Chapter Text
.......... Saphie's POV ..........
A quiet morning, with no bird sounds or trees ruffling from the wind. No sound of anything, it is just me.
Laying in my bed I'm overly conscious of my fingers, my feet and what have you. Sometimes, when the morning feels like it should, I pretend death. I act the afterlife as my morning birth and it’s painfully glorious.
I am utterly aware of everything around me but I choose to still; stay in my bed, unmoving, unfeeling, understanding that the world changes and I am forever stuck in time.
Perhaps my melancholic mental rant rids my body of the early morning sorrow and allows me to thrive forward. Moving, finally, I get up and tune in everything.
My alarm has been ringing; the world is not quiet.
And so, the world begins anew for me and the veil of peaceful inexistence is gone.
A groan leaves my lips as I so painfully wish to enter the comfort of my bed again, the crisp orange autumn leaves on my floor ardently remind me to keep my window closed. And so, wrapped in my blanket, I waddle to the window and shut it. I should have done such an act quickly but I take my time.
Sometimes suffering on your own terms make life seem better, I chose to endure the cold, you cannot give it to me.
My full bladder reminded me to leave my thoughts and continue with the morning activities. I complete these needs and get dressed; I don a grey suit with a black turtleneck. I pull out my phone and play music for a kind of ambience I suppose?
“You’re Beautiful” by Mojave 3 continues where it left off the night before:
(Time my life to a fallen leaf / Watch the spring in all its plumage / Beautiful like the stars at night / Twist and turn before the dawn / Beautiful like the moon at night / Ducks and dives into the sea)
I sunscreen and moisturize, spreading concealer under my eyes and a light cream blush I blend into my skin to restore the life stolen from my pale skin.
A smile rises to my face as I insect my skin in the lighted mirror, nothing creases.
“Good, good,” I say to myself and I mentally check I haven’t left anything.
I leave my room and walk down the stairs, and see my mother in her nightgown relaxing on the couch with a mug in her hand and the news on. I pack my bag in the adjacent room and put on my coat.
Walking out the door, my mother comes up to me.
“You haven’t had breakfast yet?” she questions, but she phrases it as more of a ‘go get something to eat.’
“I’m not hungry,” I tell her, but she looks at me questioningly.
“The day is long Saphie” she – sort of – whines, “just take a protein bar with you” and she pushes one into her hand.
I have no intention of eating it but ignorance is bliss to her.
“Fine,” I say, “have a nice day ma.”
“You too dear.”
I leave the house and the wind shoves the door closed in a way familiar to the other English mornings. And so, the journey begins. Walking down the pavement with the stones arranged oddly, they’re not evenly spread out and arranged properly and some parts protrude while others dip into the Earth. The uncomfortable, unwelcoming cold.
It is a sunny day, but it doesn’t take away from the gloominess of the morning. With the sun, there is bound to be evening rain where the night is old, and the unforgiving breeze pins your face to reality and slaps you back and forth from your path to sanity.
The clouds angrily drag along the plane of the sky in a manner akin to me. Foot after foot, pushing myself forward in an unwanted manner.
“I wish I could have stayed home and relaxed,” a thought reiterated in my mind many times over and over.
The path to the train is known well to me, my feet follow the pattern they have every day for the past few months and my mind is lost to an automatic regime.
The old, slightly large woman whose stockings are always halfway down her legs or ripped with her mismatched clothes and settled frown on her brow, tracks my steps while she sits by the bus stop. The man near her begins to open his fruit and vegetable store and he works diligently in the cold morning. My eyes settled on my surroundings; your thoughts cannot wander in a town where people snatch away the unfamiliar.
The schoolgirls wait near the corner shop for their friend and shiver in the wind. ‘Why would they wear such short skirts in such cold weather?’ I think to myself and go on some kind of mental rant about the patriarchy or male validation.
Others are, truthfully, none of my business and I concern myself more with my movement. Foot after foot, pace after pace I get to the crossing, and walk with my head down.
“Perhaps a car will do me the grace of running me over” I ponder. I stopped mumbling to myself in the early morning as once I came across a girl at my school who overheard me rambling about how I’m pretty sure I saw a frog having sex. People are odd but complain when I am too, the double standards are painful.
My lips are permanently turned down in a slight sadness, but do you call it sadness when that’s the expression that you were born with? God, do I ever stop complaining.
Walking the steps to the train, I reach the platform where some have leering gazes and bored expressions while others are preoccupied with their lives and occupations (be that one thing or the other). All I truly feel is amusement, to a degree, that we all have our own lives in the world, and jobs to sustain our Earth or other people. My mind is on its millionth tangent of the day.
The wind bites at my nose uncomfortably and my shoes suffocate my double-socked feet I walk to my spot on the platform that, over time I have learned, brings me closest to the gate in which I exit.
I rock back and forth, waiting for the tube to arrive, and I watch my breath form miniature clouds in the sky. Nothing as magnificent as the beauteous nature that hangs high up or perhaps the cigarette smoke that comes out of the man next to me.
It is a quiet morning on the station, and I am forever grateful for that.
The train arrives with its majestic screeching; metal on metal piercing my ears.
As I knew, a door opened exactly by my feet, and the man next to me entered a different carriage. In mine, however, there are only two people. No – there are two men – and now (after the doors shut) the lie the three of us lie in an enclosed carriage.
The two sit next to each other and have yet to acknowledge my existence. I begin my short walk to the many empty seats, eager to relieve my legs from the heavy bag on my back.
Usually, when in London, the first rule is to mind your business and leave everyone alone.
However, curiosity killed the cat I might say because I glance up and I see these men.
All I can think of is ‘Oh My GOD.’