I've never been able to imagine a normal life. Never been able to imagine myself growing old. Every time I try, I imagine a group of friends, acquaintances who reveare me without truly knowing me. I've never been able to imagine myself in love.

I grew up on a diet of fantasy stories. Tales of heros who were able to defeat grand opposition and make something of themself. But I never had that great opposition, no enemies or rivals. So I created it. I created a perfectionism that stretched so deep into my soul I couldn't move without triggering it. I suffered anxiety and a hollow emptiness, because I thought it would make me stronger but all it did was made me better and better at isolating myself from the real world.

Stories can't sustain you.

Nothing in this world is perfect. Nothing is simple and things are rarely grand. Perhaps thats what makes it so beautiful. Not every sunset will inspire some great work, but that doesn't mean it's not worthy of existing.

The worst crime I've commited was one of self restraint. I have so many ideas. Concepts that when created can touch a soul, but I never made them. I had this terrible idea that I would somehow sully the essence of the concept. I never made any of those masterworks I dreamed of because if I didn't do them exactly how I imagined them, they would be worthless. So I've done nothing. Never developed the skills to complete one of those great ideas and so they've faded away. Like a cat that wanders away when it doesn't get pet or fed.

I was always able to live through books. To experience triumph and greatness that was never mine, that was never real. I got so scared of not being perfect I never tried. I wanted to be percieved as some epic hero so I never got close enough to anyone to show them who I was. Because I wasn't that hero.

I dreamed of dying or disappearing in some unforgetable way because then my life would matter, have an impact strong enough to change someone forever.

I just never figured out the perfect way.

But I sit here now. Sixteen but feeling like my time has run out when I know it's only just begun, and I watch the Ponderoas sway in the wind. There was a windstorm today. It was raw and primal. The type of wind that screams not howls.

I think it's time to move on from that crazy dream.

To move on from perfect.

It's time to stop hiding behind other's stories, and to make my own. It's going to be quite the adventure. I want to see how to world changes as I get older. I've always found it ironic that younger people with their sharp vison can be so blind, but as your eyes worsen with age you can see clearer. Nothing I make will ever be perfect.

So why bother waiting for something that'll never happen.

Light is a magical thing. It can highlight or hide flaws forever casting the world in ever-changing lights. At noon, the sun's glaring rays will show every flaw. The cracks in concrete, the shine on the edge of a dull blade. It’s utilitarian, revealing problems while you still have time to fix them. Sunrise and Sunset obscure what is wrong. It’s almost as if the warm light relaxed your eyes, letting them glide over imperfections. But Moonlight… moonlight is special. It romanticizes even complete destruction. Ruins turn to romantic, adventure around every corner, and even the worst problems seem distant and conquerable.

But even the Moonlight couldn’t mask the horror of this scene. It was a mound, taller than two men, of churned dirt. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was lying in that pit. A single pitiful wooden cross sat on the top. Two twigs lashed together. All that marked the countless emaciated who lay there.

Of course this wasn't the only pile. Three more formed a straight line, ringed with prints left from cat tracks. Strange, there aren’t many pieces of large equipment left, let alone gas to run them.

Kneeling at one of the piles was a man. Dressed in a tattered tweed coat, he knelt, hands clasped, teeth chattering, and murmuring under his breath. Poor sod, at least he was smart enough to get out of the cities, even if his hunger panged frame and burned hands told the stories of his struggles. He stood, walking towards the treeline. His steps were surprisingly steady considering his condition, his dress shoes make deep impressions in the damp earth. There was a faint trail he was walking towards. A few broken ferns most people would miss. The mud got thicker leaving deeper imprints as the beech and maple forest was replaced with trembling aspens and willows. A trickle emerges from the slight slope of the hill, and you can see narrow footprints of bare feet paralleling the tiny stream. The aspen leaves tremble, their silver underside flashing as they twirled in the wind. What was that? A whiff of smoke. He turns his head and starts jogging along the tracks. They veer to the left and he follows. The scent is stronger now. The smell of damp wood smoking and something cooking.

A light up ahead. Warm and comforting it beckons. He's running now and his teeth have stopped chattering and he's breathing in heavy gasps, his hot breath wisping in the cold night air. He's almost there and THUD!

“MOTHERFUCKER!” his ankle twisted in an unnatural angle, caught in a lifted maple root. “This blasted tree why’d the fucking thing have to be here dammit.” he hissed between this clenched teeth.

“Maybe because it’s a fertile patch of Earth and the tree simply needed a place to grow.” a mirthful femine voice echoes through the forest. “Or perhaps the entire world decided to conspire against you, planting that tree fifty years ago waiting for this very day.” She steps out from behind a maple, arms crossed, her brown skin shimmering in the moonlight. She crouches down by the man, who was still holding his ankle tight. “You look terrible.”

The man’s voice strained. “Please help me.” She smiles again, threads her arm under his and pulls him up.

“What’s your name oh careless one?” his face pulls into a grimace.

“Evan.”

“I’m Ehawee. How did you trip with all this light? You should really watch where you're going.” Shuffling into the small camp, Ehawee gently lays Evan down in front of the fire then walks over to her pack slumped against a large beech. “Where do you come from Evan?” He didn't respond. Turning she could see him squeezing his eyes shut, his entire body tense as he tried to fight the pain. She slides a piece of umber bark from a bundle, walks over and sets a hand on his shoulder. “Open your mouth and chew this, it’ll help with the pain.” She stands up and starts jogging towards the little stream. On her return Evan has sat up, leg propped up, and throws another log on the fire.

“Thank you for your help.” he grunts.

“No need to thank me, put this on your ankle.” she passes him a wet cloth, cold from the creek water.

“What are the mud balls that were in the fire?”

“Cattails. They’re a bit fibrous but edible.”

“How are you out here?” his voice was low straining with despair. His back hunches, shoulders trembling and head hangs low in grief.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re less than a mile from a mass grave, smiling and laughing. How can you be so carefree when the world is burning?” Tears slid silently down his face. Little rivers shone in the moonlight as he turned his head away from the fire. Ehawee sat for a moment, contemplating.

“Would you rather me be sad? Yes those people are dead, but few of them were ever truly alive. Most would’ve lived out the rest of their life unfulfilled and contributing to the destruction of their Mother Earth. Those people-”

“DON’T YOU DARE DISCOUNT THEM.” his voice rang through the grove, echoing off the hillside. “Every single life was precious. They starved while you sit here with plenty to eat. What if the roles were reversed?! If you were someone in one of those cities, slowly dying while someone else sat in the forest living like a queen? I can only assume you learned your skills because of where you were born. But what about them? They didn’t deserve to die. What makes them different from you?” his voice breaks. “Why won’t you help them?” Ehawee slowly raises her head, leveling her piercing eyes at Evan’s crumpled form.

“What would you have me do Evan? There will always be injustice. I can’t feed them all. The white man did this to himself, becoming distant from the Earth and helpless. You mined the Earth soil, destroying what you had. Are you really surprised it only took one solar flare to send your already destabilized society off the edge?”

“So people should go back to the dark ages? We should throw away all the progress we’ve ever made to live out in the woods like you. That could never sustain everyone, the land would run out eventually.” Silence hangs in the air, and Ehawee turns to the fire.

“Do you know why every civilization has fallen?” her voice is quiet, barely more than a whisper.

“Entropy. They don’t adapt fast enough and are overtaken by someone else who will.”

“That’s only half the story. It’s true the world refuses to stay the same, but more than that it’s about the nature of power.” She selects a stick from the pile drying by the fire. “If I try to force or coerce you into doing what I want how will you react?” she turns again, looking Evan in the eyes this time.

“I would stop you.”

“Exactly. Every civilization has been built off the labor of others. There's always power-hungry individuals forcing their will on others. Even in democracy the many subjugate the few. A large civilization cannot fulfill all peoples desires, therefore, they're enforcing their will on someone. It’s why a utopian society is impossible.”

“Limited government. It provides security and nothing else.”

“And when has that ever worked out? People would resort to violence to resolve feuds. There's always a system trying to enforce justice, otherwise there would be chaos.” The fire crackles, and Ehawee rolles the baked cattail roots off the coals, and tosses the stick into the fire.

“So what does that have to do with you refusing to help people?” Evan says, glaring at her.

“Simply your society was doomed to collapse. I’m helping where I can, that's why I’m here. You can only save the drowning man who swims toward you. Peace comes when you’re in harmony and working together instead of trying to fight off other people. People are imperfect, and everything they create will have some sort of flaw. It’s why we must trust the natural systems. To learn from the plants and animals who’ve lived longer than us and have living figured out.” Evan knit his brow, giving her a concerned and quizzical look.

“So we’re all supposed to live in harmony with the Earth and never aspire for something more? We’re supposed to look at the stars and never try to reach them? That doesn’t sound much like living to me.”

“How will you reach them? By stealing from the Earth to build rockets to find what's beyond? You accuse me of being heartless for not helping all of your people, an impossible task might I add, while it was your people who were content to watch the crises of others. Tragedies and even genocides the white men knew about and did nothing to help. The Yemen crisis, the Siege of Sarajevo, the government even turned refugees from your border and yet you try to blame me?” The silence was deafening. Even the fire seemed to quiet.

“Thank you for helping me, and I’ll try to repay you. It's just so fucking- broken. All we wanted was something greater and somehow we destroyed what we had. There's got to be a better way. Were we simply meant to be hunter-gatherers for eternity? We did so much in only two thousand years and know we're going to lose it? This can’t be what humankind is destined to be. It’s not right.” His head fell into his too-scarlet hands. His once shiny Oxfords were covered in mud, his exposed skin covered in lacerations from his run that had only just started to clot.

The campfire glows, rendering the moonlight invisible. The pair sits next to each other, the mystical night soiled by haunting questions... 238,900 miles away, a flag floats motionless. The remainder of the American dream, and a reminder of the civilizations that once stood. Maybe one day people will once again reach for the stars. Perhaps they’ll find that flag, way up on the Moon and wonder how it got there. Hopefully, they’ll get farther than us.

Paintings of french countrysides adorned the walls, throned in ornate gold frames. But the most precious peices of art were tucked away in a humble little shoebox in the back of the closet. They wern't canvas on oil, but crayons and bright washable marker on construction paper. And although he hasn't seen them in more than two decades, he remembered every wavered line and messy scribble.

There was a grin she hid, tucked away in her cheek. A wink that danced in her iris, and a kiss in the angular lines of her cupid's bow.

His face was one of derision. Creases painted a perment frown at the corners of his mouth , but the way he figited with the shipped dradle in his hand was that of a child. And his usually vacant eyes lit up when he rambled about the intricacies of sourdough bread.

Baby don't hurt me.

I have to have fifteen words, so here's some random words.

I find it funny how much I laugh.

How much I smile so wide, it splits my face apart.

It's funny how a laugh fill the void of panic and anxiety, while the world crumbles around you. Becuase if it's funny it can't hurt you. If you laught at the thorns, they turn into roses.

At least, that's what I tell myself.

So I'm sorry Mom. When you woke up at 3am to hear me laughing hysterically over my geometry homework. If I wasn't laughing, I'd be crying. Becuase proofs are bullshit to be feeding to a hormonally charged teenager, who is drowning, just trying to get by.

I laughed a lot in English class. Because reading Death of a Salesman, when the majority of the students in the class are depressed is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. So Mrs. Pool, are you dumb enough, not to see the scars on the wrists and the red-rimmed eyes? Are you trying to drown us, to shove us into a mold not everyone fits in.

Because there are a hundred other book with redeeming qualities. Shakesphere may be a monkey hitting keys on a typewriter, but at least his plays don't have characters who people sympathize with becuase they want to kill themselves.

I could write all day, pounding keys in my frustration at the world. But will that help?

No.

The only way it'll get better is if I quit lying that things are fine, and I'm fine. It'll only get better if I quit participating. Improve myself, and hope others follow suit.

Because the only person in this world I can control is me.

The only other option is the laugh.

And lie.

The day had been a normal one for one Lucy Davis. Bomb drills at school, and a test in arithmetic. But that day, February 13, 1988, was the day River Lynx London would die. 

She had arrived at her house after school like always. Her mother still at work, her father's chair vacant as the day he had left them. She walked to her room, avoiding the gaze of the mirror in the hall. She dropped her bag on her bed in the small three bedroom house, then walked in the bathroom. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Nothing was strange. Nothing moved or made a sound. River left the bathroom and headed towards the kitchen when a knock sounded at the door. River turned to where the noise had come from and looked at the mirror. She froze, entranced and horrified as she started to tremble. As River's perfect life shattered into pieces. 

The air was filled with a black smoke, choking River as she gasped for breath. Screams echoed in the crowded air along with gunshots and cannons booming.Something was wrong. Where was she? The smoke suddenly disappeared. Blown away, as if by a fan. The she saw them. Men dressed in uniforms, stained with blood and oil. They bore the present and hammer on their arm and they were pointing guns at her. She couldn't move, couldn't run. The parted her lips to scream but she didn't have time. The words were forming to slow as the bullets sprinted they're way towards her. Time slowed. The bullets struck. Pain blossomed. Darkness claimed her. 

The man at the door heard someone screaming within the house, then a large thump. He started frantically fiddling with the door. He was muttering to himself.

"No, no this can't be happening. She wasn't supposed to have realized her power this early. Not now, not here." The screaming stretched on, getting louder and louder and more frantic. The the screaming fell short and silence stretched on. The man backed up, a determined expression masking his face. Then he ran at the slammed into it with his shoulder, destroying it completely. Reducing the eight inch oaken door into matchwood. He rolled as he hit the floor, coming up in a crouch, then sprinting through the halls to find the source of the screaming. 

He found her, head cracked and oozing blood and a colorless liquid from her banging repeatedly against the floor, a cracked mirror on the wall beside her. The man started the put pressure on the wound, binding it with a bandage from his pocket. Then placed a strange small device down and flipped a switch. A blue haze simmered into existence, then winked out. The man picked up the girl gently, her eyes rolled into her sockets, then he ran for the front door and the white, nondescript van waiting outside. 

Mrs. London pulled up into the empty driveway. Running up to the house after seeing the destroyed door. 

"River honey! River where are you?" she shouted, trying and failing to keep her voice level. Her shouts got more frantic as she searched the house. "River where are you! Come out this instant! RIVER!" she fell to the ground by the pool of blood in the hall. She was crying, sobbing fanatically. "I knew this day would come, why today? Why today? Why my little baby? Why? Why not take me instead. 

Mrs. London was still curled up there when the police arrived after a call from one of the neighbors. She was still muttering to herself when they wrapped a shock blanket around her and forced her to drink water. 

She was still muttering to herself as the white van arrived at a private airport and the men inside boarded a plane.