Snippet #2576583

As Haru spoke Tallyho sucked on her fingers. The more he spoke the faster she ate. And while he spoke of Kyle—his issues with school, with anger management—she finished all of the grapes in her hand. And then he got to her. She eagerly peered back at the table. There was no way on Aires that she was going to be able to get up and get more. So she sucked on her own fingers. The index and thumb posed print to print as if she were simply savoring some imaginary grape. As if she hadn’t just run out of her only coping mechanism.
Collaboration and team work? Since when did she actually, actuallyneed that? Every cyclopean she fought, every bad situation she’s been in, every trial and tribulation she’s been through has been because of her own resilience. The others? They just happened to be in the same area doing their own thing. Every person who has ever saved her life, or helped her in some significant way has been from outside of the team. And one of them, though they didn’t know at the time, was aligned with the enemy. So as far as Tallyho was concerned teamwork did nothing for her.
She felt that everything she said to Harper was said for a reason. She had three years to think about it. Three years to be constantly reminded that no matter how obnoxious or unthoughtful or self-serving Harper was, people were always going to still care more about his well-being and his feelings and leave her to drown. And this reflection did not just apply to a good chunk of the group but to an extent she felt this about Dorian even.
She bit her finger as Haru went on:
”Get over things.”
”I cannot forget.” she thought.
”You’ll die alone.”
”Don’t you think I know that?”

She was prepared. She always lived alone even within crowds. As a child she felt strange. She learned to speak later than most children. They assumed she was an invalid. Mute. Stupid. She was dirty and she was stupid. And she was always hungry. And her mother was shrinking. And she ate her meals among the goats because she didn’t want to see her mother shrinking so much. Sometimes she would eat up to six meals a day just to remove herself. And when her mother shrank so small that she shrank out of existence Tallyho thought that she too was shrinking. And she became scared and became obsessed with being strong. And she ate more. She picked fights with boys. And she was still dirty and stupid and motherless but she beat the boys and took their lunches. And even when the old women braided her little orphan head with lilies she felt alone. And what was the point of having those women waste time braiding her hair if she was still going to feel alone anyway? So she left. And she walked a lot. And she was always hungry. And the night she cried the hardest was when she was hungry and got a splinter in her toe and couldn’t get it out with her little fingers and stubby nails and she let it sit there. And she felt so alone that she spoke to the splinter. The splinter became her friend because it made her feel something other than loneliness. Pain, yes. But she wasn’t lonely anymore. And she lived her life this way every night finding some new thing to talk to. She spoke to the wind because it made her feel like she was flying. She spoke to the fire because it made her warm. They made her feel things physically and they were distractions. Sometimes she wasn’t hungry. And soon she grew into womanhood. (And she was never sure when she became a woman because she hadn’t had anyone to tell her so.) And she resigned herself to this.
Before she struggled with trying to find a good reason for why she was alive. Taking her own life had never occurred to her. But she didn’t feel like she contributed anything of value to the world. She lived for no one, not her clan, not even herself. She resigned herself to this.
And then suddenly she had a calling. Suddenly she was this month warrior. At first she thought it was all in the necklace—something she quite honestly stole from somewhere to trade for food but never got around to it. She resigned herself to this.
And she resigned herself to the fact that she had trouble expressing her feelings. And the fact that no one was going to care about her but herself. And she was okay with this. To some it might seem a bit eerie but it was natural for her. And she resigned herself to the fact that she will always be hungry for something other than a meal that sits at the pit of her stomach for only a few hours before dissolving. And to the fact that, at the root of it all, she’s always felt a little less than human. And that was who she was and how she was.
And then Haru moved away from her.
She could feel herself melting on the white upholstered love seat. Watery butter on a mound of mashed potatoes. And she felt relieved. And then it was over and Harper was crying. Tallyho loathed the sight of tears. And the taste when they ran into the corners of her mouth. And they probably didn’t think she knew the taste but they were force-fed to her by the spoon of her cheeks as they fell without hesitation the night after the first time she killed a cyclopean. After her seizure in jail. And many other times but—no—she would always be a little less than human and this was natural. And she was okay with it. Falling down that hill and onto earth was the beginning of the hardest chapter of her life and she was okay with it. She was okay, okay—
“Okay…” That was what Tallyho said at the end of Haru’s intervention. She wasn’t particularly cold but she wasn’t passionate either. Then Kyle thanked Haru and Harper asked if they were done.
“I’m done.” he said, “But it’s not up to me to decide when the three of you are.”
And with this Haru hoisted himself out of his chair and made a dispassionate walk out of the room. Haru had changed a lot since the first day they met him. That day he appeared as a well-dressed, quite handsome, dashing, charming, witty young man with a natural affinity for success. But these days he was more rugged, hair un-kept, a slight limp in his step. Sunken eyes and paler skin. He seemed like he was getting older but he wasn’t supposed to because he was immortal. Yet he was beginning to look like someone’s aging father. And conversations with Haru became less like teenage rebellion and more like the curt conversation where your father reminds you that one day he will die. And your throat gets dry.