Brighter

Brighter was a person consumed by feelings and usually felt as if she didn’t belong. This feeling was normal amongst teenagers but she felt it in a different way. Today was her 16^th birthday and she had spent most of the day in her room, head buried in a Holly Black novel. Her fingers slowly caressed each page as several different feelings began to overwhelm her; Longing, Sadness, Anger...and for some strange reason...

Remembrance.

What is there to be remembered? Brighter often wondered.

These were fantasy books, nothing she would have remembered from her studies and certainly not anything she could have personally experienced. Perhaps in her dreams the imaginative world of wondrous beings had so consumed her it had given her fond memories of what couldn’t be real.

Hmm...Plausible thought Brighter as she recalled her series of dreams.

Her dreams were always very vivid, blank canvases overpowered by neon paints was usually how she thought of them. How could such a simple person, a plain simple, unimportant girl like her imagine such extraordinary things? This particular question, Brighter did not have the answer to and all of the books in the world couldn’t give her the answer she longed for. Her dreams were truly one of a kind...

 

And often she did dream...

 

Brighter brought herself back to reality as quickly as her mind had wondered into the Realm of Fantasy. She finished reading the page she was on and sighed as she placed her bookmark in the book, closed it and sat it on her nightstand. You can’t long for something that isn’t real, Brighter thought to herself. Reality was just that, reality. Part of adulthood and maturing was learning how to live with and accept the fact you cannot change reality or exchange it for something that wasn’t real. Only children dwelled on the aspect of Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and any other figment of a child’s imagination. Brighter smiled as she recalled her memories of all of those things, leaving freshly baked cookies out for Santa and putting her tooth under her pillow for the Tooth Fairy. Her younger days had been fun with laughter pervading every sentence and meaningless things meaning absolutely everything. Now it was time to be an adult...and time to stop believing in such childish ideas. This alternate world wasn’t real.

It never would be...

 

Yet Brighter still believed.

 

She would hope and pray that one morning she would awaken under a tree, her clothes removed and a dress made of soft green leaves hugging her body. She wanted the creatures to dance around her and cover her with lilies and wildflowers while they played their instruments and drank their wine. Brighter knew these creatures, Faeries to be exact, weren’t exactly all they were cracked up to be. She knew they could do horrible things to humans, and yet she still longed to be apart of the Faerie world, any world for that matter as long as it was different from the one she was in now. Brighter longed for another world, using books and dreams as temporary escapes from reality. Yes, this world was real, this world was physical, and this world was the only option she had to choose from...

But this world isn’t “me”.

Brighter smiled at that thought while picking up another book. Even if she wasn’t meant to be in this particular world (not that there was another one of course) there was still the minute pleasure in expressing individuality, or as normal people saw it, weirdness. Brighter enjoyed being different but as a result she often felt lonely. For the most part, loneliness didn’t bother her. Peace was bliss and you couldn’t exactly have peace with friends always yapping about the latest gossip or what the movie stars were doing every second of everyday. Brighter was simply a much happier person with her books by her side...but sometimes...she wanted a friend.

Sometimes...

When things happened...

She needed a friend.

Brighter quickly dismissed the thought. The more you think about it the harder things will be, she told herself. Just leave well enough alone, Brighter. Her previous thoughts began to fade as she opened another book and began to read. In the end, friends didn’t matter. Her books were all she had and all she needed. She flipped each page with diligence and concentration, imagining the words becoming images and those images becoming reality. If only these books were reality. If only they were her reality.

Brighter’s love of books was reflected in the design and slight untidiness of her room. Books of all colors, shapes and sizes pervaded the majority of her free space. Overflowing book shelves sat against the walls of her larger than normal bedroom. A wide variety of novels about vampires, werewolves, and faeries sat in a neat stack on her computer desk. She had been using these books to gather information for her research of different mythical creatures. Many of the fantasy books she read had made it to the big screen, resulting in the walls of her room being covered in posters of her favorite books-to-movies. Brighter’s bed, much like her computer desk with less organization, was home to many of her favorite books she would read over and over again. She sometime’s read at night, staying up until the early hours of the morning to finish whatever she was reading. Maybe not exactly a complete nerd, but bookworm was definitely an understatement.

Brighter lay lazily across the bed, half of her body hanging off as she held the book above her head, reading. Her bedspread consisted of a quilt with a shinning sun and pillows to match. On particularly peculiar days, days in which words just weren’t quite enough to explain the phenomena, Brighter would lay in her bed and run her fingers gently across the orange and yellow fabric that made up the sun on her quilt. She would imagine life being so simple and as beautiful as the colors in that quilt or the stories in her books.

Life wasn’t what she wanted it to be…so she would simply imagine...

Brighter’s arms grew tired of holding her book above her head. She switched positions, propping herself up against a pillow while continuing to read. Brighter’s love and yearning of fantasy related books appeared to be insatiable. Thousands upon thousands of these books just never quite felt like enough. For some reason she had always felt a connection with books, a connection that made her want to go deeper into each story. She wanted to live each story as if it were actually real...

She often thought it could be real...

 

But she knew deep down inside, this was all in her head. Knowing the reality of her situation always made Brighter feel the effects of the loneliness she often suppressed. She knew she was simply a friendless girl who escaped from society through the means of books. Society, Brighter thought to herself with a quiet frustrated sigh. I hate society.

 Brighter heard a quiet knock on her door and knew immediately it was her mother. Why her mother insisted on knocking on her door to enter still fascinated Brighter. She would knock quickly and then open the door without any approval or disapproval. I guess it’s out of respect thought Brighter. It didn’t exactly irk her; it was just one of those things she wondered about.

Brighter’s mother entered with a smile that suddenly turned into an unsatisfied frown as she looked at her daughter curled up on the bed reading yet another novel. Brighter could see the disappointment on her mothers face but just couldn’t hold back the smile that tried to escape its way to her lips. She wasn’t smiling at the fact her mother was upset, she was smiling at how little her mother knew about her, despite the fact she knew Brighter so well. Sonja wanted her daughter to be normal and just couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t go out and have fun. Brighter, on the other hand, knew exactly why; she wasn’t normal.

“Brighter”, Sonja called “Honey please, today is your

16^th birthday. Go out and have fun with your friends. It’s not healthy for a beautiful, young girl like you to stay trapped in this house all of time. You’re too young to be a couch potato. Go party, go do something wild, well, maybe not too wild but for God’s sake Sweetheart go have some fun!”.

     Sonja was Brighter’s mother and she was, well, beautiful. Her hair was a dark crimson color and her eyes were a cross between green and grey. Her skin was as smooth as the finest silk and she appeared to be completely flawless. Her mother rarely cared about what clothes she wore (Sonja was usually in jeans and a t-shirt) but her face would always make you disregard what she wore. She was just that beautiful. Her lips were full and pink but at the moment were twisted into an expression that did not bring out the best in her face. She wanted Brighter to do something special for her birthday and as usual, she only cared about her books.   

     Brighter allowed a slightly sinister grin to creep across her face. Couch Potato? So that’s what they’re calling it now days? Brighter thought to herself. She may be a lot of things, but a couch potato is something she was most definitely not. There were reasons Brighter chose to stay inside...

If only Sonja knew...

“Sun’s out”, replied Brighter, head still buried in her novel. Brighter wasn’t a fan of the sun. It...didn’t benefit her to put it in a nice way. She wasn’t emo (although it would appear as such to people who did not know her) but there were reasons she couldn’t go out in the sun.

Reasons she just couldn’t quite explain.

 

Ever since Brighter was a child the sun had been her enemy. Not that she didn’t like the sun, as a matter of fact she adored the sun and practically lived for it, but when she was in the sun...things happened.

Strange things.

 

The type of things they’d lock you up for and only let you out when scientists wanted to stick needles in your flesh and take samples of your blood. No thanks; I’ll pass on that lovely lifestyle, thought Brighter while her mother continued trying to convince her to go outside. 

“It’s a beautiful day sweetheart, not a cloud in the sky”, said Sonja in a desperate attempt to persuade her daughter.

Not a cloud in the sky, thought Brighter. Could she pick a worse time to try to persuade me into going somewhere?

“Mom look I�"“

Brighter’s voice slowly trailed off as she lifted her head out of her book and paused for a moment. Her nose began to tingle and her heart began to race. Raging feelings of excitement pulsed through her veins, intoxicating her and making her feel dizzy.

 

She knew this feeling.

She loved this feeling.

 

Her lips slowly began to curl at each end into a thoughtful smile. All day she had waited with anticipation for this moment to come. Finally she thought to herself as she sniffed the air deeply.

It was finally coming.

She put down her book and grabbed her umbrella and raincoat, the two normal-people necessities that Brighter could have lived without.

“Brighter what on earth are you doing?”, said Sonja with an odd look on her face. Was her daughter insane?

Brighter glanced at her mother, smiled, kissed her on the cheek and headed for the door.

“Be back later mom” she said as she ran down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Brighter was quite short, but determination saved her from any faulty steps.

Sonja knew she wasn’t crazy. She briskly walked over to Brighter’s window, looked outside then yelled to her daughter.

“But its not even rain�"”, She stopped herself as she heard the low rumble of thunder and soft, smooth rain drops began to beat against the roof of the house. She just shook her head and laughed to herself. She glanced out of the window again and watched her daughter walk gracefully down the street and through the rain.

As soon as Brighter saw her house fade into the distance of the pouring rain, she took off her raincoat and lowered her umbrella. Brighter smiled as the soft drops of water made her face tingle. She loved the way the rain felt against her skin. It cleared her mind and made her feel alive. The rain always had a way of making her feel like she belonged and in actuality that feeling in itself made her feel a strange sense of oddity. Most girls Brighter’s age wouldn’t be caught dead in the rain; it messed up their hair and made their make up run. The rain showed most girl’s for what they were; slaves to the will of society. Society says women need make up, society says women need this hairstyle, society says women need these shoes...

And the rain simply washes all of those unnecessary things away, leaving a lost soul who has no idea who they truly are.

 As for Brighter, she wouldn’t be caught dead in the sun. The rain was apart of her just as much as her heart and soul, any element of weather was, but she couldn’t expect anyone to understand that. It was one of those things she’d most likely get locked up in the crazy house for. Being different just wasn’t a part of everyday society. Everyone had to look the same, act the same and of course think the same. Brighter tried to understand the harsh uncreative views of society and couldn’t. The expectations of what everyone thought she was suppose to be irritated her like a gigantic thorn in her side not deep enough to draw blood but just deep enough to irritate the hell out of her. Brighter thanked God for giving her open minded parents who allowed her to be different without any complaints. They actually encouraged her individuality and frowned upon her following the crowd. Brighter began to smile as she thought of her parents. What can I say? My parents are strange.

Brighter continued to walk until she came to a little spot out in a field where 4 little tree’s provided shade for two boulders. This was one of her favorite places to sit and listen. Listen to the things only she could hear. The trees provided just enough shade so Brighter was able to sit under them during the day time when it was sunny...as long as she was alone.

But today, she wasn’t alone.

On one of the boulders sat a boy with spiked dark purple hair and a ring hanging from his eye and his nose. His face was slightly tanned and he wore an expression of excitement and anxiety.

His name was Lunar.

Brighter began talking with him in a fantasy chat room some months back and they had immediately taken to one another. Brighter felt as if he were the only person that understood her and would ever understand her. She considered him one of her closest friends out of the few friends she had, even sometimes wishing he could be something more.

As Brighter came closer he smiled and she smiled back, taking a seat on the other boulder. She had been expecting him.

Author's Note

Any feedback is appreciated! =)