There are things beyond my knoweldge... and I hate them.
by Sally Manger
Sally was rather puzzled. Her brain felt as if it were a torrent, apparently useless knowledge--of which her supplies were quite immense--swirling around the blank spaces meant to be filled with… what? Emotion? She couldn’t recall an understanding of such. Her father had always taught her that she did not need those. Being a lady meant that. Ladies were calm and collected, although it didn’t seem that way based on many of the ladies she had observed. Aunt Lilac, for one, was neither calm nor very collected.
She wondered on what basis his thoughts were formed. When had he ever been a lady?
Her mother had written to her, something about a real divorce. That was what had the second year’s mind in a twirl. She supposed she was meant to be sad. How did one behave sadly? Sally tried very hard. Staring at her reflection to see if she was doing so correctly, she frowned slightly. Then she frowned further, feeling and appearing ridiculous. Was she to be angry? She knit her eyebrows together and sneered. It was quite… odd.
Was she supposed to be… happy? The Aladren felt like her chest was lighter, less weighed down, but she did not understand why. Was that relief? Should she have been relieved? She wished she could see her mother, could hear her voice. Although not in letters, she did tend to express herself clearly for Sally’s oblivious sake.
Shaking all of this off, she headed out of her dormitory with the library in mind as her destination. In the library, everything made sense. Books were sorted by genre or author--or something at all--in an organized fashion. There were words that no matter how many times she blinked would always be there, singing to her.
Admittedly, this could have been considered running away, fleeing from her thoughts or the possible feelings that might arise from them. The twelve year old didn’t know how to let herself feel, and so things that stirred something in her were, if possible, to be avoided like the plague. Perhaps she was a coward. Sally was fine with that title. She did not need emotional knowledge; she had book smarts, an astounding IQ. She was supremely capable, therefore, to learn these things, but she was almost petrified to. Emotions had wracked her mother for too long to let herself feel like that.
Sitting gracefully at a table, long navy blue skirt folding beneath her ankle-crossed legs, she cracked open the book she had moments before grabbed off of a shelf. It was one she had read before, something familiar. She soaked in every known word, every practically memorized line, as if it were new. Her concentration was assaulted when someone sat beside her. “May I assist you?” she asked politely, her eyes screaming to go back to the white pages.
12Sally MangerThere are things beyond my knoweldge... and I hate them.198Sally Manger15