NaNoWriMo - 2

This story (chapter?) is fictional. It’s based on a dream I had a while back, which I’m pretty sure was inspired by the Philip Pullman series His Dark Materials. This photo reminded me of the dream. It was taken on December 28 2007 in Miami, Florida. My mom and I were visiting Renee and Dan, who lived there at the time, and we went to a zoo during our visit. This intriguing guy was there. Let’s call him Carlisle…

I always had the feeling there was something unusual about me and my daemon. Ever since I could remember, Carlisle was there with his big grey feathers and large, sharp black beak. He had been an African grey parrot since the day I was born, as far as I knew. But that wasn’t normal. The other kids’ daemons were changing all the time. Flashing from a finch to a cat to a porcupine, depending on the situation and their mood. I longed for Carlisle to change. I wanted to see him slither along the ground as a snake or bark as a dog at the neighbor’s grumpy old cat, but that never happened. Carlisle was just a parrot, always a parrot.

As we grew up, the other kids started to notice, too, and I had to make up stories for why they never saw Carlisle change. “He changes all the time in my room,” I’d tell them. “But he doesn’t like to change with other people around.” “Oh really?” my classmates would say, “Then prove it… have Carlisle change when you go back to your room and come tomorrow as something else!” Ugh, why can’t the snots just accept it? I’d ask myself. But I’d agree and say okay and pray that during the night Carlisle would change. If I just hoped hard enough, he’d change, right? But it never happened, Carlisle never changed, and all the other kids knew.

“Carlisle’s still a big fat parrot,” they’d point and yell the next day. “He can’t change!” “Oh, actually, um, he did change yesterday, into a wolf. A big, growling, mean wolf. He had a great time shredding all the bedsheets and howling at the moon. But I need Carlisle to be able to fly to, to class… because it’s the best way, the fastest way to, um, get here, so whenever we leave he has to be a parrot. He can’t be a wolf.” Those stories obviously only got us so far, but eventually the other kids gave up and, thankfully, just left us alone. We were weird, me and Carlisle. My big, aloof African grey. Those kids had no idea how badly I wished Carlisle would change… just once, and maybe if he’d change, I’d feel something and would know that we were actually normal, we were okay.

One day after school when I was maybe eleven, I was playing soccer with one of the few kids who would hang out with me. We were in a big abandoned lot behind the school, kicking the ball back and forth. Toby’s daemon, at the time a wiry silver poodle, was running alongside Toby, feverishly watching the ball and barking each time it came near, and trying to nip at it. Carlisle, as usual, flew lazy circles overhead, feigning interest. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Toby started screaming and flung himself to the ground, clutching his foot. I ran up to him. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!” I yelled. “I don’t know… my foot, it’s on fire!” I could see that it wasn’t actually on fire, but he was clearly in pain. That was when I realized Toby’s poodle daemon was also writhing and squealing in pain just a few feet away, with a thin, black metal nail sticking out through her hind paw. Toby was feeling every little bit of his daemon’s pain. I could tell it was pure and real and awful. I ran to get help, Carlisle following behind, and when we returned a few minutes later with the school nurse, Toby’s now cat daemon was carefully licking her paw with Toby sitting on the ground, cradling her and stroking her fur and crying a little, but doing okay. They whispered quietly to each other as the nurse inspected the wound. The bloody metal nail glinted up from the ground beside them. It’s a scene that I’ll never forget, and it’s a scene that I think about from time to time and, in some ways, envy.

A few weeks later, Carlisle and I were in my room at the school dormitory. I was reading a history lesson at my desk while Carlisle worked on cracking open walnuts on the windowsill. I had grown up with that sound, the careful cracking and crunching of walnut shells being broken apart by Carlisle’s beak. He often gave the nut inside to me, especially if he’d already had a few. He’d fling them on the desk next to me and then go to work on the next nut. I think he just liked the challenge of cracking something so tough open. I loved that sound. It felt like home.

It was still warm enough out to keep the windows open in the evening, and with both windows open my room could get rather breezy. I noticed the wind picking up and just as I thought about closing the windows, I felt a gust and heard one of the windows slam shut. Carlisle started squawking horribly and flapping his wings crazily at the window, walnut shells scattering across the floor. I ran over to him. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!” I yelled. “I don’t know… my foot, it’s on fire!” I could see that it wasn’t actually on fire, but he was clearly in pain. It was just like with Toby. But Carlisle was my daemon. Wasn’t I supposed to feel this pain? I felt nothing but panic for my daemon. “Your foot! It’s stuck in the window!” I opened the window to free his foot and he squawked painfully and fluttered over to my desk.

I followed. “Are you okay?” I asked. I wiggled my own toes, bracing myself for the pain, and sort of hoping to feel something. Some jab of anguish, some tingle of trauma, like Toby did with his daemon. But I felt nothing, other than walnut shell crumbs poking here and there. “I’m fine!” He yelled with an anger I had not heard before, keeping his right foot tucked up under his belly. I could tell it was not fine. Maybe even broken. “Why’d you leave the windows open anyways?” He roared. “I’m sorry,” I said, a bit stunned by his rage. “We should go to the nurse. Do you want me to carry you?” Carlisle generally refused to let me carry him, preferring to fly for himself. I reached out to stroke his grey feathers, and pick him up, but he didn’t answer and before I could touch him, he hurled into the air in a streak of grey feathers and flew out the other window that was still open.

“Where are you going?!” I yelled after him, shocked. There was no answer. “But we’re not supposed to…” I trailed off as I watched his wings flap away. “Be apart,” I whispered. It was the first time he left me. I waited for the burning pain in my chest that everyone said they felt when their daemon got too far away from them, but again, I felt nothing. Something was not right. What if he dies? Will I die? What if he never comes back? What will I tell everyone at school? Everyone has a daemon. Everyone’s chest burns with fire when their daemon gets a couple meters away from them. It’s common knowledge, basic human fact. We couldn’t be separated. But now? We were already strange enough. I’ll be a freak without Carlisle. Can I even go to school, or anywhere, without him? I’d never seen anyone without a daemon before…  

These thoughts took over my mind, until eventually Carlisle did return. He had a white bandage around his foot and a bag of chocolate truffles in his beak. My favorite kind of chocolate truffles. I had closed the windows, with the wind whipping the branches around angrily, so he had to tap at one with his beak to get in. “Hello!” he said brightly, tossing the truffles on the desk as I pulled the window open and sat down at the desk. All of his anger was gone, and was replaced with a frenzied kindness. “I’m so sorry I left like that earlier. It just really hurt. The nurse gave me those chocolates to give to you. Your favorite.” His voice was high and light. He hobbled across the desk and over to me and gingerly nipped and preened my hair with his beak. The only other time he had preened my hair was when he accidentally bit into my finger a couple years ago, mistaking it for part of the walnut I was handing him. I howled in pain until the sudden preening and attention distracted me and calmed me down. He must have really felt bad. I reached out and stroked his soft feathers, but didn’t know what to say.

Finally, I asked, “Is… is your foot okay?” “Yes, the nurse said it’ll be fine. It’s not broken, just very badly bruised.” I nodded and looked at the chocolate and then down at the floor. The walnut shells were still everywhere. I had spent the past hour lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what would happen next, and had forgotten about the mess until then. I stood up, my hair pulling out of Carlisle’s beak, and started picking up the shells. His eyes followed me. “Are you okay?” He asked. I kept picking up shells and staring at the floor. “I’m alright. I just, I don’t understand why I didn’t feel anything.” “You didn’t feel anything?” he asked. “Yeah, I mean, I should have felt your pain, right? When your foot got caught in the window. My foot should have hurt, like Toby’s did. Right? And it should have hurt when you left, too. My chest should have burned. A lot. But it didn’t.”

 

“Oh,” he said, “That… that’s actually a, a good thing. It means we’re strong if we can be apart. And I didn’t go very far, just to the nurse’s office in the next building. My foot hurt so much, I just couldn’t wait. I’m sorry. But everything’s okay now. I’m back.” I straightened up and looked at him. “We’re strong? What do you mean we’re strong? Nobody can be without their daemon. We’re not strong, we’re weird.” “Well,” he said, “well, I didn’t go that far. And, and when people feel their daemons’ pain or can’t be away from them because it hurts so much, in their chest, it’s actually a weakness. They need each other. They can’t be independent, and that means they’re weak. They can’t handle difficult situations. But us? We’re strong. We can be apart, at least for a little bit. So we can handle more than everyone else.” “Oh,” I said. Was this real? Could me and my daemon actually be an extra strong, independent version of everyone else? Somehow, I didn’t feel any better. “I see,” I said. “Thanks for the chocolate.” I unwrapped one and ate it and thought about how strong we were, but, for the third time that day, I felt nothing. Exhausted, I crawled into bed and turned off the light. I listened as Carlisle made his way up to his usual sleeping spot on the curtain rod. But I couldn’t sleep.

Who is Carlisle? I kept asking myself that during the night. He had been with me my whole life, had never left my side until that evening, but he didn’t actually seem to like me that much. At school, I watched all the other kids dart around the playground, their daemons flawlessly galloping alongside as a lynx or zooming easily by their ear as a dragonfly. Carlisle just flew in the same lazy circles over my head all the time. The other kids did everything with their daemon, too. They studied lessons together, ate lunch side by side, and played the same games together. Whenever we weren’t in public, Carlisle mostly just ignored me, perched on the windowsill crunching walnuts or high up on the curtain rod, taking a nap, like he was now. I had always assumed everyone else’s daemon ignored them at home, too, but clearly we weren’t like everyone else. I stared at his beautiful grey feathers, reflecting the dim, hazy streetlights outside, the slow rise and fall of his plumage as he breathed. I tried to imagine what he was dreaming, but found nothing.  

Word count: 2,139
Total: 4,166