First of a few new captions
Dec. 21st, 2008 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Here's my take on one of the captions ^^. Enjoy!
I became a mute when I was a little girl. I had my first bath at the local bathhouse. The water was so much warmer than I was used to at home. I felt shaky. I slipped. I woke up in the hospital. I couldn’t even moan out. I panted and cried as my parents held me. The doctors tried every single treatment possible. I only managed to moan out loud once. I felt so scared.
But they helped me at the hospital. And they taught me how to speak with my hands and body. It didn’t feel the same but, as the years passed, I got pretty good at it.
I grew up. I grew in many places…and the boys noticed. And it wasn’t pleasant. Many figured that, since I was mute, it meant I wouldn’t protest when they looked me over or made comments. My hearing was excellent though and I found a few…choice hand gestures which showed my feelings clearly.
The others treated me like a doll or statue. They separated themselves from me. All except for one boy.
He always talked. A lot. A…loooooot. Especially to me. He’d talk about everything. I didn’t even need to resort to hand gestures. I could just raise my eyes and he seemed to know what I meant.
But for all the emoting I did to him, he always seemed to wear an impassive look. The other girls called him “angry” and “weird”. I liked him.
We were having lunch beneath a tree when he suddenly said, “I wish I could trade places with you.” I gave him my 'curious' gaze.
He shrugged but didn’t smile or frown. He added, “For like a day, minimum. You deserve to just say whatever you want. I talk so much that you wouldn’t wear my throat out any. It would be cool.”
I gave him the ‘incredulous’ eyes but he just kept eating. I figured that was it.
Then, a few days later, he came to me with a book. He held it up and said that it was an old book which talked about people trading essences for short periods of time. He pointed at exercises we could do. I played along.
We held touched hands and meditated. It was like the strangest sort of first date. But it was fun.
Then, one day, while we were walking in the main hall, I turned to look at him. At that same moment, he looked at me. I felt myself drifting into his eyes. Then, I wasn’t looking at his eyes at all. I was looking down at my own eyes, wide with surprise.
The me I saw moved on her own. She squirmed so much that her skirt and top both slipped, baring her midrift. She looked as embarrassed as I felt. And, for the first time since I was a little kid, I heard and felt a word come out of my mouth as I thought, “What?” and prepared to motion with my hands and eyebrows.
The voice wasn’t mine though, it was his. I soon discovered that the rest of my body was his.
I stood there, in shock, as the other me felt herself all over. First her neck, as she tried to mime words, then her chest, which prompted both of us to blush brightly. I helped her tuck her clothes back in.
It was immediately clear that he and I had swapped bodies. His normal expression was all over my face. I confabulated a way to get us out of school, talking up a storm.
He led me to his house. I couldn’t stop talking all the way. I commented on the trees. I talked about the sky. My words weren’t quite his words. They felt like they were my first words. But they were words I could no longer hold in.
I released them to TV programs and posters in his room. He sat quietly and listened. But, then I asked him questions. I asked him about how it felt to be me. And my face started to move.
He tried little expressions at first, which he’d probably seen on my face. They came slowly but more and more as I spoke to him. Soon, he was grinning and throwing teasing hand gestures.
He brought my face through a flurry of expressions. I took his voice through a symphony of sounds. I put it to the test with his family’s karaoke machine. And he danced to my singing. Despite his promise, I did begin to wear his voice out.
I spoke long into the night, till his jaw was sore. His mom put out a futon for him-in-me. And lay in a futon in the same room. I whispered to him in the dark. I thanked him again and again. His/my voice cracked over and over. I spoke to him until the words drifted through my dreams and I followed them.
When I woke…I immediately knew the familiar form of my body. I knew the familiar stillness as I tried again to speak. I looked over at him. He was sitting up in his futon.
I opened my mouth. I urged my eyes. I urged my throat. I strained. I held onto the memory of speaking from yesterday. I tried to feel the words, “Thank you” forming in my throat and flowing out my lips. I expelled my breath. But there were no words.
He watched me. A fair and warm smile spread across his face. He said, with a child-like emphasis, “Thank you…” and bowed his head. He reached over and touched my hand. And I smiled back at him.
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Date: 2008-12-21 10:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 04:49 am (UTC)