[solo(s)] meteor showers (chance)

[kuropeco]

One, two, skip a few, ninety-nine, a hundred.

He sits on the rooftop and contemplates the sky, traces the lines of each and every bright constellation that he can find stretched out above his head. When he can no longer find official ones, he makes ones of his own, creating something from nothing, stretching glowing lines from one to another like the page of a coloring book.

Chance Bones is nine years old and there are burn marks littered across his torso, creating patterns along his ribs.

He doesn't feel them much anymore, but sometimes he'll reach for them, press the tips of his fingers against each one and try to stretch his hand to reach them all, like he's playing some sort of instrument, a piano maybe, or a violin.

(He secretly likes the violin; there's one he took from school, before he left, and it sits hidden beneath his bed, away from where Mama can see it.)  

[kuropeco]

He feels like he's been knocked off balance.

It's an unpleasant sensation, all of his nerves on edge, like he's exposed to something he's not used to - which he is. He isn't sure whether he's supposed to like it or not, or whether he's just supposed to accept the fact that he's changed a little since coming to the island.

He's not the same Chance Bones that was recruited, but he's not completely different either.

He sits in his room and lies on his back on the bed, staring up at the plastic stars that decorate his ceiling. His telescope is back out, settled into place at the window, but Chance doesn't have the energy to get up and look through it, in spite of it being a nice, night for stargazing. He runs a hand over the blankets, moves it up to rest beneath his head, and in spite of his unwillingness to move, he's oddly restless, which feels like a contradiction.

His fingers shift and slide. The bed is warm, thanks to his own body heat, but he can't help but wish that it wasn't quite so empty, wishes that there was someone else to keep him company, and then immediately rejects that thought, because he is entirely a loner, completely and purposefully unattached. Chance has never before felt a wide depth or range of emotions, he's not about to start now.

But that doesn't stop the small, oddly unsettling prickling in the back of his mind, doesn't negate the fact that his mind keeps drifting back to lying on the grass and eating cake and french fries, utterly at ease, too much at ease, too comfortable, too much.

Chance doesn't understand. He has little experience in these matters, but he does at least recognize the discomfort of someone else; the tension, the walls that people put up around themselves. Chance has walls too, but they're rock solid, barring things he doesn't remember ever having existed. In fact, he's not even sure that he was made the same way as other people; clearly if he can't handle a simple friendship, he's not built for more, even if that more is nothing more than getting close with someone, in whatever definition that means.

Emotions confuse him. Chance dislikes not understanding things, but this has been his lot in life since before he can remember. He doesn't understand a lot of things, and yet this has never stopped him from progressing before. This is just one of those times, one of those occasions, where he will keep moving forward.

(Or maybe it's one of those times where he needs to learn, rather than avoid. He's good at the latter, far worse at the former, as clearly evidenced.)

Chance rolls onto his side and closes his eyes.

He doesn't sleep.