[Chayden]

Oh, look. It's a Chayden.
Some of you may know that Chayden is a dream-inspired person. She attributes that success to the powers of her Goblin Cat, Pooka.
It is his job to protect her from nightmares, but she knows that he helps to change what might be nightmares into seeds that she can cultivate until they become beautiful, flowing stories.
They don't start out perfect, though.

[Chayden]

Some day, Chayden plans to become a published author. When that comes, she would like to have something to offer to her dearest fans, something to prove to them that a lot of work goes in to creating a work of fiction.
She wants to be able to show them the very beginnings of an idea, in the rawest form possible.
This here is the place that she will be putting her "first draft" ideas - the things that she writes as soon as she has awoken. It is a place that she wants to be able to return to, some day, with a wistful smile and an ache in her heart.
Please know that the rudiments of a plot that follow are being turned into a legitimate, publishable short story as we speak, and do enjoy~ <3

[Chayden]

Sia - Breathe Me. And a dream.

The school is a five-day stay-there school; students are taken home by bus on the weekends.
Going into school, the only friend that Niko has is his bus driver, Dona.
He is a good boy, an honest boy, but he is heavily misunderstood.

[Chayden]

He doesn’t know that he is a boy. He doesn’t know that he is a girl. He just doesn’t understand.
His hair is blonde, short, curly - a pixie bob. His eyes are large and thick-lashed, dark around the edges from his lack of sleep.

[Chayden]

He is thin and soft-spoken. Perhaps his clothing leans a little too far to the feminine side.
His parents seem to have forgotten his gender themselves. He would never have been able to ask them, even if they had. This was something that he had to figure out on his own.

[Chayden]

They sorted him as a girl in school.
When getting ready to go into the gym, he has to hide himself away from the other girls. He’s afraid of them, admittedly - with their intense stares, their intense perception. He is confused enough without the constant questions that he would surely be subjected to in their presence.
He is different from them.

[Chayden]

He is a standout. He does not wear a bra, does not have a need for one, even though all of them show theirs proudly, a statement of their femininity.
Niko is scared of their frills and their pads and their lace. He prefers his skin.
In class, he stays to the back.

[Chayden]

The corners are his home, the one place where he feels safe. Sometimes, the teachers are kind, and they leave him be. But other times, they expose him, tear off his shell, shine a spotlight through his shadows. He is vulnerable, soft.
He learns best on his own.

[Chayden]

The worst part was going to sleep. The lights went of at 9:30, and if they were not quiet in the dorm by 11:00, there was hell to pay.
Niko did not want to be lobbed in with the girls who chatted and tittered and made him anxious. He wanted to be alone in his sleeping bag - the one that he so strangely chose to sleep in next to his bed - not bombarded by all of their noise.
Even at night, their noise.

[Chayden]

But Niko, however much he got the short end of the stick, got lucky sometimes. And he was lucky enough to have been given a bed next to the window. Sure, it looked out over the parking lot, but beyond that was a field, and beyond that was the sky. He pulled his bed away from the wall amidst the clatter of their voices at lights-out and settled himself against the sill. It was cold, always, and slick with condensation.

[Chayden]

He would press his arms to the chill of it until long after they had gone numb, press his forehead to the pane and use the fogging of the glass as his heart meter. As long as he breathed, it still beat.
And that was all he needed to know as he looked out there. He wasn’t watching for anything - there was never anything to see amongst seven feet of snowbanks.
But the stars gave him hope.

[Chayden]

It let him know that he was small. That his troubles were small. That someday, as long as those stars were shining, he would leave this place. And that someday, when he was done, he would be free to float up to them, to touch their shining faces, to have the tears wiped from his own.
It would be a long and painful road, but he would arrive at his destination eventually.

[Chayden]

He met Sorsje at one of their... dances.
It was a night for ice-skating. They were all taken out to the rink - all 400 of them - and set free.
Inside, of course, they were on the rink. Niko skated around aimlessly, just staring at faces that refused to stare back at him.

[Chayden]

He skated next to a few people, wanting desperately to cling to them, but knowing all the same that it was wrong.
When the first girl decided to go outside - a nasty, mean-hearted girl that Niko would really rather not deal with - he had no option but to follow. They asked the teacher for permission tersely - she did - and he unlocked the door that led to the tiny, snow-filled clearing next to the main entrance of the school.
It had been made into a tiny slide. Something was clenching strangely in Niko’s chest...

[Chayden]

There’s something here, it said. Patience, it said.
And Niko could only listen.
He sat to the sidelines, clutching fruitlessly at his chest with one numb hand as the strawberry-haired girl went down the slide herself, her face ever impassive even as her jeans were soaked through by the snow. She had to have been cold...