This story was originally written on the 13th of May 2024 in relation to Cerulean. It has been lightly edited and formatted.
Jean held the feather in her grip indecisively, like a particularly molted bird might anxiously hold its outstretched wing. Words came to her, of course, but they were not her own. Some were from ideas like she'd heard from a friend, flavored with the sunbleached wallpaper, curling at the edges, as if daring to be crushed like a dry leaf in autumn. On the same couch, eyes move back and forth, searching for the words themselves. But Jean had never been there, never spoken to whomever it was whose nervous toothy smile lit up a room. Some words were those she could have come up with herself, well conceptualized within the nonverbal systems underpinning her though processes, to the extent singling one out was criticism of a thread in a full sweater. The problem with these was, despite their match, she wasn't the one responsible.
A jolt startled Jean as a log collapsed in the fireplace. The shrunken and charred lump of wood moved her hand for the first time in what could have been hours. What had once been rarely had now grown to often: Jean found no words at all. Though, not a word's absence, rather a word that wasn't. Or perhaps couldn't. Sometimes they made sense, unhelpful despite it. Today, however, Jean had processed all of those words. Each candidate considered and discarded, desperate to collect in a pile despite themselves. Today Jean had found herself. It went without saying that she was not a word, but what was troubling was the ways in which she wasn't not a word. Pondering it felt like staring, or maybe being stared at. It had only just occurred that she was scared to blink