#burnoutfic

A step or two into the future (when things look just a little bit brighter).

I am twenty-three…

No, that wasn’t right. I tapped the backspace button on my tiny laptop, my brow twitching towards a frown.

I am twenty-two years old.

Over ten years ago, I was adopted after an accident that took both my parents’ lives. I do not remember much from before the accident. I am told that my mother worked as a florist and my father as an accountant at a nearby business firm. There is a lot that I do not know about them. I do know that I wanted to make them proud.

I still do.

Beneath my fingertips, the plastic keycaps began to shift up, flattening into cold luminescent disks. The tapping became a sharp series of metallic clicks—I smelled clockwork brass and moldering paper. Somehow, the mechanical bits interfaced with the electronic parts of the laptop despite the lack of visible ports or connections.

I took a moment to breathe. The world beneath my feet still remained on the same layer, the right layer. This was a good balance. I worked better when I channeled the Tined Library, my thoughts more ordered. I still had to be careful not to let it go too far though.

For as long as I can remember, it has been assumed that I will never go to college. Because of the accident, I struggle in normal settings. I have difficulty focusing. I need assistance that others do not.

I am also intelligent and thoughtful and hardworking. I am my parents’ daughter. I am inspired by the people around me, who have struggled to overcome their own circumstances.

I am—

For a minute, I stared at the unfinished sentence. I didn’t know what to say. It was like sifting through the ocean of my power. I had the vague sense of what I wanted to type, but the specifics slipped through my fingers like grains of sand, indistinguishable.

I focused. Stretching out my attention. Ink blocks and smoldering carbon. Fingers moving like gears, somewhere in the distance.

I am more than this.

What was this? I wasn’t sure now that I had typed it.