#kiki stuff

Kiki rose from her bed.

She stretched out her arms above her head as she sat up, her lavender comforter falling to her lap. The artificial window showed sunlight, but she knew it had to be too early for that.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she looked to her side. Kidd was still there. Kidd was a dirtied old fellow who'd been everywhere Kiki had, a gift from her favorite cousin for her fourth birthday. Grey stripes covered the little cat, small enough to fit in a pocket, eyes of black plastic that reflected the light in a way that made them look like they'd had highlights drawn in.

She lifted him into her arms and tucked him into the pocket of her pajama pants, beige, covered in little bears and smelling like the closet they'd been pulled out of when she'd arrived. She left his head poking out to make sure she'd never lose sight of him. She was an anxious child, undeniably, from the way she was brought up. Kidd would be taken from her sometimes as punishment - she would wake up without her only true comfort in her home beside her and find out later that it was because she'd missed the fact that her math homework had a backside or that she didn't eat enough of her dinner.

She walked on her toes out the door and descended the stairs down the hall to the first floor of the building, then popped her head out the front door. Sure enough, the fireflies were still out. The sun hadn't yet risen.

The girl found a strange charm in the confusing world she'd found herself in. A world where trees were made of polygons and where one could access a black void just neighboring where they worked, a world where time was read in symbols and nobody could seem to remember quite what the cashier at White Castle looked like. Finding beauty in the horror of it all helped her cope - she had died, after all, and couldn't remember how. It had been a week since then, and already, she had forced tears so many times that she found it hard to tell whether she was really crying. That was her job. To present a story, to make whoever was next on the King's list pity her. She didn't dare question the consequences if she refused.

If "home" could simply be defined as a place one lives, this would have been it. And she thought about that as she looked up at the sky, perfectly-shaped clouds gliding past, holding up Kidd as if he could watch the stars glimmer with her. This didn't feel quite like home, not yet. But she didn't truly know home, and she never had. Home always felt too far away. Something she could try to visualize but had no hope of reaching.

Whatever. Whether she liked it or not, she told herself, this was home now.