Wishing

River is the girl, and the girl is River, and together they wish they could fade, vanish into the shadows and disappear, melting from sight and thought and memory.

Sometimes she presses herself against the wall and pretends that she is melting and liquefying and her hair is turning white and her feet are part of the floor. She wishes and she prays and she dreams, but wishes told upon a falling star never come true and she is still there, still alive.

She shrinks within herself, presses into corners and curls into a ball, but there are bright lights always and forever and there are no shadows to hide in.

Everywhere she goes she is seen and noticed and observed and dissected. She has a spotlight trained forever on her, even when she is alone. They monitor her, every twitch or mutter written down and recorded. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and she is perpetually in motion, running from the lights and the eyes and the cameras.

She doesn't eat or sleep and she becomes thin, thinner than they liked but not enough for her to slip through the cracks on the wall. She is skin and bones, ribs visible through her shirt, barely substantial any longer. (But still they see her, and she cannot escape them).

Simon comes and takes her away, but still she is noticed, still she is seen. She becomes a ghost, a wraith, sliding through the ship on silent feet and clinging to the shadows. She hides in small corners and tiny spaces and sometimes she can pretend that no one is looking, and she is alone alone alone.

But Simon notices, and Simon calls, and the crew looks out of the corner of their eyes until they spot a strand of hair whipping around the corner.

And then she knows that her illusion is false and that she will always be running, an ant trapped under a magnifying glass trying desperately to avoid the sun.

She wishes and prays and dreams of fading, of vanishing, of just melting away. She knows somewhere there is a pile of her wishes, glittering and shining, brushing the ceilings and spilling across the floor. But although she wishes with every fiber of her being, they never come true.

(After all, if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak)