Enigma

by RuNyx

To everyone who has ever felt unaccepted and unworthy of being loved: Being alone can feel like an eternal agony. But it is darkest before dawn. One day, your sun too will rise.

She knew it was not the natural reaction to witnessing something like this. She had been told that more than enough times through the two decades she’d been on this earth. It still tore at her sometimes, what she felt and what she was supposed to feel, the dichotomy sending her own moral compass spinning.

Finally reaching the mass, she came to a stop a few steps away, and let her brain do what it loved doing the most—observe, analyze, conclude.

She wasn’t much of a talker. In fact, until recently, she had completely given up speaking for a few years. It was only two years ago that she had begun again, though not as frequently as expected, and only after … she shook it off, not letting herself go there while being in the situation she was in. Stay in the present, she reminded herself as she did often, biting her cheek in a routine that worked in grounding her.

It was dangerous, his voice, a weapon sheathed until he chose to expose it. She could imagine him in a time of empires, using that voice to make a mob mad, inciting them to a riot, influencing audiences to herd to an arena, tempting them to step inside, cajoling them to their own demise as he chopped their heads off clean.

Maybe her metaphor was wrong. Literature wasn’t really her strong suit after all. His voice was more unexplored sea than bloodied sand, like the fables of creatures in the oceanic dark, luring unsuspecting sailors, dragging them to the depths.

As weird as she was, she didn’t disrespect the dead. They could invade dreams and steal peace of mind. She knew because they had done it to her dreams and peace.

She was fine. And she would continue to be fine, even if it took everything from her.

As a child, she’d had a printed-out routine stuck on her wall with her day mapped out. She loved the methodical approach to a day, doing everything that needed to be done with little space for variations.

Salem's characterization as neurodivergent is well-depicted.