whyyyy

The Pekoponian streets were far from pristine, garbage was strewn about in rotting patches, mixed with broken objects that one might assume were the remnants of broken people. Dreams might have been here once, but their owners had decided that it wasn't worth listening to them, and now the girl walking slowly along the sidewalk was left with their memory. She had made her existence with them, or at least this form; brown hair that left a spicy shampoo scent in her wake, curling like the steam off coffee, slightly sunburned skin that gave the appearance of time excessively spent somewhere warm without enough sunscreen, and a cat's gleaming yellow eyes within it all to make her unreal, like a video game character, the princess of a planet with a name like Mirrndoj. A silky skirt flounced along with her steps, kept out of rhythm by tuneless humming, and a top trimmed with knock-off gold thread; she was more inclined by her appearance to be going to a party of polite company than anywhere else. Not one person who had thought before “it might be nice to have...” had gained these things, and now she used them, though it felt out of place to her.

The Pekoponian people would have not taken any particular notice of this girl, at most she would get one or two glances to note that she was unusually well-dressed for a lone teenager on a Saturday night, and then all eyes would be on the path again, because she wasn't really any more special than the brick of the buildings or the streetlights' bulbs. She was just a component of the world, she fit into it somehow, and it wasn't anyone's concern. Such as estimate was the literal opposite of her own perception, however, she was quite aware of how this world and all others rejected her. The girl was a garbage pail, collecting whatever happened to be pitched away, rumpled papers marked with thoughts that were never written, moldy growths of organisms that had been deemed unfit for the environment that had tried to spawn them, and gold-encrusted jewelry that had slid down the drain to the sewers, inventions and promise that were no longer to adorn the advancement of any civilization. She had all of this, but it was trash. Useless in reality.