Something I Call: Run (Tag: Celeste)

Her last piano lesson ended with a great ovation by her teacher. Who said that her talent could grow to be even higher than his. The girl, though young and inexperienced in many matters of life, knew very well that her piano skills had surpassed her former master´s, but that did not matter in that fantastic day. Despite having a certification to boast about, that was not what was running in her head since that euphoric applause. She was sad and happy at the same time, since that final ovation marked the end of one of her most beloved extracurricular activities.
The point was simply, now she had a free afternoon inside the week. It was not really a free afternoon to enjoy the glorious task of losing time and succumb to laziness, but an afternoon in which she could start a new activity.

Discipline and hard work had always been part of her life, an essential part that pushed her to improve herself in many arts, so the idea of ​​practicing Kendo seemed just brilliant. She did not know how she had overlooked that magnificent idea for so many time, but now it was impossible to stop thinking in that. Of course, she still had doubts about whether she should try it or not, but the more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself that it was the new sport she wanted to practice. It not only possessed a difficult technique, along with many rules, but also was exotic enough to avoid doing it for "fashion".

Clearly, now that the decision was almost taken, the only thing she needed was to find someone to accompany her in the classes and share a couple of hits with her. Deep down she knew these were just excuses to hide her fears of the unknown of the discipline. But aside that, the idea of ​​hitting someone seemed very therapeutic. And she desired to hit no one more than the shapeshifters Chase.
Although she had searched all over the mansion she had not found Chase anywhere, and nobody seemed to know where he was. So finally, after hours of climbing stairs, asking around, and walking down long corridors, she decided it was time to go home.

Still a little disappointed by her unsuccessful search, she headed over the mechanized gate that separated the outside world from the mutants. From the door of the mansion she could see her white limousine, that behind the thick black bars looked like a giant zebra. There was waiting impatiently for her, trying to blend with the environment without success.
The thought of going home so early, did not make her eager to move fast, so the steps that led her from the door to the surroundings of the gate were slow and heavy. She walked the long road that linked both doors, until she stopped to listen to a melody almost hypnotic. At first she did not know where it came from, but she allowed such delicious melody to pet her ears anyway. Finally she located the source. And her hands moved quickly towards her backpack in search of the culprit. Beethoven eighth symphony roared in her expensive phone for a few more seconds until she finally answered. It was Gabrielle, one of her friends, to congratulate her for the achievement. Once she accepted the empty compliment, she decided to continue her march to the exit.

In the vastness of the green space surrounding the mansion, it was easy to get lost, and especially to do not see anyone. The trees hindered the vision, so despite being a vast uniform terrain, it was clearly divided into different zones. The various facilities for the most popular sports were surrounded by trees, so they seemed to be islands in a sea of ​​green. These islands in turn, were connected by different paths to the central island which was the mansion. Her tours around the mansion had been few, so it was not uncommon she have yet secrets to discover.
At that moment, all was deserted, the students were mostly in class, or enjoying the common room or taking a snack in the kitchen. It was easy to hear the sounds of the nature, mixed here and there with some small urban infiltrated.

With all that stillness she was very surprised to hear another human voice. She jumped in place, clearly annoyed by the sound full of mockery. This noisy was deafening. It was the only other sound that did not belong to that world between natural and urban landscapes. That mix so subtle and so uneven at the same time. The laugh, because that was what it was, rose above the other sounds. Solid. Loud. Insulting. Challenging.
Instinctively she turned around to find her opponent, but no one was laughing behind her back. Sharpening her senses, and cursed all the other noises to disappear, she discovered the laughter proceeded from... a tree. When her beautiful black eyes located the place that her ears indicated, the girl saw a boy resting on a tree. A child clearly younger. Such barbaric activity reminded her of her two older cousins, always hanging on every tree. Always sweating and bleeding.

Already recovered from her initial shock, and with a physical entity to blame for her problems, she asked, raising her voice above the laughter and the murmur of the trees. "What are you laughing at, monkey boy?" Her voice still retained some sweetness, but not much. Of course no one was allowed to laugh in her presence, unless they were a choir to her own laughter. That was enough to demand compensation for her lost honor. But being in a school for mutants gave her a 100 percent possibility of being accusing a mutant, and although the possibility that his mutation was dangerous was even lower, she did not dare to undress her harmonious voice of that last bit of sweetness. She had to stay nice and sweet. At least while she decided if he was a threat or not.

Rich and beautiful 3-line watched the boy curiously. The limousine was at the same distance as the tree where the agile climber made his nest. But neither option appealed to her more than the other. To go home early was simply boring. Extremely boring and lonely. Staying with him and trying to make a friend seemed a very difficult task that will consume much of her time. Maybe also her money, and a huge amount of patience, that every second was less.
Finally she decided to give the lonely mutant a chance. At first glance the only thing they had in common, besides the obvious x gene that she would not admit to own, was the fact that both were lonely creatures.
Determined to get an explanation and an apology the girl remained still, facing the tree and therefore the little devil who had laughed at her. Her arms folded across her chest in a clear signal that she would not leave without getting both.

At first glance, the child seemed to be normal. Without any visible mutation to make him fall into the lowest classification of mutant. But there was something strange waiting in all that normality to be discovered. It was always like that with mutants. From experience she knew all that sub-class of the human race was full of liars. People who lived trying to be something they were not. Humans.
He had something wrong. Something beyond a defective gene. She knew it, she could almost feel a different aura around him. A strange aura, hard to find in a city.
And that aura, that charm, that spell exercised was really bothering Celeste. She wanted to scream to him. To throw a stone at his head. To shoot him with the taser and watch how his little body shake. Whatever it was, she wanted to break that bubble in which he had locked himself. That armor of protective tranquility. Yes, that was.

Ignoring that little voice that demanded to ruin his life, she preferred to watch him. And in her silent contemplating while waiting for a response, she found exactly what bothered her.
It was all that patience he used to play his video game and take notes. That feeling stretched like a living creature, moving its invisible tentacles to extend several meters from its creator. The child could have been in Times Square surrounded by people and noise, or in the subway in the busiest hour, but he gave the impression that he would always be able keep that patience that separate him from the world. Endless tolerance emanating from the child or at least it seemed like that to her, which lacked that quality so badly. Time was a great tyrant and she knew that if she did not move fast, she was never going to finish all the things she had planned to do. The fact that someone else had something she had not, simply made her gone crazy. It infuriated her whole being while consuming what little patience she had left.

She was about to shout her question again, this time she wanted to include a little more threat in her voice but then she heard the boy´s reply. He ignored her. Not looking at her face as he answered. Instead she stared at him with more force, ready to throw the tree over his head using all the power of her gaze. Focused like a beam. At the same time, she slowly moved a little closer. She was still far from the tree that had guarded his back, but now she was close enough to not have to shout.
On another occasion that lack of courtesy would have been reason to start a war, but at the time the answer itself was more important than how he said it. The boy's confession left a sweet taste in her mouth. She would have to get revenge on Sam again, but now she needed more details. Her voice, beautiful and refined, became a sticky and sweet molasses with which she could catch flies and children alike. "Why?" She asked a little worried. Really trying to figure out what she had done wrong to make someone warn him about her. "Can anyone as pretty as me be a bad person?" The question was clearly a challenge, but the intention was so well hidden among the many layers of sweetness that might well have been a fragment of a poem or a song from a bird rather than her sweet beautiful voice.

Suddenly the child who moments before had seemed almost timeless became a ball of nerves. It was difficult to express the shock that caused in the girl. Or Celeste was very bad at judging people or the small mutant had serious problems controlling his emotions. In either case the result was the same, the child was getting more nervous, according to her, for no apparent reason. His voice evidenced a change of mood. Always keeping her tone full of sweetness, she tried to be like a reassuring mother to him. It was never good to confuse a mutant. "Relax. I will not hurt you." She really did not know what words to choose to make little mutant calm down, let alone make him look at her instead of his stupid video game. Not in a peaceful manner. For now, she used a soft tone accompanying with soothing words.

The truth about her beauty and goodness was totally eclipsed under the powerful spell that poisoned the child. Even her intense black eyes and golden hair were not noted. And her sweet voice received no answer, because his attention was absolute and complete for the small instrument full of lights, buttons and chips. As a reward for his loyalty, the ingenious object only gave him little sounds, and changing patterns of light that made some kind of figure.
From where she was standing, Celeste could not even see what type of game was catching him, so she moved slowly towards her goal.

Her stealthy steps were executed as if they were from a very old and complicated dance, a dance not only beautiful but also dangerous. As if she was dancing with a wild and extremely dangerous animal. Dodging claws, avoiding its mouth while still maintaining the beauty and fluidity in her movements. While her eyes black as obsidian analyzed her prey, deciding when and for how long she would advance. After each set of steps followed a pause, which she used to examine the implications of the approach.
Her graceful movements moved her slowly. She stopped irregularly but soon she was in position from where she could observe in detail the child's play. And his peculiar notes.

The letters were as stylized as hers and showed groups of numbers and words chained together following a precise rule. A quick glance at the screen was enough to know what the words meant. But the numbers were still a mystery. It was clear that he had used some kind of guide to sort the letters and numbers as they were, but it was difficult to realize what was their origin.
Carefully she watched the game while checking a couple of her theories. Although watching over his shoulders was a little difficult because of his movements that sometimes covered his vision, the hardest thing was to stay in place without making any movement, and without speaking. But despite the difficulty, she had become a living statue, and the stillness was only surpassed by her silence.

At first she believed that the numbers symbolized the times in a row that the same figure appeared, but soon she realized that some figures did not appear for a long time but still had a high number.
Following this line of thought, she decided to invert her initial idea. She observed and compared the numbers with how many times others figures appeared until that same figure reappeared again, but this theory was not correct.
She was beginning fall in despair, and the infernal noise that caused that little machine did not help much because with each line completed it produced a sound like a bell that tried to be a reward, a digital greeting card but after a couple of lines it became real torture.

She was about to give up, ready to succumb to boredom when she noticed the colors. These were bright and beautiful, in a tone that almost gave life to the pieces. Colors produced digitally in a way that she could not steal. Even when she was the queen of colors, that could transform a simple stone into a gold-plated jewelry. The Queen that was able to ignore the laws of nature and change any color at will, even then she did not notice the colors.
The key was in the colors, and although she was not entirely sure what the numbers meant, she knew was absolutely right. He could be sorting them by color range from the lightest to darkest, or vice versa, or even in some strange but clever way, changing the names of these colors to a code of numbers. It did not matter, she had discovered what he was doing. She had won. "It's very clever how you labeled the pieces." Said the girl calmly and keeping her voice soft and low.
Quickly she added a new idea even when she was not quite sure why she did it. Maybe just to find what else Sam told him or just because she wanted to disturb his order. "Don´t you hate how the figures lose their form while melting with other lines? Or when you end a line and their shape disappear... the figures and colors get mixed."

Although the child's response was interesting, the girl felt very disappointed. For a moment she believed he was going to be uncomfortable with the question since he was looking for patterns and order while that line at the bottom keep being chaotic. It was indeed the most chaotic part of the game, the living wall devoured the forms and colors without a define pattern. It was a digital anarchy that only ended when someone completed a line and to make it "disappear".
But the child seemed not to care where the lines went, or why the figures had to lose their personality to join the bunch, he did not even bothered by the fact that the game had a gloomy environment where all interaction ended in nothing. The disappearance of lines, or rather the transformation of them in nothing was the main theme. As long as he could keep sorting figures he was happy.

It was strange to start thinking about order and chaos while analyzing a simple game and in which any interaction with a human was controlled and limited by thousands of algorithms. Key rules that were unavoidable and controlled the world of these poor falling tetrominos. Color, shape, range, speed. All variants were carefully managed by algorithms dictating the rules of the game. There was no chaos in that small device since everything was controlled. Even something as chance and randomness was coldly calculated as its "mind" was too logic to generate truly random things.
The child was right, there was a pattern waiting to be discovered.

But looking for a pattern in millions of possibilities seemed even more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. And he was not only analyzing the figures, but also the colors. Although perhaps he could save time by putting aside the colors, because surely they were just something produced to give an illusion of variety. The pattern was right in the figures, only in the figures. And maybe not all the figures at a time, but in groups. Proud of the way her thoughts took, she tried another question. Trying not to look extremely concerned about the possible discovery on a game that she felt very repetitive. Still, she could not hide her excitement completely. "Did you try looking for smaller patterns?" She asked, carried away by curiosity, and ignoring caution. With the little experience she had with that particular child, she knew that if the question was not good enough, she would not receive a response.

Not knowing if the child would respond or not, or if her question had been sufficiently clear the girl began to explain quickly what she suspected. A bit driven by its growing impatience and partly because of the strange curiosity that caused on her that old game and the child looking for patterns. Probably the child had been working long on that list, but she does not care at all. She was sure that with her great talent at many things she could get to discover something that had been overlooked. "Maybe there is not a large pattern, but several small patter that combine to for the whole sequence. For example a smaller pattern can be made of three different pieces, that would be a group." A pause to accommodate her speech. "And groups would mix together with others groups of three." Although she liked the colors on that game, she was sure the key was in the order of the tetrominos. Like its powers, the colors in the games were only there to make things beautiful.

The word "wrong" generally provoked a chain reaction that destroyed the stupid that pronounced it, because Celeste could not always have the right, not always emerge victorious, but she was never wrong. And she had the money to prove it. But this time was different, the child´s voice was almost stripped of all emotion and did not provoke anger, nor any of the others emotions used in these situations. There was something in his speech that was interesting, not very interesting, but at least a little more than the different game pieces. When the boy was sure of something, he spoke without hesitation, without doubt, but when he expressed his opinions, his speech changed filled with doubt. It was an interesting change. From passionate to unsure in just a moment.

Keeping the same tone, she replied. Trying to make the word "wrong" do not sound so hard. "You are wrong. There is a random generator but it does not create a single giant pattern." She did not really knew if her answer was right or wrong, but she suspected that life was made up of lots of little things put to work as a whole, and not a single thing to do every job. The machines were always full of gear, or chips and the more complex, the more pieces it had inside... her reasoning could not be wrong. With more confidence she continued with the idea. "One giant pattern is easy to find, but if you have several small patterns that are repeated and mix , the game would gain complexity. With thousands of small patterns you can manage to make more complicated combinations."

It was not necessary for the child to inform her of his passion, at first glance it was easy to see it. And with the little talk they had, it was clear he loved that kind of games. Now she knew that there were not only patterns that lure him into that but the mental challenge from the game and its programming. Even with his lack of agility in the fingers, he seemed to be enjoying his research. He looked very focused on taking notes and play at the same time. More difficult was to judge if another emotion appeared on him while he was playing. It was quite difficult to guess if he was doing it like a king of duty or it was just a different way to have fun.

With the conversation taking a faster pace, another strange word emerged from the boy. Bad. When she heard the word, she repeated it in her head silently. She knew exactly what it meant but she could not remember having been bad... That accusation was new. Many people had told her about her selfishness, and she had no choice than to admit it, the evidence was there for all to see. But that was not a sin, there was no way to avoid being selfish. And although it was also true that she destroyed private property more than once, and often she could not the stand the vision of a wall without stain or colors and needed to paint them, and sometimes she was a little bossy, just a little.. . But she did not remember being mean to anyone, much less with Sam. She even gave him a beautiful crown. In fact, she had not been mean to someone who did not deserve it. Of course, in her opinion, many of the commoners who stood in her way offended her openly in some way. Even if they did not realize it. Even if they did not even look at her. "Did Sam also say that recently we went to eat together? We even begin to be friends." Replied the girl. Trying to confuse the boy that brandished the word of Sam as his herald. In that date, Sam did not make her cry as in their two previous meetings, in fact no one wept that day, which was rare. Because generally in restaurants someone made a mistake, and then cried when her wrath descended upon them.

With astonishment sticking to her face, the girl repeated with a distracted tone. "3-line?" She did it almost by instinct, as to l find more meaning to the nickname he had imposed over her. After pondering a moment, the child could not avoid to nod and smile as reward to the young but astute mutant. Her nickname was fresh and innovative.
Besides she had to admit she was gracefully and attractively thin, just like one of those glorious lines, and like the lines she had an important mission in life.Her mission in life was not to be the only piece able to complete four lines at once, but she knew it would be very important. Of course she still did not know what was her purpose, but she was sure that would be something that not anyone could do.
With a malevolent smile hovering on her lips the girl asked, clearly testing the young prankster. "Do you want me to disappear or do you need me?"

"I am not yellow." She said a little confused at first thinking that he was referring to the color of her skin, no one had yellow skin except for the people in that popular TV show. But then when she managed to interpret her words in the right way, she slowly nodded as she let an "Ahhh." of understanding. Probably he was referring to the color of her hair, it was not yellow, but golden, the more bright and pure golden that one might find in nature, perhaps even more golden than gold itself. But in the limited color palette of his game, maybe her hair would be yellow.
"Well, 3-line is going to stay." She added while receiving the confirmation from the boy. Even when she planned to stay anyway. Nobody could give orders to a queen. Making the child believe that he had had something to do with the decision was part of her improvised plan so they could begin a more fluid conversation. A little more normal.

Since the child seemed to want to avoid eye contact, Celeste moved closer and sat with her back to the trunk, looking towards the mansion. An angle of ninety degrees between them.
Maybe the child would feel brave enough to talk to her in that way. The situation was somewhat frustrating, she had never come across someone that will avoid talking so much. For most people she only needed to talk about her limousine or show all her beauty for they to fall at her feet, or for the most stronger, she just needed to show her Taser. But with the small mutant these tactics appeared to do not work.

Resting against the broad trunk of the tree was quite relaxing, carefree, touched by the shade. Enjoying the quiet and solitude. She could almost forget that the child was still there if she closed her eyes. If she stay still, she may even fall asleep under the comforting shadow. Instead of sleeping, she tried to talk to the boy without looking at him. "What would you like to drink?" Clearly she was not going to give him the opportunity to refuse, but even knowing that she had total control of the situation, Celeste could not help but feel strange. It was very rare to be talking to someone without looking into his eyes. Without seeing that person in front of her and be able to judge whether they were listening or not, to not be able to judge his reactions before he speak. At that time she could not do any of those things.

Clearly she would not wait for his response, since it might take years to be processed and returned. She continued with her plan without waiting for his response. She could always modify the order at the last moment.
With two quick touches to her touch screen phone, the modern artifact began the process that communicated her with the driver. Fearful of her rage, the driver answered immediately, without giving time to the tone to ring again. "Bring cold water and some snacks." That was all her request. The queen was not to spend her vocal chords in explaining to her minions what types of snacks or what kind of water, they needed to judge it by themselves and if they did it not well... Well, she could always get another driver, and new guards.