Untethered Solo Finished

Starts pre-Hogwarts then progresses into the present

You hear the sounds all around you--stark and loud.

The sound of the cold, rushing wind, of thundering hooves; of ragged breath.

The trees and shrubbery blur all around you, your speed reducing them to mere streaks of green and brown flashing from the corner of your eye.

Right in front of you was a rocky path, and in the distance, a pinprick of startling light-green peeks through the relative darkness of the foggy forest.

You realize you were a horse--no, its rider.

No.

Both.

You were both horse and rider. Both master and subordinate. But the ground is rushing quickly past your feet, and it does not matter which you were--you simply... are.

Onward.

You do not know why you want to go there--to that brightness. You just knew you had to--needed to. And it was getting ever closer.

It promises of good things--you can smell it as a horse. Of green, of verdancy, of rightness.

It promises of wonderful things--you can see it as a rider. Of light, of escape, of a respite from this endless forest.

You've been running for a while. Your hooves--feet--ache from the exertion.

But it is right there--and you can taste it, hear it...

Feel it.

Until you couldn't.

Because at the last stretch of the path, mere yards away from freedom, you could not control your horse. Your steed buckles under your legs.

You could not support your rider. You couldn't control all four of your legs. They crumple beneath your equine body.

It was a mere stone--you, rider and horse, stumbled upon a large stone protruding out of the ground, and now you are falling.

The ground starts to rush up towards you, too quick for you to even fully think: "Oh, I--we--lost."

The sound of the forest halts as both horse and rider meet the ground.

Dmitri woke up--bolting upright in his bed, sweat staining his favorite pinstriped pajamas. 

It was all a dream, and just as quickly as he woke from it, so did its memory. His recollection of the whole vision started to fragment--but he never lost the feeling of dismay, of sadness. 

He felt... untethered.

Out of control.

The eleven-year-old looked out at the dreary August sky, unseeing. The feeling the dream left him with was familiar. Dmitri's sleep-addled mind could not form a concrete thought just yet, but if he could, he would have been able to realize that the dream held some waking-life truths for him.

The past month was a whirlwind of things happening too quickly for the boy to process: the murder of his mother, the destruction of his childhood home, his departure to London--all happening one after the other in a span of a few weeks. All of it seemed to have occurred in a split second--with absolutely no remorse for the eleven year-old.

Time and fate were ruthless--the boy had no respite.

It was only starting to slowly assimilate into his consciousness--his dreams creeping into his waking hours: that nothing was ever in his hands.

He doesn't know what started it--what changed. What began the slow realization.

For a whole month he has avoided even thinking about any of it.

Numb and unfeeling.

Ever since the whole world crumbled beneath his feet, he has not allowed himself to feel.

It might be the unfamiliar atmosphere of his new home--his aunt's modest townhouse. London, the chill, the weather--so vastly different from the comforts of his previous home and its shattered remains. Of sun, and contentment, and happiness.

Dmitri watched as a leaf fluttered by his window, spun around and dragged by a merciless wind. 

Untethered.

Or maybe it was the letter from his new school. Of the idea of magic.

In a sense, it probably was.

Because, yet again, he would be thrust into something he didn't want. Of something he didn't ask for. What Dmitri wanted was to stay, to forget. To let day after day see him unchanged: still numb and unfeeling.

It was a pleasant sensation--being void of emotion.

Unhinged.

But he should've already guessed time and fate did not care for your feelings--or un-feelings. Because there he was, just a few weeks after waking from his dream, standing in front of a crowd of cloaked students, being told he was to remain in another cheap imitation of a home for seven years. They told him he had ambition--that they saw he had a desire for something larger.

And maybe he did.

He wanted time and fate to stop fucking with him--to just let him be. He was already untethered, buffeted by the sandstorms of misfortune, blowing helplessly in its harsh winds--not knowing where he'll land next. Dmitri desired for a respite from all this... helplessness and lack of control. A moment of peace.

A moment of control.

He never wanted magic, never wanted this school, never wanted his mother to die, never wanted to destroy his home--never wanted this life. But apparently, he had no choice. Dmitri never had a choice.

The boy, after being told he had potential, attempted to take matters into his own hands.

He tried to make friends.

He thought it was a big middle finger to destiny--that a boy so broken and hopeless could make people like him. Of course, not one of them knew his story; he tended to keep trying to forget, and telling someone--anyone--would not help.

Dmitri tried his hand at normalcy.

But people were unpredictable--subject to the same harsh currents of time and fate. You'll never know when they'll come and go. You can never be certain about what goes on in the deep recesses of their minds. You can never be certain that you--an untethered, directionless wraith of a boy--are enough for them. All he knew for sure was that, barely a year since the start of school, he was left alone once more.

By friends who disappeared one by one. Left to drift helplessly.

Until Dmitri discovered a different side to him.

It took him a while to realize it. His fear of unpredictability--in people, in circumstances, in serendipity--has left him estranged from the normal routines of an 11-year-old in a magical academy. He had more time to himself than with others, and this made him grow to love the only other thing close at hand: schoolwork.

It took him a while to realize it. That books captured—trapped—time and fate in its pages--that facts barely, if ever, change. History was set in stone. Textbooks were a product of the past for the present. Unpredictability did not factor into the equation: books couldn't disappear. Books couldn't up and decide to leave Dmitri to fend for himself. Books didn't hurt. 

Books didn't die.

Exams, homework, spells--the results were entirely in Dmitri's small, eleven-year-old hands.

And it excited him.

That something was finally in his control.

That something was predictable.

Something was safe.

One can never go wrong with a well-written homework, a well-studied-for exam, or a well-pronounced spell. 

And it drove him.

That a kid drowning in a loss of control, of a life he had no say in making, could mold a small part of his life with his own equally-small, bare hands.

And it elated him.

That a being so untethered, left to run a rocky, treacherous path, can find rest in a road it can make on its own; can be its own master.

Onward.

Unhinged.

Untethered.

But finally free.