Never Quite Enough

"i mean, i dont think im a nice person. im easily jealous - now theres a start."

- Turnus Wyllt's Mirrorblog

a typical Turnus Wyllt, ft Klara Spejl and feelings of inadequency

Story
It’s never quite enough to be strong, Turnus realises.

When Klara Spejl speaks, her hands shake. Often, it’s excitement that bubbles and boils over, pushing at the brim, pressuring her, forcing her, to open up. Meanwhile, Turnus doesn’t even try. In any case of inconvenience, he sulks off, hiding behind a MirrorPhone screen or a friend’s social skills.

How she deals with such nervous energy, Turnus can’t understand.

“Look, you have to tell me - how can I get confidence like you?”

“I wouldn’t call it confidence. Impulse and desperation, perhaps,” she laughs as she replies.

~*~

On a school record, on a slip of paper, Turnus holds the title of Prince.

He takes the classes, he sits with fellow princes at the castleteria. He refuses to wear a crown, to take up weaponry, or to bother with politics.

(Once, when wandering around the area where princely classes were held, he had been asked whether he was ‘lost’, and needed help getting out of the ‘wrong part of the school’.)

(He won’t admit it - he couldn’t - but there was a tiny bit of pride in his heart.)

Klara Spejl strides with regal grace, smiles upon the world like it’s her own. She has no title on paper, but nature has gifted her one nonetheless.

If you listen closely, you can hear the corvids of the forest whispering. The crows, the ravens, they all hail her.

“Our sweet prince,” they say. “The Prince of X,” and they fill in that unknown variable with whatever they fancy. Of flowers, of mathematics, of laughter and light and all that is sweet and holy. They call her prince, and he thinks - how the ever more deserving she is of that title than him.

~*~

“I’m not like other princes,” Turnus sulks. “I don’t need to rely on a damsel’s emotional labour.”

“That’s cool,” says Klara. She blinks.

Turnus knows that she doesn't really get it. And she's lucky - she lives a life where she doesn't need to understand such a thing.

“It’s whatever,” he waves it off. “You’re still, like, the only decent prince in this school.”

Klara frowns. “Aren’t your best friends princes?”

“You’re still the only decent prince in this school.”

~*~

The Prince of Amateurs is at it again - being far too much.

How can the one meant to live with a frozen heart be so warm?

When she speaks, people listen. They love the care in her voice, the kindness, the joy.

Turnus knows he needs no devil’s curse or snow queen’s kiss to invite the coldness into his heart. He already has - it nests within.

He cannot talk without stumbling or accidentally insulting. He does not have that natural ease. He towers over his friend, but whenever the two are together - and get locked in conversation with a new person, he wants to duck behind Klara, crawl into a ball and remain hidden.

It’s not shyness.

No one would be daft enough to call it shyness.

He’s cold. That’s all others will think him as.

~*~

Turnus never quite loves fairytales the way he should.

And it’s not that he doesn’t love stories - he does. He loves them so much that he spends hours immersed in his own worlds and words. There’s irony, Turnus does not deny that, in living in a world of stories, in loving stories, yet detesting your surroundings.

(Can one truly be a storyteller if he does not learn to live and love in his own world first?)

While Turnus stumbles through gracelessly, the Prince of Princes herself fills herself with fairytales, in the same way birds fill the undersides of their wings with air, in the same way the heart fills with blood.

Stories are life. She does not merely live for stories. She lives as a story.

But Turnus sees the world as a passive observer. What role is there for him?

He will always be one degree removed from his own reality.

~*~

''This is all you’re good for. Without magic, your best hope is as a trophy prince.''

And yet - Turnus fails at the most basic, the least exhausting of roles.

~*~

He’s never quite enough, and she is far too much.