15th June 114P.R.

Mt Marble Kirk. That's its proper name, but everyone likes to call our cosy city Kirk.

It's surrounded by desert and in the middle of nowhere. There are bumps on the ground and ropes to hold onto to above our heads to guide you to your destination, on junctions there is Braille written on the rope so you can turn off down the right road but most people know the windy streets off by heart so don't need to touch the ropes at all. Trains are the quickest and safest way to get around Kirk. They have wide carriages with different textured seating, carpets and walls in each carriage to keep people preoccupied during journeys as people tend to have very strong (and sometimes violent) feelings about different types of music.

But for me the two things that make Kirk the most amazing place are the theatres and the markets. Flocks of people come in their hundreds to listen to a single gig but hands down Ella Walker has the most beautiful voice. Markets also are a people fest, as we get merchants coming and selling wonderful materials, new sound technology and exotic things from abroad. No one is ever curious enough to follow them, they just come and go like a gentle sandstorm that leaves moist air behind it.

The houses in Kirk are filled with material, like in the trains, each room has a different texture to provide atmosphere and in a weird way, feeling. All outward doors have to be heavy and strong to fight against the sandstorms we get and the trains are all called to a halt in such circumstances. At the centre of Kirk there is the oasis that is the centre of our water system. But above it is, what I call The Rock, where above the oasis there isn't a ceiling, there is another level with things overhanging. They are similar to desert shrubs but bigger, with more feeling and massive twigs. The mass of it is incomparable to anything else, standing on the rooftops with it's ill felt weeping sadness.

I've never talked to others about the Rock as I feel like they're unaware of it. I have also become aware of other rooftop secrets. Streets weaving between the 2nd floor of the houses and Braille signs above the reach of any hand. The strangest thing is these 2nd signs are not written with boulers, they are in another form, smooth and wide letters bound together in some foreign material.

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I love my Kirk, so peaceful yet full of noise. I just want to tell people to listen, not to the hum of social media but to life clicking and ticking around them like a perfect clockwork city. Not that I can tell them anything of course. Me being mute and all.

But don't worry, being mute isn't the worst part. Oh no. Because I'm different, so different that even my parents became afraid of me. Afraid of it. I can hear the trains waiting at stations when there's no sound. I can go out at midnight and touch the things in the sky. Only I'm not touching these things nor am I hearing the trains. It's something better, it fills me with amazement and it tells 1,000 Braille words without having to feel the Braille.

But. It's bad, it's a curse and it terrifies me. Although I keep trying to block it out I can't stop thinking about it.

When I was 6 (in 102P.R) my parents realised what I could do and they became afraid. My dad would beat me and tell me not to speak of it. My mum, being a historian, would tell me stories about the monarchs and how their curse corrupted them. She would tell me about how they were hunted, how they were killed in the revolution and now seen as pure evil. They warned me never to speak of it. To anyone.

Ever.

The words they said have haunted me, terrified me and ever since then I've been pretending. Pretending to be like everyone else, pretending that I'm normal, pretending I'm not cursed.

Then my world collapsed, not in a moment but over time. From the moment my parents found out, I used less and less of my voice, scared that I would blurt out the evil. So much so that by the age of 10 I had no voice. Just nothing. Now over the years I've wanted a voice but all there is, is silence, that same eery silence is all that fills my ears. So I started tapping, at home, at school, I ended up making up my own language to communicate. I call it tap talk. When I was tapping, non-stop, urging my mum and dad to learn the language all they did was take me to A&E. There the doctors said it was good that I had a way to make sound, to have my own unique voice in the world.

They also told me to write, to keep a diary about anything and everything in my life.

So here it is. Another Year about anything and everything. Kai's Diary.

Note to self: Get a better name than diary for my diary. Also strictly speaking it's a notepad but that's not a problem.