Drabble 168 – Chimeric

I have always wanted very badly to be good at science. Unfortunately, my brain is always off doing something else when it should be studying chemistry or physics. I was passable at biology, geology, and astronomy, but once you start throwing in equations the part of me that enjoys learning turns off and starts thinking about, I don’t know, that time I asked someone if they wanted to be “bridge buddies” because we were in a group for having to explain the land bridge theory, and how that ninth-grade memory will probably never, ever leave me, and how I am still embarrassed about it 16 years later, or whatever.

I enjoy science as if I am a fan of it. I think it’s deeply cool, but unfortunately, I have crammed my head so full of song lyrics and obscure vocabulary that I can only sit on the sidelines with a giant foam finger, cheering it on. You go, science. I don’t understand what’s going on most of the time (unless it’s about rocks, which I inexplicably understand rather well), but I’m rooting for you.

Anyway, here’s drabble.

CHIMERIC

(n.) from Ancient Greek χίμαιρα, for “she-goat”

A figment of the imagination, an idea of fantasy.

Ophelia knows she has taken all the wrong ideas from the stories. So many things are forbidden; she wants those. You’re not supposed to model yourself on Doctors Moreau or Frankenstein. You’re not supposed to work by night for fear that someone might spot you at your unholy research. But she does, because there’s adventure in the forbidden and the daylight makes her sneeze. While she does not follow their fictional footsteps—her research is mostly mundane, save a few dabblings—she dreams that someday she’ll be remembered with such awe, such fear, for making an impact that leaves the world trembling.