[open] there's an art to life's distractions

[chasmata]

chasmata

She feels some sharp stab of horror when he speaks and she realizes that their paths have crossed before and she has no memory of it. Heat pools in her cheeks and she opens her mouth to fashion up an apology she can only half-mean when she does not remember their last encounter.

Or, at least, she doesn’t think she remembers it.

He speaks again before she can stammer out some explanation and everything slips sharply into focus. The Playground. How she’d walked right into him and he’d been the first soul she’d confessed her defect to and she had not fully understood the depth of her embarrassment at being so thoroughly blinded the sun until she’d turned tail and fled. (Or the closest she could get to fleeing when she could not see and did not want to suffer the same fate she had just run from).

She is embarrassed still, but she is distracted from it by the sight of him. He is the most handsome thing she’s seen, of that she is absolutely certain. Were she more of a romantic, perhaps she might have even swooned.

Instead, she merely studies him for the space of a breath and is grateful that her dark color conceals the flush of heat in her cheeks.

“Oh!” she exclaims and then summons up a smile, “I can!” And she laughs, something quiet and restrained but warm all the same.

“I’m sorry for how I acted the last time we met, I hadn’t learned how to handle my embarrassment yet.”

the moonlight, baby, shows you what’s real
but there ain’t language for the things i feel

@[Laurelin]