04-14-2024, 08:43 PM
— and how long must I stay, will I lay by your side
just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;
just to say that I’m yours and you’ll never be mine;
The smile that he returns to her nearly catches her off guard — so fleeting and bright like a shooting star streaking across a barren sky, the kind you find yourself wishing you had been paying closer attention so that you might not have missed it.
And it is only then in the shadow that the brightness had left behind that she realizes how different he seemed from the last time she saw him. The smile had felt like a window to something she was not supposed to see, to a past version of himself that did not really exist anymore, and she feels almost guilty for witnessing it.
She can’t claim to have known him, not really; they are strangers by most definitions. But she remembers how easily they had smiled and laughed, even with the pressing darkness. If something had been wrong the last time she saw him then it had only just started, or maybe he had just been better at hiding it. She has never been in the position where she had to hide anything, but she imagines that secrets must be heavy, draining things, and she couldn’t blame him for not having the energy to pretend any longer.
“That we know of,” she says in response to what he says about monsters, looking again across the river. “Maybe they’re hiding over there. Maybe that’s why we aren’t meant to go across.” She laughs a little as she says it, because she knows it is silly. Beqanna didn’t usually do much to protect them, though she didn’t necessarily purposely harm them, either. Not if you were smart enough to not stay away from the places she was so clearly trying to keep you out of.
She glances down at herself at his comment about starting a fire, and for a moment worry floods her face, her lilac-colored eyes darkening with it. “You don’t think I could actually do that, right? That’s the last thing I need, burning the whole place down by accident…” she trails off just a bit, trading in the worry for a distracted kind of thoughtfulness before asking, “have you tried setting it on fire?”
And it is only then in the shadow that the brightness had left behind that she realizes how different he seemed from the last time she saw him. The smile had felt like a window to something she was not supposed to see, to a past version of himself that did not really exist anymore, and she feels almost guilty for witnessing it.
She can’t claim to have known him, not really; they are strangers by most definitions. But she remembers how easily they had smiled and laughed, even with the pressing darkness. If something had been wrong the last time she saw him then it had only just started, or maybe he had just been better at hiding it. She has never been in the position where she had to hide anything, but she imagines that secrets must be heavy, draining things, and she couldn’t blame him for not having the energy to pretend any longer.
“That we know of,” she says in response to what he says about monsters, looking again across the river. “Maybe they’re hiding over there. Maybe that’s why we aren’t meant to go across.” She laughs a little as she says it, because she knows it is silly. Beqanna didn’t usually do much to protect them, though she didn’t necessarily purposely harm them, either. Not if you were smart enough to not stay away from the places she was so clearly trying to keep you out of.
She glances down at herself at his comment about starting a fire, and for a moment worry floods her face, her lilac-colored eyes darkening with it. “You don’t think I could actually do that, right? That’s the last thing I need, burning the whole place down by accident…” she trails off just a bit, trading in the worry for a distracted kind of thoughtfulness before asking, “have you tried setting it on fire?”
hourglass
Gale