09-24-2018, 01:21 PM
They say the eyes are the window to the soul.
That they can tell you a lot about who someone is if you only look.
His eyes are deep, and dark, and blue like the ocean; she can see the white, foamy tips of waves visible in the fractures of his irises, and almost smell the salt in the air. His eyes are strong, yes, but they are also steady, endless. So, when he moves towards her she doesn’t flee; she trusts him. Her own eyes are wild, and dark, and empty, and she finds herself briefly wishing in these moments that there was more to them than there is. But that’s her truth - that she is unremarkable, nothing unordinary, and that if she is truly honest with herself the stolen memories might be the only interesting thing about her.
(The one wrapped in gold has eyes that are wild and dark, like hers. They’re full of something that Glassheart tries to pinpoint, but can’t. The silver one has eyes beyond her years. They’re sad. They’ve known the kinds of things no one should ever know.)
She doesn’t know if she wants to let them go.
She doesn’t know if she can keep them.
When he answers her question he hides more than he reveals, but his ears swing flat against his head, and she’s sorry to have offended him. She lets it go, swiftly, and then moves forward to close the gap between their bodies. She’s never stopped long enough to talk to a stranger before, let alone touch one. Is this her, or someone else?
“Do you want to be alone?” He asks.
She still isn’t sure. She does, and she doesn’t.
The memories are revealing a world she’s never known before. They feel important. They feel bigger than she could ever be. They’re horrible, and dark, but they’re something. When they are at last skin-to-skin she drapes her neck across the length of his back, perhaps an intimate hold for two strangers, but the cold would have to make fast friends of them if they were to survive.
“I don’t know,” she echoes again, staring at a hazel along the river’s edge with vacant eyes while the clouds of her breath escape out into the winter air.
“I don’t need to be alone from you, though.”
She wonders then, what would happen if she left the meadow. This place triggered the memories, again and again. If she left would they still follow? Would she be real again?
“Do you have a home?”