09-29-2018, 08:23 PM
The absences in this room
don’t sleep. Like gods,
they walk through rooms
unnoticed.
- - - -
In the young spring night, the air is cool and light. It is full of unrealized promises that slip past idly, as indifferent as leaves in the wind.
She is by no means remarkable. She is happy with that, or at least content. That is her way and always has been. The man beside her does not seem very remarkable either, at least not beneath the moonlight. Knowing nothing else about him, she likes this. It allows her to forget that it takes just a glance to see her silver hair and her sorry eyes.
"I can see it in your eyes," he voice eases across the nighttime air as though it were not a man but a darkness that speaks, and maybe it is. She does not reply to this.
She would not call kingdom life mind-numbing, not if you do it right. A private smile flits across her lips as if amused by a joke the stars told her. "We might have crossed paths before," she says suddenly, instead of replying to anything in particular he had said.
North is not a particularly fanciful creature, but she is in sore need of a friend, so she pretends for a moment that they've met before, long ago. Maybe here in the meadow, maybe on the road between Dale and Chamber, maybe somewhere else. It does not matter. She pretends it is not a sullen stranger that shares her company but an old friend.
It does not make her feel any different.
"The night sounds the same." She closes her eyes, reaches her senses out into the darkness full of sound. The frogs, the crickets, the wind in the grass, it is all exactly the way she remembers.
"I feel like it should sound different, don't you?" She begins to feel like the earth owes her something. It makes her angry, that man and beast should live and die by the thousand here and yet the land is left unchanged.
Eyes still closed, heart still beating slowly, slowly, to the beat of rivers winding downstream, she pictures herself years ago. She was just as stubborn and sly as today. Just as angry, deep down, at the meaningless of it all.
All these years and not a damn thing is different. Tell me there is such a thing as change.
- - - - -
N O R T H
don’t sleep. Like gods,
they walk through rooms
unnoticed.
- - - -
In the young spring night, the air is cool and light. It is full of unrealized promises that slip past idly, as indifferent as leaves in the wind.
She is by no means remarkable. She is happy with that, or at least content. That is her way and always has been. The man beside her does not seem very remarkable either, at least not beneath the moonlight. Knowing nothing else about him, she likes this. It allows her to forget that it takes just a glance to see her silver hair and her sorry eyes.
"I can see it in your eyes," he voice eases across the nighttime air as though it were not a man but a darkness that speaks, and maybe it is. She does not reply to this.
She would not call kingdom life mind-numbing, not if you do it right. A private smile flits across her lips as if amused by a joke the stars told her. "We might have crossed paths before," she says suddenly, instead of replying to anything in particular he had said.
North is not a particularly fanciful creature, but she is in sore need of a friend, so she pretends for a moment that they've met before, long ago. Maybe here in the meadow, maybe on the road between Dale and Chamber, maybe somewhere else. It does not matter. She pretends it is not a sullen stranger that shares her company but an old friend.
It does not make her feel any different.
"The night sounds the same." She closes her eyes, reaches her senses out into the darkness full of sound. The frogs, the crickets, the wind in the grass, it is all exactly the way she remembers.
"I feel like it should sound different, don't you?" She begins to feel like the earth owes her something. It makes her angry, that man and beast should live and die by the thousand here and yet the land is left unchanged.
Eyes still closed, heart still beating slowly, slowly, to the beat of rivers winding downstream, she pictures herself years ago. She was just as stubborn and sly as today. Just as angry, deep down, at the meaningless of it all.
All these years and not a damn thing is different. Tell me there is such a thing as change.
- - - - -
N O R T H