BeautyinDistress
I sat at the desk, counting the number of times my pencil waved back and forth before my eyes. One, two, three... on and on it went. As it flew past my face I couldn't help but nervously glance at the door to the private room, half-expecting to see my disapproving boss standing and opening her mouth to fire me.
Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen... still on and on it went. No matter how nervous I was getting and no matter how stupid I knew I was being I just couldn't focus. I knew I should have at least tried to steadfastly do my work, but the piles of paperwork and hours of filing just weren't appealing to me that day.
Twenty-two, twenty-three... twenty-seven... forty-one... My pencil just swung and swung. Eventually I went to work, but my mind was elsewhere. Normally the mind-numbing work I preformed day after day would have drawn me as it was a distraction from my life, but that day all I wanted to do was live.
That was the day I received the news. My husband had been honorably-discharged and would be arriving in the airport the next day; my life would no longer be filled with the worry and the longing it had been filled with since the day he left 4 years beforehand, almost to the day. I still had a job, friends and hobbies, but once you experience full, real love there isn't much else that truly matters. That would be the day I would truly begin to live again.
She looked up from the tower, watching the dragon fly through the air and seeing her knights attempts to fend the beat off. 'Why are you doing this?' Amelia thought as she looked up at the once-gentle creature blowing fire over the kingdom. Getting up from her bed, she marched out of her bedroom doors - ignoring her guards' objections - and found her way to the highest balcony in the castle. After calling upon her inner - "Amy? Amy I said it's time to go! I know you're having fun darling but it's starting to get chilly." Sighing, Amy took one last look at the marvelous sandcastle she had constructed and said goodbye to that particular realm of her imagination until another day, before turning back and taking her mom's outstretched hand.
The dust, piling up for ages, sat on the mantle. Avery could never place her finger on why she couldn't bring herself to take a duster to it. Perhaps it was the fact that it collected dust so quickly, so she'd have to do it everyday anyway? No, can't be it. There was something more pressing, something tugging on the strings of her heart and emotions. Although it never came to the front of her mind, she knew deep down in her heart that it was the picture of her husband, now dead, that kept her from dusting. Perhaps she thought that letting the dust pile up would help her accept his death, that it would remind her he was collecting dust himself. If it were clean, perhaps it would keep him alive in her heart a bit too much, and she would be driven mad, thinking he was actually alive, talking to his picture. So, Avery left the dust to manifest on the picture, all over the mantle, so she would not have to think about this.
There was something about the curve of her body as she walked, kneeling down and sniffing the ivy leaves she was named after. He couldn't quite place what made her seem so strong, so powerful. Adrian knew this wasn't just one of his stupid crushes, he could tell by the way seeing her jump from rock to rock along the stream didn't just arouse him or make him slightly giddy, but it filled him with interest. She was a strong one, Ivy, the way she killed fish cleanly with sharpened sticks and he could imagine her returning home covered head to toe in mud, laughing as she tossed her mom the fish to gut, clean and cook for a fresh dinner. Willful, that was what she was. Strong and willful, with the power to help her family survive even with the constant budget cuts on her dad's already low-pay job. There truly was nobody like Ivy, not in Adrian's eyes.