rohaigirl
He's alone on the bus tonight. Mark's not driving; it's some stranger who doesn't greet him when he tags on, doesn't provide a very welcoming front for conversation. So he just sits alone toward the middle-front of the bus as the dark city moves past. Three in the morning is so dark, when even the party-goers are starting to call it quits or get kicked out. There are so few cars out, so few people, especially in this part of town. He feels like he's being borne not just through space but through time as well, and he wonders if this is how the Old Ones feel now.
Time moves by so fast now that he's older, and the more time that passes, the vaster the past becomes to him, the faster the present slips through his fingers.
Sand, he thinks, and that buzziness in his head when he's been awake for too long but isn't tired anymore, it goes away. His temple connects with the cool glass of the windows, and like that his eyes are slipping closed, heavy and warm with sleep.
The book drops from the shelf and nearly clips her nose. It hits the ground and pages bend, spine crackles, and the crack of the hardcover on the marble floor echoes throughout the library. The girl dances fearfully on tiptoes, reaching for the book she had been searching for a moment ago, whose neighbor had just fallen so clumsily from the shelf. She can hear the librarian sigh and heels clip clop toward her; just a few centimeters more...
His arms were heavy with sleep, heavy with years wrinkling, spotting, drying his skin and bones, heavy with memories pressing in upon him from all sides, memories struggling to burst from inside, to leave; his eyes were heavy with sleep, too; his head drooped beneath many summers, his shoulders hunched against the chill of many winters.
A hundred.
The grip on my hand was loose, always threatening to slip away. The owner darted in and out of the crowd, wove between people and flew across cracks in the pavement that nearly tripped me. The skin so barely clasped against my fingertips was cold and dry and calloused, and I followed the feather-like touch more than I followed him; and as I chased after his dreams, I came to realize that I would follow him across all the world if it only meant that someday, I would be able to hold that hand tightly and lead him home.
He sat in the center of the pod, arms crossed, legs crossed, eyes closed and head tilted forward, listening.
People ran around frantically all throughout the structure, their hearts racing just as fast as their legs. There was fear thick in the air, fear and death. It was a bitter perfume, sweet but tangy at the back of his throat. His narrow face tightened at the scent of it.
He wished that he could find some trace of her. Perhaps the scent of her shampoo, or the particular smell of her aunt's cooking, or the sweet taste of her cherry chapstick, even. Anything to tell him that she was in the building.
The building was doomed. The city was doomed. But if she were in the underground base with him, he might be able to save her.
She couldn't stop the sob that tore from her chest. She didn't consciously know the exact cause of her anguish, but she felt it was something to do with the way he looked at her. There was something in his eyes, the set of his mouth, the flexing of a muscle here or there in his face that told some part of her that it was over. He didn't say anything; life had continued as normal between them, but she knew on that base level that nothing would ever be the same again.
She was the kind of girl that always had a smile on her face. It wasn't a particularly pretty one--her teeth were tinted and crooked, and her mouth was too big for her face, but that never stopped her from flashing a grin at everyone she talked to. It wasn't that she was always happy, but she always made the effort to make others feel warm and invited.
I loved her for it. I hated her for it, too.
Because I hated and loved her, I couldn't stand to be far from her side. From the shadowy corners where the light of her smile barely touched, I soaked up the feeling of friendship she exuded from every pore. I never tried to reciprocate her warmth; in fact, I cringed away from most interactions with her. She reached out to me despite the fact that we were polar opposites, she pulled me out of the depths of my personal abyss and she kiss away the isolation.
It made me uncomfortable at first. She'd rubbed me against the grain of my nature; she never tried to change me, but just by remaining near me and turning that smile in my direction, change me she did...
A tube fed into his arm, pumping a colorless fluid into his veins that kept him only just lucid enough to acknowledge our presences. His eyes were at half mast and dulled by pain and anger and undernourishment; I could count every one of his bones sticking out beneath his taught skin.
His fingers twitched slightly when I touched them. "Hang in there, Benjy," I told him. "When you get out of here, I'm gonna take you out to dinner at that restaurant you told me about."
I was watching out the window again, this time at the sun rising above the mountain range in the distance. The Abbey was nestled deep within a beautiful and quite remote valley, filled with all sorts of natural wonders like trees and rivers and springs, and the animals here were quite varied in species too.
For instance, on that beautiful early morning at dawn, a crane flew past me so close that I swore I could feel the draft of her wings against my skin. I pulled my knees up to my chin and smiled into my pajama pants, just happy to have witnessed it.
Damn. Foiled again.
Though every cartoon villain had uttered those words again, and therefore should sound silly to me as I said it, I found that the phrase perfectly fitted the situation: The pie I had been so carefully baking all day in replacement for the birthday cake that had been ruined early was gone, and there were only fifteen minutes left before the party started.
load more entries
writing since 2011 · 14 entries · 14 days shown up
each square is a day—lit means RachelHugsALot showed up.
4longest streak
14days written
0.1entries / week
the words RachelHugsALot reaches for
faceeyesagainstskinheavyhanddamncrystallightglassinsidepastsmileheadsleepcup