“You wouldn’t know,” she said, so quietly that I paused in the park and let my eyes follow her as she walked past me. I watched her back, frowning, and leaned forward.

“Wouldn’t know what?”

“How he feels.” The words were tossed over her shoulder, flippant, and they stung. They hurt, but I tried not to let it show. I launched into an awkward jog-walk, to catch up, and when I was beside her I slowed to match her pace. I didn’t look at her, though.

“And you know?” I asked. The words came out bitter and sarcastic, but it wasn’t my intention for them to sound that way. They hung in the air, heavy and dripping poison, out too fast, out before I could pull them back into the darkness of my mouth and swallow them so that they only hurt me.

If my words affected her, it didn’t show. Her face was placid, smooth, a picture of perfection I could never reach, even in my wildest dreams. She made a small noise in her throat, and I would have labeled it a snort if I didn’t know that Katarina Bazarov did not snort. “Of course I know,” she said, “He tells me everything.”

We both knew it was a lie. The words were too glittering and too beautiful to be true, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t bring myself to feel any satisfaction in shaming her, not now. The annoyance and anger I felt pulsing through my body seconds ago lessened into a weariness that made me sigh. The tiredness I felt blanketing my body made itself known in the stutter of my step, the way I suddenly felt like Atlas—worse off than Atlas, even—shuddering under its weight.

She went on to speak even though I offered no prompt. “But, in any case, I wouldn’t need to have him tell me. I can see it. I can see it in his eyes, in his smile. I can see all of it.”

She abruptly stopped walking and, because it seemed like the right thing to do, I stopped also, about three steps from where she stood. I looked back at her, turning all the way around because I refused to be like her, refused to only look over my shoulder, and saw that she was squinting at me, a hand raised against the glare of the sun to shadow her eyes. My shadow stretched towards her, reaching her feet, and for a second I found it odd that I should be the one haloed instead of her.

The smile that spread across her lips was a cold one, baring her teeth like a snarl. “I could never compare,” she murmured, giving a little shake of her head.

I found that odd, too, because I had figured I could never be something that was considered matchless.

trying a different style utilizing prompts from here, hopefully you all pick up on what i was working at.

—-

motion
Her hair whipped around her as she stood on the fence, the wild horses galloping by, and she looked over her shoulder at him, grinning as she asked, “Aren’t the most beautiful ones always wild?”
cool
She stared at him with apathetic eyes, breaking the stillness by sliding an envelope towards him across the table, and he felt his heart stutter at the coldness of her manner.
young
Watching her fling vibrant paint onto the canvas, usually missing the canvas, he decided that even if she were one hundred years old, she would very likely never act like it.
last
“I want to be your last,” he said to her, fiercely, and she only glanced at him from the corner of her eye and quirked her lip up in a semblance of a smile.
wrong
She frowned at him when he told her that e-p-i-t-o-m-e was pronounce ‘ee-pit-oh-mee’, not ‘eh-pit-ohm’, and she promptly declared that she thought ‘eh-pit-ohm’ sounded much more refined.
gentle
He was accustomed to her charming a horse with whispered words and sugar cubes, so the first and last day he saw her take a whip to a stallion that had kicked her favorite mare, he was mildly surprised.
one
Barring the way to the cake, he held up a single index finger in front of her, eyes strict, and she pouted in reply.
thousand
She had whispered her dreams into his ear that night: “I want to own a thousand acres of land one day, a horse to every acre…and it’ll be our own.”
king
He watched with bated breath as she extended a hand towards the majestic black Arabian that stood alone in the corral, steam billowing from his nostrils, and he wasn’t sure if his captivation was for the girl or the beast.
learn
Her eyes flicked between him and the jump unsurely, the beast she was atop of flicking its ears in a mirror of her agitation, and he merely shook his head, saying, “You’ll get it with practice.”
blur
She passed him, a mass of blonde, and he realized he was missing his hat; it wasn’t until a second later that he realized, with no little shock, that she had moved that fast without a horse.
wait
“You’ll always be here?” she asked, biting her lip as she half-hid behind that black Arabian, avoiding his eyes, and he took the reins from her hands, removing the tack for her in an action that was answer enough.
change
He wasn’t sure when the slender and sleek young woman replaced the buck-toothed, pony-tailed girl of his youth, only knowing that she had.
command
“No,” he snapped when she had tried to beg him to let her break the horse herself, and when she tried to argue again he accosted her with the harshest glare he could muster, forcing herself to bite her tongue, and her teary eyes hurt him because he couldn’t bear to tell her that he would never see her harmed, not under his watch. 
hold
She came to him in the middle of the night, silent, wraith-like, and let herself into his bed, squeezing herself into the circle of his arms as she tucked her head beneath his chin with no words.
need
The shift was subtle, but it had occurred, because as he pressed a kiss to the bare skin of her lower back, he couldn’t envision a life without her.
vision
Anyone who saw her couldn’t deny that she had the brilliant mind of her father and the charming finesse of her mother that would bring the family name to new heights.
attention
He remembered the first time she had truly captivated him: at sixteen-years-old, when she rushed into the stable well past midnight at the sound of the mare’s painful bray and buried herself elbow deep in the delivery of the foal with the other stable hands, never turning up a nose at the dirtier work.
soul
He remembers that night where, underneath the weight of his arm, she whispered to him that she did not think people go to heaven when they die—instead, they remain on earth, guardians of their beloved.
picture
He held the photo in his hand, eying the gangly boy inside it with a critical eye and said that he didn’t remember this particular one being taken; she merely giggled in reply.
fool
He railed against her, tempted to catch her by the shoulders and shake her, scream at her to scare her into never being so reckless again, but she stood resolutely against his rage, the proud fool.
mad
She was shouting at him as she stomped around the room, her hands motioning a flurry of empty movements, and he had to bite his lip against a smile.
child
He remembered the days that she would whine at him because he was too tired to fetch her saddle from the tack room for her in the early morning and, nostalgically, wondered if it was really so long ago.
now
“That doesn’t matter,” she said softly, shaking her head, “just focus on this.”
shadow
She was only five foot three, but she made a point to tell him that, from where she stood, her shadow was taller than his.
goodbye
Tears that she refused to let fall welled up in her eyes and he avoided looking at her for too long as he packed, but even then he could never deny that she was there.
hide
When he asked how she ever had the patience to sit and wait for him to find her when they would play as children, she merely answered, “Because I knew you would, and will, always, always find me.”
fortune
He had always teased her for her obsession with tarot cards, but when her birthday came around he presented her with a beautiful, hand-drawn set he commissioned from a local artist.
safe
“Is that safe?” her friend asked her once she had finished recounting the story of them on the horse and all she did in reply was snort and give a jaunty shrug of her shoulders, effectively saying ‘who cares?’ without words.
ghost
Some nights, when the rain was particularly hard and the night was stiflingly dark, she came to him shivering, her eyes telling haunted stories of things he did not know of.
book
“Do you remember that time, when you were about six or seven, that I had teased you about not being able to read well and you threw your school textbook at my head?”
eye
No one could deny that she had talent; with just an appraising look, she could guess a horse’s clock-time on the first try.
never
Her cheeks were wet with tears as she curled her entire body over the dying horse, the veterinarian looking on with pitying eyes as he discarded the syringe, and she whispered, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have forced you to make that jump.”
sing
He figured it was a well-kept secret, her singing to the horses, because when he asked her why she didn’t sing in front of people she turned the most endearing shade of scarlet.
sudden
She didn’t have a name for it, couldn’t even tell when she started to care, but only knew that when she saw that girl hanging off of his arm the emotion that rose in her had her fisting her hands hard enough to leave angry half-moons in her palms.
stop
She spat vicious words at him and turned promptly on her heel to stalk away; he was about to chase after her, but the old photograph of her and another man made him falter in his steps, and slowly, very slowly, he walked in the opposite direction. 
time
He remembered days when they were both young, where golden grass stretched as far as the eye could see, a time where if anyone mentioned that their days were numbered, they would have simply laughed at them.
wash
She watched him, unnoticed, as he peeled the shirt off of his body and pitched it away before grabbing the running hose and pointing it towards the horse tied to the post.
torn
She stood between him and the magnificent ranch house, wavering, before giving him a mournful look and walking off in the direction of the house.
history
As she spread the old photographs and treasured antiques before him, the realization that he was witnessing a hundred years of family history was not lost upon him.
power
He figured she didn’t realize what she was capable of, didn’t notice that when she bent, he bent too.
bother
“…If you’re not too busy, can you help me mend this tack?” she had asked, and when he shook because he was shocked that she was actually finally speaking to him after their fight, he had to quickly explain himself to keep her from storming away—again.
god
He kneeled in the pew, forehead resting against his steeped fingers, and he prayed, because in a hospital lay an unconscious girl and, with her, his heart.
wall
He remembered the days she used to hate that particular jump—the one built up with bricks—and feels like it was so long ago, because now he watched her soar over them without so much as a hitch in the gait of the horse.
naked
They were both fully clothed, but after he told her the story of what exactly happened those months that he ran away, he didn’t feel like he had a scrap of fabric on.
drive
She has yet to come across a single man that could exude an intensity even near his when he forced himself on that bucking Arabian.
harm
The day he saw her flung from the saddle of the spooked horse was the day he swore to himself that she would never endure pain again, not if he could help it.
precious
He watched her bend to press a sweet little kiss to the face of the foal, right on its snip mark.
hunger
Their lips fused together, she clung to him tightly and he bent her back in his arms to the point he thought she would break, but she nipped his lip in encouragement and he felt something inside of him give a primordial roar.
believe
Sitting underneath the sky with their backs against each other, their heads leaned back to rest on the others shoulders, it was easy to say that the world encompassed only them and the horses and think that they weren’t lying.

It’s night like these (where the moon is covered by clouds but its luminescence persists, where the house is so quiet it can make me shiver, where not a thing is out of place but it seems like, feels like nothing is where it belongs) that remind me I am not alone in this world, but I do not stand with anyone, either. A person will sit an arm’s length away, but I will not stretch out my hand to brush my fingers against their shirt.

I will lay in my bed (not necessarily alone, but feeling like it) and curl on one side, a pillow against my back. I will shuffle around the house and prepare a meal for one, wash the equivalent of one person’s load of clothes, and I will carry on as I always have: my heart beating for one. I am not sad because I am accustomed to it, but being accustomed tends to sap the happiness, also.

I wouldn’t call it content, but it is something akin to it. Because content implies warmth. It implies comfort and the sense of everything simply being all right. But I am not content, because I am not warm. I simply am (stillness, silence, steadfastness), and for me, that is enough.

These emotions whirl within me that I am not at liberty to name. I cannot describe them, simply because I do not know how (the words crack, they falter and I bite my tongue against them). I only know that they exist, and that they persist in me with little agitation. I do not mind them being there, because they do not bother me.

There is, honestly, little that bothers me. I do not care that a person’s smile will linger, angled away from me. I do not care that a smell (flowery, light, and soft) carries on in areas I have not been, persists in things I have not touched. I do not care that I do not feel, because, as I have said, I live for one.

I have not cared, I do not care, I will never care.

(Because I am not built for caring.)

“And it is not fine for gods to menace fools,”
you said, and I was too sheepish to answer,
instead looking down at my
ragged fingernails that
had dirt
caked beneath them.

I did not
know if you were complimenting me
and scolding me at the same time,
comparing me to a god and
lowering yourself to a fool
or—

if you were insulting me,
calling yourself the god
and telling me I am a fool,
as it should have been.
As it should have been.

So I avoided your eyes and simply
stared at my callused hands,
for lack of anything better
to do.

I have filled a gilded bowl to the brim with tears. I allowed salt-water to dribble into it, watching the water level rise until the surface tension of the liquid trembled the slightest bit over the rim of the bowl. I waited a the span of a heart’s beat (ba-bump) before I plunged red hands into the still-warm liquid, watching it slosh and spill over the edge of the bowl.

The effect was instantaneous. The tears turned a pinkish tinge and I wiggled my fingers in the water, not sure what the emotions that welled within me were called but only knowing that they rose wickedly, enveloping me in a heat that flushed my cheeks and made my vision swim. I laughed, and the sound was callous and detached and, in all honesty, not very sane but I was okay, since my hands were being washed of my sins and my transgressions even if the rest of me was filthy-filthy-filthy. (Pontius Pilate, oh, I wash my hands of this? Reconciliation that is borderline sacrilegious? Or a baptism centuries too late?) I pull my hands from the bowl and marvel at the sight.

The skin of my hands is perfect, pristine, pure. It is white and unmarred until, at my wrists, it blends into dirt the color of horror made manifest.

Over yonder sits a boy with a bleeding heart on his sleeve; can you see him? There, with the shaggy hair and the blue eyes (that for some reason seemed much darker than they should), don’t you spot him? He might not be truly beautiful, but he is beautiful to me and that is all that matters.

I’ve talked to him before and even though they might sound like insignificant words to you, they were definitely important. The first time I spoke to him, he told me that he came to this particular coffee shop to ponder and meditate (on what exactly I do not know—yet) and I’ve offered that I just came here because they made a killer cappuccino. He smiled then and nodded. With that, I knew it was time to retreat and try again another day.

I’ll tell you a secret: we’ve actually kept this unformed, unspoken rendezvous up for six months (or was it five? I’m not sure, come to think of it) and we’re still going. Running into you today threw off the scheme of things—wait, stick around, you’re here anyway so I might as well tell you the story.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, wait! Don’t bother, I remember now.

So as I was saying: we did this at least weekly (somehow, we’d just always run into each other). It was our ritual; it was our way. We exchanged a truth for a dare, a fact for a joke and a tidbit for a scrap. Sometimes he’d tease me and sometimes I’d playfully ignore him. What we had—have—I’m still not even sure of. It’s something though. It is definitely something.

What was that you said? His name? Oh…I’m not quite sure. To be honest, we were both digging so much deeper than the first level of acquaintance to bother with exchanging names. For some reason, it never crossed our minds. I’d peg him to be of some unusual name though, like Ciaran or Dante, maybe. 

My heart tells me I feel something for him (the first time it did was when he told me that he preferred me in glasses because, somehow, it made me look even smaller, a priceless treasure to be protected—and I quote those words, by the way) and my mind is in cohesion. Isn’t that rare? For heart and mind to agree? That must be a sign.

Oh, he’s coming this way. Quick! Act like we weren’t talking about him! (But it’s no use. The man has hearing like a bat. He probably heard every single word we said.) I can see in your eyes that, close up, you’re put under his spell too. A quick, disarming smile was all it took for him to have you on his side, to be rooting for him with me instead of against him for me. “Hello,” he says to both of us and I smile. I see you swallow and nod, still unsure. “I’m Tristan,” he continues. (It’s no Dante or Ciaran, but I’ll take it. It was a nice way of rolling off the tongue, Trisssstan.)

You nod again, but you don’t offer a name. I look at him and I feign hurt. “You tell her your name and you haven’t ever spoken to her before. What about me?” He looks at me then, a full-on, hard stare that steals away my breath. The message is clear in his eyes and it is enough for me. I grow quiet.

Now, your skepticism comes back into play. “How can you think you know her,” you ask, “when you don’t even know her name?”

He—Tristan—gives you a little smile that might even be a little disappointed, if you looked close enough. “What need have I of a name?” He looks at me now when he speaks. “You’ve heard our story. Wouldn’t you agree that our relationship transcends that?”

i haven’t said this formally yet, so i say it now. thank you, from the very bottom of my heart, for following me and allowing my humble pieces of prose a space on your dashboard. you cannot imagine what it means to me to have people appreciate my work.

should any of you ever fancy a talk, my ask-box is open! may you continue on your merry way.

sincerely,

phi-uyen

Sorrow looked down at his feet with mournful eyes, wide and dark and solemn as Love pranced around and danced in the field before him, laughing and chortling all the while. “Sorrow,” she sang with glowing face and sparkling smile, “come dance with me, please.”

“No,” he sighed.

“But why?”
“You know that I cannot.”

She pouted, pausing in her playful antics to look at him instead, arms akimbo and eyes heartfelt. “But you can,” Love said sweetly, “You simply think that you cannot. Come, Sorrow, I’ll show you the way.”

“No, no, Love, you know that I cannot dance, I cannot sing, I cannot smile as you do. I am not meant to be that, that of sunshine and rainbows and…love.”

Love moaned, canting her head to one side as she fell back in the field, straight on her back as he craned his neck to keep sight of her in the high-growing wildflowers. “I know, I know you are Sorrow and as sorrow you encompass misery and grief and—and heartbreak but that does not mean you cannot dance, does not mean you are not allowed your joy. Please, Sorrow? Please?”

His arms came to wrap around his own chest, trying to comfort himself, for, as was always the case when he was with Love, a dull ache had risen in him. He shook his head and rocked back and forth on his heels, wishing to say yes but finding that he couldn’t. “I cannot,” he cried, his eyes going misty, “it is not my place.”

“Yes it is, Sorrow.” Love sprung up in all her splendor and pranced to him, looking up at him with wide eyes and a sprig of purple flowers stuck in her hair. “For at your end is man’s happiness and at man’s happiness is love, therefore it can be your place, too.” And before he had time to truly ponder her words, she grabbed his hands and dragged him out further into the field, the a place where the wildflowers had not yet been trod upon.

“Now before you can say there is no music and no steps, just feel it. Let all this—the wind, the animals, your own breath—let that be your music and let your heart lead you in the steps.”

And so she started to move before him, hearing a song he could not. In her radiance, in her gleaming way, she was enchanting him, making him feel fluid in his bones and he found that he was swaying to some rhythm he did not know, did not recognize. “There you go,” she smiled. “See, you’re doing it.”

He cracked her an awkward smile that seemed more like a grimace, his awkward movement slightly garish because of his too-long limbs, of his lanky frame. Sorrow could never be like Love, for she was unique in her beautiful way, full of vivacity and exuberance. She moved gracefully and purposefully, sharp, crisp movements that never once looked out of place. She fed him lies; sweet lies that made him better than what he was just so he would dance with her. She made him forget his true nature for a moment, throw it to the wind and indulge in her one wish of the day.

And Sorrow found that, for now, even in all his gloom-and-doom, he could not refuse her.

For she was Love.

When her head tipped back, the wind blew her hair across her face and seemed to pull her laugh from her throat before she even voiced it, stole it from her before she even realized that it was hers to give. She looked at him from between messy strands of blonde hair that shined gold in the afternoon sun. “Don’t tell me,” she drawled, leaning a hip against the metal rail that encased the roof of the building, “that you’re afraid of heights!”

His heart stuttered when her hip touched that rail and made it squeak in protest. “Valencia,” he pleaded, “Valencia, please stop. Come away from the edge.”

She merely looked at him over a bare shoulder, an expanse of skin that was smooth and tan. The smile that played along the curve of her lips was teasing, dangerous.

It was a challenge.

The wind billowed the skirt of her scarlet dress around her thighs, and with one hand she grasped the rusty rail before she leaned out over it, hair slipping from behind her shoulder to fall in front of her face. She looked away from him now, towards the bustling city below, and when she laughed the sound was infectious.

Under better conditions, he might have been tempted to crack a smile.

Instead, he took a step towards her only to falter and come to a jerking stop a yard or two away. He reached out a trembling hand, trying to ignore the sweat that broke across his brow and the chill that wracked its way down his spine. “C’mon, Val, it’s not funny.”

She popped one leg into the air, the red sole of her shoe making him think of gruesome things, of how it would look if she tipped over that railing and hit the concrete below at a velocity that would shatter every bone in her body and have blood seep from her in gallons.

“I,” she said, her voice very calm, almost flippant, “find it to be hilarious.” She brought both hands to the rail and leaned out further, the backs of her thighs playing peek-a-boo with the skirt of her dress but instead of desire rising within him, an acute horror constricted around his throat. He could see her flail, he could see her tip and fall and fall and fall and—

die.

In a sharp and sudden motion she set both feet firmly on the ground again with a resolute click of her heels. She straightened up, prim and proper, and smoothed the fabric of her dress with her hands, twirling around on her tiptoes to face him. Valencia canted her head to the side, gave him a thoughtful look with her green eyes that seemed at odds with the impish smile on her face, and brushed past him like nothing happened, catching his hand in hers and tugging him along the way.

Stop,
because you are falling
too fast
and I am not.
Because you are smiling
at me and the best I can do is
look away.
You are racing along a road
that will lead you only to
hell.
And you don’t even realize.
You don’t even realize.