Ugly Duckling

He strongly believed in all his life he had never seen a person dirtier or more caked in grime and waste than the small mouse of a girl that stood before him now, glowering up at him and somehow managing to make herself look more dangerous than she was. Actually, it was almost laughable, but he was too distracted by the very state of the girl to spare a chuckle over her obvious superiority complex.

In all honesty it was like looking down at a breathing pile of mud; some elemental monster of old, if one wanted to be philosophical about it. He was not sure if she actually had any hair of her own, for her head was completely covered in a helmet of dried, cracked dirt that had surely been gathering there for years. Her face was no better, with layers of earthen smudges that were so thick that a true skin tone was impossible to identify, except perhaps if she were to strip off her undergarmets. Even her clothes seemed to be cemented to her body, but any curves or femininity that might have shown through were masked by the shapelessness of the coarse fabric; it hung from her small, thin shoulders much like a ragdoll, making it impossible to even tell if she was old enough to sport her own pair of breasts. Altogether, she was the filthiest creature he had ever seen, and he shuddered to think of what it would take to even begin to relieve her of her burden of mud, or what might be found beneath after years of neglected good hygiene.

At least, that was how she appeared to the untrained eye. His eyes, however, were refined enough to pick up even the smallest nuisance within the cracking and brittle exterior. The girl was a mess, filthy and soiled beyond measure; but she was anything but hideous.

Ciar smiled grimly.

“Tough little bitch, now aren’t you?” Without warning, he reached for her and caught her by the arm, dragging her forward until she was unbalanced and using the moment of panicked confusion to hoist her over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes – which was exactly what she was for the time being, as far as he was concerned. She screeched in protest and began to struggle, but he only tightened his grip and turned, walking from the room as quietly and nonchalantly as he had come.

A bath would do her good.

Lost

Two sides remain, and yet neither can reconcile with the other: strength versus passion. Somewhere along the way, both became entangled and inexorably separate; she gropes after both and is left with nothing. She sees this as weakness, but I never understood where it all became shattered. She was always a source of inspiration to me.

Talented, beautiful, determined…

Simplicity and complexity so deep you could drown in it, and I wonder if she ever let me in at all, because somewhere along the way she lost herself and I lost her.

I grope after her, but am left with nothing. Is this my weakness?

Somewhere along the way I lost myself. Maybe she’ll find it.

Conversation

She was the type who talked at the most inappropriate times: funeral sermons, theater performances, school recitals, sex…

The sex bothered him the most.

It wasn’t just that she talked; it was that she expected conversation. Who wanted to have a conversation during sex? It was a conversation all on its own! And hell hath no fury if he didn’t respond… That, or else the sex would end right then and there.

Of course, he could never tell her that.

“You’re making that face again.”

“What face?” Blonde hair falling around her like a halo, eyes a smokey hazel-green that cut through him. For all her verbal shortcomings, he would never call her unintelligent.

“Just admit that you wouldn’t know what to do if I was silent.”

“I… uhh… You know I love your voice.” Shit.

“Mm-hm… You love it so much that you wouldn’t mind if we stopped right here and just had a nice, intimate chat, right?” She had him by the balls, and for once he wished it wasn’t literal.

…Then again, he had already thrown himself into the fire. “Do you really like hearing yourself talk that much?”

Oof! The feeling of her elbows suddenly jammed into his sternum was not comforting, and as erotic as it was to have a naked woman impaled and sprawled out skin-to-skin to his own body, the look in her eyes was dangerous as she cradled her cheeks in her hands. “Why, yes, I do.”

He saw a cold, cold shower looming in his future.

Galileo

If she stared at it hard and long enough, she could see the sun move, almost imperceptible.

The day had been long, and the sun on the horizon was taunting her. Half an hour until sundown. Can you make it? The summer solstice was always the most cruel of days for one who worked from dawn til dusk.

The fields had been long ago plowed, the seeds planted, the fields cut and razed. It was the most strenuous of days, an annual affair of planting those crops that would mature just at the end of the fall to feed them through the winter, and it was always done on the longest day of the year. However, for the first time in almost a decade the task had been finished while the sun still hung, yet still they were not allowed to return to the village until dusk. If they were seen, the guards would kill them with smiles on their faces and insubordination on their lips — the rebellious slaves.

And so they waited, singing quiet songs and crouching among the tall grasses to play pebble games that they had learned as children.

Another half hour and then sweet reprisal.

Bachelor

Twenty years old and his joints hurt like he was eighty. What kind of man was he?

Stretching out the length of the sofa, his knees popped at intervals until fully extended, and even then they throbbed from the pain of three jobs and the early onset of arthritis. Life was not a kind thing. Sighing, he turned on his side and stared across the mostly empty room to take in the sight of the barren, whitewashed walls of his apartment, observing the blank surface with neither appreciation nor disgust. Decorating was something his mother did.

Outside, he could hear the windchimes a previous tenant had attached to the porch overhang. When he opened the windows during the high winds of the spring, the light tinkling reminded him of harsh realities softened by gentle hands and bleeding knees that were far less important than the feeling of a foot kicking a ball at the obnoxious kids next door. Of course now it was the dead of winter, and he knew the chimes were swinging with the onset of a snowstorm. But, like the white walls, it was something he had come to accept rather than notice.

His wrist throbbed vengefully.

He could always go home, he knew. There wasn’t a day gone by where his mother didn’t clamour to have him back under her roof again, claiming he was too young to live on his own (twenty was not too young). If he did that, the pain would lessen and his work load would drop, but she would be hovering over his every movement. He preferred the pain and the work. What kind of man was he? The kind that had to leave his house to stop himself from throttling his mother in her sleep. She would never have plain, white walls. She would never collapse on the couch after a long day of work. She would never forget to eat. She would never have a half-empty, one-bedroom apartment because she couldn’t afford anything more.

He loved being a bachelor.

Musings

There are moments when the days simply meld together: one into the other, an endless stream, where it’s hard to tell when you were waking and if you slept. The mind forgets: a form of malfunction programmed into the very psyche of humanity. Maybe it is simply the passage of time — Time, an intangible construction measured by human means, at human whims, for human purposes. Aging will happen regardless of whether you consider Time or not.

But one can always hope.

If you were to ignore Time, would you stay forever young? If no one ever finds the body, how do you know a person has truly died? Time is subject to humans, but are humans subject to time? A twelve-year-old trapped in a coma until adulthood is still a twelve-year-old when she wakes.

Perhaps only Time would tell.

Subtlety

Subtlety is not something she does well. She stumbles upon it: a mask sculpted by misinterpretation and ignorance, not her own. Bright smile, hooded eyes; a living statue with the greatest mystery and nothing to hide. Boisterous and outspoken, it is all a matter of the right question and the act of seeing in a sunlit room.

Subtlety is not something she does well — screaming in a crowded room.

The crowd remains deaf.

Incompatible

He was laughing. Laughing! The bastard.

“It’s not funny, so shut the hell up!” Of course, the laughter continued. It wasn’t in his nature to stop once he had started, even when she got upset or angry with him; Hell, any reaction simply fueled his proverbial fire. Nevertheless, he was laughing at her, and by God, she was pissed. “Keep that up and I swear I’ll beat you ten ways from tuesday.”

“I’m sorry, Riza, really I am.” Wiping tears from his cheeks and clutching his stomach with the force of his amusement, he was still quick to raise his arms in appeasement when her fist rose sharply in the air. The grin never left his lips, eyes glittering with humor as he brought himself under the guise of composure. Still feeling the severe urge to wipe that expression from his face, she turned her back on him with a huff, choosing instead to watch the fountain nestled within the courtyard in which they stood. Within moments, arms had snaked their way around her waist, coaxing her stubborn body back against a taller, harder one.

The day was cool, a breeze sweeping down through the terrace and across the stone, making the water itself mist in the fountain. The effect was usually calming, but for once Riza felt very much like a tortured cat: hackles raised and claws fully extended even as its owner tried to sooth it was a few well-placed strokes. Of course, the cat did not forget that it was the owner who had stepped on its tail in the first place.

“Riza.” Those arms tightened incrementally.

“Why would you laugh about that? It’s not funny at all. I was trying to make a serious point.”

“It’s not that serious a matter.”

“How can you say that?”

The low chuckle that sounded from his throat rumbled down through his chest and vibrated into her back. “Because if humans never dated on the sole fact that they had a problem with their partner, we’d all have died out by now for lack of compatability.  You think I’m insensitive and laidback, I think you’re obnoxious and outspoken. Right there, we’re even.”

“You WHAT–?”

“–THE POINT IS,” she could hear the smile in his voice as he leaned closer to her ear, “that despite my dislike of some of your habits, and yours of mine, I am not going anywhere because of that fact. So, I’m not going to let you go anywhere either.”

Sure enough, when she attempted to step outside the ring of his arms, she found neither appendage would budge. Sighing, Riza stubbornly let herself by held by the frustrating man at her back.

“I hate you.”

“Mm… So I’ve been told.”

Mona Lisa Smile

“You smile like you know something that other people don’t.”

It was supposed to be an insult; he could tell by the derisive tone in the girl’s voice as she haughtily stared down her roommate, sizing her up from a vantage point inches below her target’s own line of sight, yet puffing her chest out like a hen and popping a hip to shrink even further towards the earth. The girl in question looked on with as much nonchalance as he had ever seen a woman react to a personal attack, as though the first had never said anything at all.

Then she smiled. “Yeah, I guess I do.” Lips curling wide, teeth flashing, eyes crinkling with silent, private amusement. Mona Lisa held fewer mysteries behind her gaze.

What exactly she was affirming with her words, he would never know.

Nemesis and Desperation

She had never been prone to desperation.

Fear, neuroses, vanity, insecurity… Madness… But never desperation. She did not know what it meant to be desperate.

“Nemesis.”

But maybe… maybe, today… just today, she felt that desperation pricking at the edges of her consciousness, fighting with the madness she secretly knew would set in soon enough. Maybe today, it was okay to be desperate, if it meant she could change time and take it back.

“You can’t do anything now. Come back to the ship.”

If she was just desperate enough, could she have him? Could she change her mind?

Don’t leave me alone.

I won’t.

If she was desperate, would it make a difference whether he lived or died?

Kuzui.

Like the world of her dreams, the day was washed in red.