Not for you

“That is not your lot in life.” She explained it as though it were one of her business proposals: short and to the point. It was a knife to my heart and I wanted to scream at her for it; but I had never been one for petty outbursts. My very personality was based on restraint and an eerie sense of calm.

“Screw my ‘lot’. I’m not playing by those rules anymore.” I turned from her, determined to stalk off in that taciturn manner I always read about in fiction, but the sound of my name on her lips stopped me.

“Soulis.” Something about my name always made my feet freeze to the floor. I felt more than heard her approach, flinched when her hand almost touched my shoulder. Almost. She was my height, but somehow she had always seemed so much taller. There was a presence to her that made me want to look away whenever she tried to meet my eyes. “It is not for you.”

It was like lighting a match inside me. Fury was not an emotion I felt easily, but it filled me at that moment, flooding from my very insides, out to my fingertips and back again; but I was known for my calm. I had to be calm.

“‘Not for me’? I’m allowed to be happy, too.” I tried to make my words as ice: cutting and cold. My eyes settled into a razor-like gaze, sharp and careless all at once. I wanted to make her cower and back away, to tell me that I was right, that I deserved it. For once, I wanted to be the one who seemed tall and foreboding.

Her only response was to stare back at me with neutral eyes, as towering as ever.

I hated her for it.

~ by eeratka on January 21, 2007.