It began with silver. Silver blades cutting silver smiles, the virgin hue as bitter as rotten lime on the fresh tongue.
Silver was all Tybalt could think of as he stumbled from the crypt, gasping and thrashing at his own ravaged throat.
They thought he was dead. Didn't even bother to check.
Of course, the state Tybalt was in could hardly be described as life. Every breath was an agonizing odyssey, every quickening of saliva was tainted with the putrefaction of blood. Tybalt's eyes watered, so he at first didn't notice the young girl, maybe 15 or 16, sitting dejectedly on the maw of a taciturn grave.
She too had water on her eyes and smeared across her glistening cheeks, although Tybalt knew it was from tears rather than irritation. Her eyes were blinding turquoise, gems in a puffy red field. They darted up towards Tybalt at the sound of his footsteps in the soggy moss.
"I... Do what you want... I give up..." she choked, her nubile face breaking into a devastated frown. She clutched a tattered purple dress around her ivory skin, shivering in the morning breeze.
Tybalt knelt down next to her and noticed the goosebumps adorning her frail arms.
"I'm not..." Tybalt tried to speak but it came out as a guttural rasp. Taking a deep breath, Tybalt simply
rubbed his hand along the crux of the girl's arm. The message needed no words- he wasn't going to hurt her.
Tybalt could feel the goosebumps begin to recede as the girl found the confidence to look up at his face again.
"I'm Anne. Anne Frank," she softly spoke, timidly reaching out a hand to inspect Tybalt's throat.
Her fingers were like oleander in fragrant winter powder, and as alpine wind coos and teases the snow into rippling blankets, so did she caress his wounded neck.
"You're hurt... Bad. I might be able to help. Do you want a bandage?"
Tybalt could only wince as she gently pushed his head up to get a better look. He was fascinated, simply entranced at her ripping a small strip of linen from her dress and applying it to him gingerly.
Silver blades and silver buttons. Silver words had cooled his judgement while heating his mind, and silver looks from a pathetic patron of his noble cousin. All those flashes of silver for the milky hand of that Juliet, for the grudge as subversive as it was ancient.
But here, it was like the biting honesty of unexpected ice. A girl, young, battered, calm beyond her years. Tybalt didn't even know where she was from, nor could he ask. All he knew was that her heart had been scorned by the whips of the arrogant world.
Tybalt began to stand, feeling a sudden rush of spirit as the wind between headstones called him back to Verona's streets. Anne grabbed his shoulders with surprising force, converting his sudden flare back towards herself.
Tybalt could feel the fresh ponds of irritation in his eyes begin to mix with the saltwater of anguish.
He locked eyes with her, letting himself become drowsy in their ultramarine depths. They were haunting, the same expression Tybalt had seen cross Mercutio's face as the life drained from his mocking mug.
Anne blinked and began to pull at the threads of her dress as if trying to release some unruly serpent. Fiber after fiber was cleft in twain until the purple nation of her torso was replaced by a gaping chasm. Beneath was the whiteness of her bare stomach, devoid of the scars and dust which coated the rest of her form.
Tybalt reached out, somehow knowing what he had to do, a primordial fragment of the universal ancestor igniting within him. As his hand finally pressed against her chest and the event horizons of intrinsic reality melted away, he could feel her heart, silver, just like his.