Ezra likes the way she smiles because it's cute and not only that. It is not something he would admit to anyone but himself.
Maybe liking something reminds him that he is still human. That he hasn't faded away just yet.
-.-.-
He still remembers when they were children. Strawberries and cream, cool white linen, the smell of pine and fire-crusted logs in the fireplace.
She doesn't remember as well. The only thing that comes to mind is daisies, she muses sorrowfully. He visits the same memories, sometimes, in his dreams. They make him cringe. He was the one who picked them for her.
That isn't something that he would admit either.
They both know that at one time, they were thirteen going on twenty-three going on three-hundred and ignorant and far too proud and just as wise and endlessly stupid as they are now, but within today they are a little more clever on concealing it, so that it isn't so much of a mistake as it is a cumbersome little detail no one need know but themselves.
He is content passing the day just watching her fold paper stars from little strips of waxed package wrappings. Her fingers are lithe and nimble, supple like the rest of her, and he sees now that her memories lie not in what she remembers but in what she is.
One day under a blue sky weeks and months and years ago, someone folded wishes akin to hers, and another brought white flowers from above distant green fields, with gold centers as wistful as love.
I was stupid back then, he finds himself conceding, but she just laughs at him.
Is that really an excuse?
He doesn't make excuses, she says for him, because he would never be that arrogant and say it for himself. They both know that he takes the weight of every burden. He thinks it's guilt, and thoughtless pain. She says it's too much responsibility mingled with experience.
He appreciates how she takes anything and gives it a name, for safety, they understand. Life is a little more bearable that way.
He used to hate the way her ribbons flapped in the breeze; on hair, wrist, you name it, she tied it. She still folds stars from ribbons of paper, but that he does not mind.
The stars are cute. They embody withering hopes that were not fulfilled. He does not need to admit this. She knows, and makes them for the same reason.
Her ribbons of cloth were ephemeral. They were blue and white and reminded him of checkered fabric, aprons that mother used to wear. Things that are no longer, those that he wanted to forget.
Now he cherishes them. Now and then there will be a ribbon woven with gentle thought through her hair. Something that urges him softly not to forget.
The ribbon is always palest green.
-.-.-
He can't stand lies. This is because his whole life has been a perpetual lie. He hates the guilt that accompanies a story that was not his to tell, the creeping heat on his spine when he knows they don't believe him. Children's white stories, dark secrets, troubles that were slipped under the rug and left to settle in the dust.
Sometimes, still, he knows not what to believe.
Her ribbons used to madden him. It was a sick, saddening kind of anger, remembering how life could have been so much better and should have been so much more. Checkered cloth still reminds him of picnics, blankets, green grass not parched by hungry fire.
They are lies to him. He lives by nothing but painful reality, and that is why she, the only lasting memoir of when times were better, can also be a ceaseless reminder that they have moved on.
Sometimes the truth keeps him sane.
There are those who ask why Mel follows him without complaint. Neither of them ever bother to answer.
Not because it would be too much. Not because of complications.
They do not mention the debt she owes him.
It is mostly when there is no light.
The dark adores demons the way misery loves company. Sadly, they are not unlike each other either.
He muses this gently as his arms fold around her in the dark. She is awake, has been since they discovered that it would rain at night. She says nothing.
Comfort. One word, two syllables. Everything she is to him.
His hand is drawn to her hair. It is the softest at night, and he thinks it is far too short, because it barely brushes her shoulders. She dislikes the idea of long hair, because it grows rougher and difficult to manage.
They never talk about how she wore her hair long when they were young.
She doesn't speak at night. No questions, and he almost loves her for that. Countless times he has come too close to falling, and this is one tumble he does not want to take.
If he fell, she would have to patch him up, she used to laugh, and then their smiles died thinking of back then.
He had been a graceless child, too.
The dark beckons things that he wants desperately to forget. He is terribly vulnerable in the night, such that she is the only one who can be with him. Poison takes venom for an antidote, and she shares with him the sentiment that childhood was not fond.
She is more along the line of a sedative, and he almost laughs aloud thinking of this. Instead, he holds her closer, and weaves his fingers through her own quiet hand.
His fixation is one of pain, and flesh. He has taught himself to revel in blood, the whistle of an arrow and the hollow thud of it hitting a mark. The creak of a bowstring and the terror of a victim. Endless circles, hunting to blunt his hatred. In a way, he is not living—and how could he be, in coldest blood—and so his dissatisfaction is undying.
Mel sates him. This is not something he would admit either.
-.-.-
Sorrow creases in the clasp of their hands. Fingers interlaced in fingers. They wear gloves when going out, and he does not dare reach for her for fear of something he cannot explain.
He knows what it is, though, and if she does, she says nothing.
To blacksmiths, she is his apprentice, which is as far from the truth as they can be. To the extent of his knowledge, she has never drawn a bow in her life; more significantly, he has never been baptized in his life.
To aristocrats, she is his half-blood sister. They accept this without question.
Ezra has never had a sister in his life.
And to some, she is his best friend, his only refuge, the girl who stood with him on the edge of the village as they watched the houses burn.
To her, he is the earring she wears on her left, a pledge. He sometimes wonders if he is anything more than that. Perhaps he is, because the left hand holds the heart.
She doesn't like daisies anymore.
Sometimes he feels daunted by her, because for all his shortcomings and flaws she has none. She says it is because for all her family's debt his has none.
Everyone pays, she says, and he wholeheartedly believes this. His nature has forsaken him to what he is, and the debt she is forced to bear is what binds her to him. They are exiles of the same misfortune, and they laugh at this, over delicate flowers the same weary hue of gold.
She likes tea roses now, the creamy white kind, and she loves the little nameless purple blossoms that dot the grass even more. He has a sneaking suspicion that they are the product of weeds, but she likes them regardless. It is the wildflowers that Mel has a fondness for, small beings that can nevertheless hold their own.
Sometimes he feels that Mel is everywhere in the world, like those tiny purplish blossoms that are forever trailing at their feet.
She is everything he could not have had otherwise.
They together are what he could never have been alone, two halves of different wholes that do not fit well but mold. Compromise is all they'll ever have, he says, and she does not mind.
Of all the things he would do—jump off mountains, shoot six birds on the same plain arrow—he would not have her stay with him on anything other than her own volition. She has not left him once. He wonders if this is loyalty, friendship or something completely different.
He will not tell her what he feels for her. This is because he does not know himself.
He would not call it love, a word that has been broken into too many letters, so that its meaning is sullied.
There was once a time when he told her she could leave. He finds that he is still awaiting her answer. He hopes that he will never get one, so it can be like this forever, trapped in the same silent question.
Together, they are almost one. It is in the way they hold their hands, where there is always a little space between like an air bubble. A tiny bit missing that they will never find.
He would rather it this way. A glass vase all intact has so much more to lose.
So. This was almost all complete crack, and I apologize.
No, actually, this portrays two of my characters that might really be placed into a plotline and posted. o.0. Their background is rather intriguing…I won't type it all out, but you can pm or review me and ask for it: I will gladly provide it.
This had almost nothing to do with RO. It was just tons of drabble that entered my mind—the plot bunnies are actually plot cows o.0 MOOO—and I tried to make it a bit relevant. Once I find a home for Mel and Ezra story-wise, this piece might be a bit more legitimate. 'til then…
Please drop a line, even if it's just to tell me how excessively random everything was -.-. Eeehh.