Apologies to those faithfully waiting for my G is for Ghost-stories (I'd like to believe someone is actually missing it lol) but my prelims (exams) are stressing me to the point of actually spontaneous crying every now and then.
Valentines day everyone.. I missed it, but still... Happy Valentines!
Porcelain roses that lay limply, strewn dead over the grey cemented side walk. Every few seconds, too, a foot and shoe and heel would scrape over them; pushing the carcass further into the ground, the clear blood spilled but unnoticed to the crowds tumbling by. But that had been hours ago.
The bustle and push had long left the now silent streets, it's ugly mirrors piled high as the new walls of shiny buildings. Foreign worlds flashing by on bright screens and buzzing followed the lights that banished cruel night. Night had come anyway. It's haphazard darkness spilling between the cracks and defying the noise and the screams and the ambience. Porcelain roses brushed their last petals in the breeze; the last breaths of their life being smothered by the cool chill as hearts and flowers dropped, crushed, into the dusk.
Miranda felt the chill of the night, but long lost was her home. Long gone was any sense of fear or relief and she stood for lack of any ambition to go anywhere else. She was upstairs, the red haired child who slept in the peace of the nearing midnight. The cross of her window-pane protecting her with her heart. Batting away the cool grip of the air and the coldness laying outside; some might contemplate peace where Miranda heard noise. Screaming it's dull pity in her honour for all that she had done and all that lay left to lose.
There was a slitting sensation of the ice that she could already feel forming around her, slowly stealing her breath and misting it in the icy world that stood around her. Metal. Cold metal followed her. And Glass. And stone. She'd long lost the grass and she didn't suppose she'd believe it again, despite knowing that some foot of lain green surrounded Wilhelmina Vandom's home. A moat of life that desperately held her from the specially formulated world of filth that clasped to Miranda's very skin. Digging it's claws around her as constant reminder to her need for anonymity. Perhaps it was funny that a woman who had spent the prime of her years hiding most missed the attention she had always hated.
Not the Meridian city that knew and feared.
The confusion might lie with the Prince. A holder of the Metaworld in her eyes - he simply held the heart of the Queen and the key to it now. Was she supposed to have fallen in love with him? In many ways Miranda could nod that she had. Far too belatedly and long forgotten; the Prince Phobos entered her mind far more than she did his. Why she might've kept eyeing that window. An Angel, perhaps, but if Prince Phobos would only look at himself..
Long gone was the time for reprimanding her own insensibilities and Miranda finally moved when a darker wind distressed her hair. She shook her head and bite a stubborn lip that somehow remembered what she'd claimed as disappointing. Perhaps Miranda only remembered the kiss because he was the Prince. Perhaps because Prince Phobos was stunning, with tangled hair and watching eyes. Perhaps it was all superficial.
She didn't think so.
He was everything.
Might he have seen one porcelain rose whom hadn't known she was his. After all, he'd never dared to claim her. To claim anything of her.
