ghostess

Royai week day 4 prompt: temperance

Such beautiful golden hair.

I gaze in astonishment.

She seems to be around my age, I think.

Sweat rolls down my temple, trailing down my jaw and trickles onto my white cotton shirt. I grip the damped collar loosely and start to air my burning chest. The heat is becoming unbearable. I lift my hand and place it on my forehead, hastily blotting the moisture away. My tousled bangs droop in front of my eyes obscuring my vision, and I suddenly feel the urge to trim my raven black hair. As I lean back into my chair, I can feel the back of my wet shirt sticking to the solid, wooden splat. When did the temperature get so hot?

Her fair skin is radiant.

I can't look away.

I put my hand in between my collarbones and take a deep breath. Placing the other hand on my diaphragm, I can feel my rib cage expand as I inhale. I count to five, and... Pause. One, two, and... huff, slowly exhaling the breath I've been holding completely. I feel a knot in my stomach. I wonder, do I look nervous?

When she was eighteen, my sister Vanessa told me about a boy that came by the bar. She was remarkably smitten by him. Shoulder length, blonde hair with eyes as blue as the ocean to boot... or so she said. She would tell me how her stomach would feel a twist. A flip. "Butterflies in my stomach," she said. I'm a boy and also two years younger than she was then, but I can imagine her tossing her long, sandy colored hair aside repeating the same thing she had said to me back then, "Roy, you are way too young to know how it feels. And boys don't often feel this type of thing."

I want to tell her how wrong she is. I want to tell her that everything she was feeling at that time, I feel it now, too. I want to prove her wrong. What am I saying? Vanessa is hundreds of miles away from where I am, probably getting ready to celebrate the annual orchid festival that arrives every spring in Central City. Besides, if I give her a piece of my mind, she will probably tell on me. No. No, I definitely can't afford to have Aunt find out.

I take a glance at the grandfather clock to my right, situated next to the slightly ajar door to the study I'm currently occupying. It's ten fifteen. Oh my god. That's thirty whole minutes gone. Thirty minutes of pondering over the beauty before me. Looking down at the book placed in front of me, I realize that I have been fixed on the same paragraph, reading the same sentence over and over again without fully grasping the meaning behind the words. I pore over the sentence in my head, "If the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression..."

I sense an impulse to look up. My feet are fidgeting, fingers tapping incessantly. The need to satisfy that craving is becoming insufferable. I look up. And without fail, I feel yet another knot in my stomach.

Those piercing hazel eyes are hypnotizing.

I can't concentrate. My vision transfixed, temperance failing.

A knock comes from the door and I jolt from my chair.

"How is your studying?" Master Hawkeye asks.

Shit. He caught me staring. "I-I'm..."

"I see you've met my wife and daughter. Beautiful, aren't they?"

I nod.

As I glimpse at my teacher, I can see his eyes glistening. He is standing still, fists clenched by his side. His swallowed lips curves his mouth upward, seemingly turning into a smile, but I know he is trying to hold back his tears. Voice trembling, he says, "This portrait was commissioned only weeks before their passing. The cholera epidemic took them away from me a year ago."

Fin.