Seventh word: Lonely

A/N: Beautiful days always make me want to write (is that bad, that I'd rather sit inside and write than be outside on a gorgeous Saturday? Probably)! But now it's 11:30 and I'm waiting for my bird to finish eating so I can put him to bed so that I can go to bed, and I'm really tired but I wanted to get this up tonight, and it's not such a beautiful Saturday anymore, it's dark and hot, and now I'm kind of hungry too, and I'm rambling so I'm gonna stop, but yeah, so whatever. Right, ahem, anyway, here's 'Lonely' :D


Kurda was completely absorbed in his map, so much so that he didn't see or hear Gavner, who was running through a connecting tunnel. Kurda's head was down, and Gavner was going too fast to stop. As Gavner shot out into the main tunnel, Kurda happened to be right in front of him, and the two crashed into each other, hard. Both fell to the ground, and Kurda's map flew out of his hands and landed face down on the floor. He groaned as he pushed himself back to his feet and picked it up; bits of pebble and dirt had stuck to wherever there was wet ink and had smudged his last six hours of work.

"Sorry," Gavner apologized, giving Kurda a clap on the back and handing him the now empty bottle of ink.

"It's fine," Kurda grumbled, massaging his shoulder where it had collided with Gavner's chest. "Not the first time it's happened."

Gavner looked down at the ruined map. "Sorry, mate," he said again, grimacing. "Anything I can do to fix it?"

Kurda hesitated. "I'm going to have to backtrack and do it all again," he said, and he didn't have to look at Gavner to know that he would be making a face, "so if you want to help..."

Gavner looked around as though searching madly in the air for a way out. "Er..." he said uncomfortably, not meeting Kurda's eye, "I would, but I was headed to the Hall of Princes, and, you know, I don't want to be late, so..."

"Don't worry about it," Kurda shrugged, giving him a forced smile; of course Gavner didn't want to help him make a map, what normal vampire would?

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Later that night, Kurda was sitting alone in the Hall of Kheldon Lurt, finishing a bowl of lukewarm bat broth. He'd been there for over an hour, eating slowly to help pass the time. Most of the vampires had headed to the Hall of Sports. For the first time in decades, Mika Ver Leth and Arrow would be fighting each other, and almost everyone had headed off to watch what promised to be an epic battle. He knew that if he finished now - which he could, he only had a couple bites left - he would still have time to go join the spectators, but he didn't want to. What was the point of watching two Princes bash each others' heads in? It would be like any other match he had seen, or, worse yet, participated in, but with a little more blood. Where was the thrill there?

He heard hurried footsteps coming from the entrance to his right, and soon, Arra Sails had dashed into the hall. She didn't seem to notice him at first, but halfway to door on the other side - the one that would take her to the Halls of Sport - she stopped and turned halfway around to look at him.

"Kurda," she said, the familiar curt edge to her voice that was present whenever she spoke to him.

"Arra," he nodded politely. "I would have thought you'd be the first one there to watch this anticipated event."

"Wanted to be," she said, tapping a foot anxiously. "Other things got in the way. Aren't you coming?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, she rolled her eyes. "What was I thinking, of course you aren't," she said critically. "Afraid someone will want you to get up there and fight, are you?"

"No," he said, eating his soup as slowly and calmly as ever. "I don't think it's very interesting. It would be quite a waste of my time."

She rolled her eyes again. "It's not a 'waste of time'," she snapped. Kurda wished he had a dime for every time he'd heard her say that. "It would do you some good to start thinking like a vampire and not a human. You'll be a Prince soon, Kurda, act like one."

He shrugged; her words didn't sting as much as they used to, he was accustomed to them now. "Brains over brawn, Arra, brains over brawn."

For a second, she stared at him, and he tensed, just in case she decided to attack him with a chair. Then, to his surprise, she smiled. "You know, I used to think the same way," she said, and he smiled back as he remembered the little half-vampiress, who was constantly telling her friends, "Don't be stupid, think before you act!". Present-day Arra's smile faltered as she finished, "And then I smartened up. Brains and brawn."

Kurda sighed and looked dismally into his bowl. Far off in the distance, they heard the strike of a gong, which meant that the fight was about to start.

"Charna's guts!" Arra cursed, and began to hurry off again, faster now than before. "Good night, spineless twit."

"Good night, know-it-all," he retorted, unable to stop himself from grinning. He used to call her that all the time when they were young. But then she had changed; all his friends from his youth had. Kurda never did. Why had't he?

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

It was nearly dawn, and Kurda had finally made it to his room, staggering through the door completely exhausted and collapsing into a chair. He had had a very long, very tiring, very depressing night. It seemed that his life had turned into a monotonous pattern comprised of two things: being bombarded with questions and being insulted, not necessarily in that order, and not always separated. Everyone wanted his opinion on something or another, but, ironically, no one had respect for him, even though he would become a Prince in a matter of months. Sometimes, he would sit down and tell himself that he'd figure it out, he'd get to the bottom of their issues with him and do what he could to fix it. But he didn't even really have to think about it. He knew why people didn't like him, it was because he was unlike them in so many ways. He could spend hours sitting and thinking, thinking about anything, whereas his fellow vampires would get anxious sitting for more than ten minutes. He liked having deep conversations, most vampires would rather joke and shove each other around. He liked to talk things out, they liked to, well, knock things out. Of course they didn't like him, they couldn't relate to him; he was the strand of thread in a box of needles. Kurda pressed his palms into his eyes and sighed heavily; he was so lonely.


I don't think I like that last line, but I couldn't come up with any other way to actually stick the word 'lonely' in there, and, let's face it, if I didn't use it at least once it would have been totally pathetic. Please let me know what you thought about it, and thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far!