Chapter Three: Broken Silence
Ack! One of you got very very close, but there's a lot more to it than that.
Quick correction: "It was followed by a set of weary eyes, a delicate nose, and lips set sternly in a leg." It is actually, in the word of the grammatically correct: "It was followed by a set of weary eyes, a delicate nose, and lips set sternly in a line." Okay?
For different people the world moves at different speeds.
First, there are the ones for whom the world moves fast. Hours zoom into days, into weeks, into months, into years, and into decades. They look back on their memories and say, "Wow. Has it really been that long?"
They are born, go through school, start working, get married, have a family and grow old in the time it takes to blink.
Because of this, occasionally they tend to take more risks believing, "It'll be over and gone in a matter of minutes."
The world for them is a movie, or perhaps a story that is fast and exciting while it lasts, but over far too fast. Regrets, sorrow, smiles, and love blend before them into a cacophony of sounds, colors, and pictures. Sometimes it makes the world seem prettier, lovely in its chaos. Other times it becomes dark and confusing, making it so they desire nothing more than to scream at time, their surroundings, anyone that might possibly hear their desperate cries STOP and just curl up in a dark room for a time and take their bearings.
No matter whom you may be, if the stress builds up enough you will break, shoving the world away for a time so that you may carefully build yourself up into a stronger structure, one that can take anything, or maybe even one that can be happy no matter what.
Maybe. Of course, some people just stay broken. They like it better that way.
LINE
(Stare.) Conversations tend to be...tricky. If it's easy to talk, and you don't even have to think of what to say, it becomes obvious you and your companion are going to become good friends fast. Still, there are exceptions to that rule.
Nonetheless, if your companion won't say a word, well...that's when it gets even trickier.
(Stare.)
"So..." How to approach a rather sensitive topic delicately is a skill that males have tried, and failed, to obtain over the centuries. Had it been Inuyasha, he would have climbed through the window, dodged the weapons and said, "Hey, why is it you're always so battered?"
Had it been Kagome, she would have tried to talk about feelings for an hour and a half before starting to bring in hints so subtle it would have taken the poor woman months to figure them out.
"How has your day been?"
(Stare) (Chomp.) (Chomp.) (Chomp.)
"Really? That's interesting."
(Rustle.) (Rustle.) (Chomp.) (Rustle.) (Chomp.) (Stare.)
"Do tell."
(Stare.) (Rustle.) (Chomp.) (Chomp.)
He had spent some time trying to decide what precisely was wrong with her.
Fact: She was dead silent. Humans are naturally social creatures, so it had to be something pretty huge.
Fact: She was alone. Something had happened to her family.
Fact: She started violently every time he got anywhere near her. Surely one little miniscule tiny grope wasn't a lasting offense.
At very long last she cleared her throat, and in a voice hoarse from disuse murmured. "Do you have any more food?"
The second kind of people is the sort where the days inch by slowly, at the pace of the gait of a hobbling old man.
The world to them is viewed in harsh clarity; they can view every single detail, every line and every shade of every moment. These people...some of them do well. They learn to appreciate the harsh stillness as art. Something beautiful worth beholding.
Others hate the stillness with all their being. They wish for it to speed up, and if they can't...they find another way out of the dream.
Cradle to grave. That's what they call a child growing old and dying.
Some wish only to stay in the cradle forever.
Some wish to head straight to the grave.
The final groups of people we shall discuss are the ones that don't really know where they want, but are shoved to the grave far too soon.
Run. Keep running, if you stop for even a moment the wants and the needs and the dreams and the things that do not exist and the things that might but that you'll never see and the flashes of color and the drops of water will all catch up.
Why on earth are you stopping? Taking a breath? Utter nonsense.
It was just a sentence, not even a terribly long one. But with those simple words, they had the effect of an explosion...glass shattering... an ache of timber...a huge tree crashing to the ground.
"Yes." The response, too, was none too long but broke everything that had been so carefully, if hastily built.
She opened the bag and chomped, suddenly, words slurred slipped out of her mouth. She didn't let them out, the merely came of their own accord. When you come up with enough things to say, yet have only walls to talk to, they build up and somehow...Point being, the once silent girl just wouldn't shut up.
"You know what I did yesterday?"
Miroku didn't answer. She honestly didn't really care.
"Stared at the clouds. All day. There was one that was shaped like a dog, and one like a dragon, and one like a train, and one looked just like a centaur." She took a moment to take a breath and chuckle wildly and sharply, something like a hyena. "I've been reading too much fantasy. Dragons and centaurs. There's also hippogriffs, and demons."
War behind her eyes. Almond shaped things widen in terror with what she's doing, mouth just won't shut up. She goes so fast the words trip over each other.
"All do read a good bo-store cheap mean and they did, I can't believe-thought of joke-couldn't tell any-can't tell-plants dying-makes sad-lots of things-saw turtle in yard-weeks-years-couldn't get it-might get mad-still hungry."
He stares. She eats, and keeps talking. This is how things begin.