Chapter Three: Know Thyself
Princess Marya, smiling tenderly, looked at him in silence.
"I have known you for a long time, you see, and I love you like a brother," she said.
"How do you find Andrei?" she asked hurriedly, not giving him time to respond to her expression of affection. "I am very anxious about him. His health was better in the winter, but last spring his wound re-opened and the doctor said he ought to go away and have proper treatment. And I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He is not a nature to suffer and, like us women, find relief in tears. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and animated, but that is the effect of your visit: he is not often like this. If you could only persuade him to go abroad! He needs activity, and this quiet, regular life is very harmful to him. Others don't notice it, but I see it."
Count Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace", page 477
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. The incessant noise coming from Dawn's table was about to drive other guests in the Paper Lantern to their wit's end. She had been gently mentally rocking a metal candle-holder from each corner to the other, causing each corner to tap gently on the table top. It wasn't enough noise to cause a ruckus, but the sound of the rocking repeating itself over and over was starting to rub some of the customers the wrong way.
At this point, Dawn was past caring. It was eight thirty, and Warren hadn't shown up. She was surprised enough to find that she was the only one he had told to go to the Paper Lantern, and it had sent a surge of joy through her, thinking it was almost like a date.
"Well it takes two to tango, honey." She muttered, continuing the rocking.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Will you stop that!" A low, exasperated voice echoed from behind her, and Dawn was about to give the person a piece of her mind when she saw it was Warren. "We're getting complaints from our customers, and I've been forced to vouch for you so you won't get kicked out." He grumbled, seating himself across from her. His dark hair was swept back from his face, a look she decided she liked on him; you could see his eyes better.
Dawn noted the towel thrown over his shoulder, and she cringed, putting two and two together. "You work here, don't you."
"Tell her what she's won, Alex." Warren quoted sarcastically, but he couldn't stop a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah," he confirmed, "I work here. My mom had surgery this afternoon, so I've been working the kitchens all evening."
"Oh, Warren, I didn't know; I'm really sorry." Dawn found the same awkward feeling of not knowing what she was doing creep back into the pit of her stomach. The candle holder that had been momentarily suspended on one corner fell with a dull thud as her concentration broke. "I…I…how's your mother doing?" She finally asked, fiddling anxiously with her "True Love Waits" ring.
"She's fine. She's been missing a bone in her heel for a while now, and the doctors decided to substitute a metal pin for it." Warren acted like the whole thing was no big deal. "She should be back early next week."
Dawn was immediately concerned. "Can you work the restaurant for that long?" Glancing around, she thought of more questions, "Am I holding you up? Do you need to get back?"
Warren smiled and reached across the table, putting his hand on her shoulders. "Calm down, woman. I wouldn't have come out here if I couldn't take a break for a while."
The "woman" found herself very, very aware that his hands were on her shoulders, bracing her back in the booth. "…If you say so. But I don't want to inconvenience you." Dawn found it hard to believe that she was capable of coherent speech, with surging feelings of concern, anxiety, surprise, and with her heart racing as quickly as it was.
Warren's hands lingered on her shoulders, as though he wasn't fully persuaded she could do without him bracing her. Dawn could feel an unusual amount of heat sweeping through his hands, and she savored it. She would have expected pain from such an amount of heat, but instead she felt only calmed by it.
In spite of her heart that was doing back-flips in her body, the telekinetic calmed down sufficiently until Warren removed his hands. Looking left and right so as not to draw suspicion, he flicked two of his fingers together – as you would a match on paper – and inconspicuously lit one of the two candles on the table.
"If you don't mind me saying so, you seem very…different at school than you do here." Dawn managed tentatively, forcing herself to ignore the half smile on Warren's face, and the heat from the candle, and the deepening darkness of Warren's eyes.
Stop that! She mentally chided herself. Warren had already started to answer, and she'd been so caught up in staring at his eyes that she hadn't been listening.
"…tough guy image that I have to keep up at school. Don't get me wrong, I'm not acting a role; that is me that you see at school, but…enforced more. The Paper Lantern lets me relax. I can be the normal, laid-back,"
Hot, Dawn interjected in the privacy of her mind,
"hard-working busboy." Warren finished. "And if I ever need to let off a little stress, there are always some ovens that need to be lit. Matches are a waste of valuable time."
Dawn grinned, in spite of herself. She was becoming more at ease with the pyrokinetic; maybe that's what had drawn her to him in the first place. "So that's why I hear you're not often in the detention room; you let off all your steam here."
"Yeah, speaking of that," Warren countered, starting to grin, "what were you doing there this morning?"
She flushed and made a face. "You heard about that, huh?"
"The whole school heard about it. Nobody's ever before actually inflicted any physical harm on Boomer in power placement."
"Oh. Well, yeah, I really don't have that much of a temper, to be honest." Dawn insisted. "But he was being obnoxious and had just sidekicked a perfectly good hero."
Warren raised an eyebrow. "And how was that decision up to you?"
Dawn flushed again. "She could materialize through walls and solid matter, y'know? Out of phase, or whatever."
He rolled his eyes. "You're not answering my question."
"Okay, fine, it wasn't technically my decision, but I couldn't just stand there!" Dawn threw up her hands mock-defensively, as if warding off some kind of attack.
Warren grinned and propped up his elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands. "Okay, so then what happened?"
"Well, the kid was a girl, and she got really broken up about the whole thing. Boomer started to call her a whiner baby and was mocking her in front of the whole class, so I just pushed him back gently."
"Gently."
"Yeah, I didn't gauge my mental strength real well. What I thought would come out as a love-tap kind of resulted in me throwing him across the gym."
"Into the wall." He was starting to smirk now.
"Yeah…into the wall. But he didn't get hurt or anything!"
Warren laughed, a short bark of mirth. Suddenly stepping outside of her comfort zone, Dawn decided to be forward. "You should do that more often."
Caught off guard, Warren's grin disappeared and was replaced by a surprised and baffled stare. "What?"
She'd gotten herself into the comment; there was no going back now. "Laugh. You should laugh more often."
There was momentarily silence, and Dawn shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Maybe she should just apologize and explain she didn't mean anyth –
"Well you should do that more often." Warren shot back.
"Scoot around nervously?" She blurted, completely startled.
To her amusement, Warren laughed again, but he shook his head. "You should say what you're thinking more often. It suits you better than thinking the situation is awkward."
Her eyes locked onto his, and she swallowed hard. Warren slowly stood up, not breaking their gaze. "I need to get back to the kitchens now." He murmured, offering her his hand so she could stand as well. Her green eyes switched over from his twin pools of darkness to his outstretched hand, and she hesitantly grasped it with her own.
Gently, he lifted her to her feet, and she found herself once more looking up into his eyes, her breathing shallow but quick. If this was Hollywood, Dawn mused in her head, he would bend down to kiss me softly yet passionately, and then he would be back on his way to the kitchens. We would wave a sorrowful goodbye, I would blow him a kiss, and I would be out the door into the cold night ai – her thoughts were abruptly cut off as he punched her in the shoulder, and she almost choked with surprise.
That…wasn't what I was expecting…
"See you tomorrow." He muttered, briskly turning around and vanishing back into the kitchens. As her senses came back to her, she attempted a sorrowful wave, ala Hollywood, but since Warren couldn't see her, it was fairly useless.
Opening the door and stepping into the darkness, she shuddered with cold. The warmth of the Paper Lantern was still barely being retained in her, and she tried to capture it with her jacket. As she began the trek of a few blocks to get back to her house, she thought she heard something in an alleyway.
"Hello?" She called out hesitantly, her hand straying to the knife she always kept in her pocket – except for when she was at school, of course. Stupid regulations. Her mind wandered, but she was quickly brought back to reality when something rustled behind her.
Glancing back, Dawn could see the red and gold glow of the Paper Lantern, but her heart was now beating too rapidly from fear for her to enjoy the warmth that the restaurant seemed to radiate. Her tennis shoes crunched on stray pebbles that lead to the asphalt road she was approaching; the road that would lead her home.
As she paused to check that road, she heard crunching footsteps behind her. Her knife whistled as it snapped out, and she glanced in a paranoid manner from side to side, her eyes scanning the shadowy corners. "I have a knife!" She yelled, but the darkness seemed to creep in on her.
Tendrils of the night swept up her body, enveloping and compacting her with choking force. Dawn let out a final strangled sob before she was completely overtaken by the shadows.
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Finally, these are getting to a decent length! Hope you're enjoying so far.
When a good friend of mine critiqued this (you rock, Jeana), she said she didn't understand Dawn's struggle with the shadows. At this point, you're not SUPPOSED to understand it. All will be made clear in chapter four, don't worry. Well, clearer. Ish.
However, I can assure you that I'm not trying to be all poeticky trying to describe a thug attacking her as a "shadow". Don't worry, I'm not going to try THAT hard to confuse you.
Oh, and it's going to be a few days before chapter four is up; partly because it's horribly long (it's my favorite chapter; it just HAD to be horribly long) and partly because I'm being bogged down with the things in life other than writing. In my opinion, they're insignificant things, but in the opinions of my transcript, they are very significant.
So bear with me, please!
Devotedly yours,
Corvaisis
