The Capulets' feast was not all I had hoped it to be. Finding myself too nervous to approach Juliet, I sat in a corner of the courtyard looking at the stars. I had decided to name each and every one of them before daring speak to Juliet. It was something Silvia had showed me: Upon finding yourself in a tedious situation, name your surroundings. I had learned one evening function, when I was talking with a few companions. I had been cruelly ignoring Silvia, who sat on a marble bench scanning the cobblestones. All of a sudden, she began muttering names. One of my black-hearted companions had whispered to us, "She be mad." They had all begun laughing, and poor perceptive Silvia's cheeks turned red.
The situation called for a witty retaliation, but all I could think of was, "Nay, she be enigmatic." I would be lying if I said that they all gasped and walked away with shame in their eyes. The first speaker looked at me as if I was mad, and they all strode away with a few "ah, yes, the eloquent one"s. And by the laughs that bubbled up as they left, I could tell that I was being criticized. Silvia, on the other hand, looked terribly ashamed. Upon questioning her, I learned that she had been christening the cobblestones with her mutterings.
That is what I did then, except with objects so high up I couldn't even mentally reach them. And this time, there were no disloyal friends to whom I at least could politely converse with. There were only golden tunics and pearls, not the small kind that Silvia used to wear, but big pearls that weighed their wearers down so that they walked around like turtles. Adrian. Marina. Francis. I spotted a pair of stars, one barely visible and the other shining obliviously. It was too fixed on the fainter one to watch its audience.