[P] liebesleid

[Mesnyi]

He looks at her almost, almost like most other boys do but there’s a sadness to it, and a far away-ness, and she knows that not only has she not yet wormed her way in, but that she has only sent a ripple across his surface. If that. He is not here, nor there, and she can only ever be here. She has known a few boys that live their lives this way; some of them give in to her advances and pretend - or perhaps they feel, she wouldn’t know - and some recede back to their shadow lives, alone. It could be argued that she lives her life this way as well. That she has wormed her way into someone’s heart has - almost - never meant that they have done the same to her. But Mesnyi gives him her show of joy, as she thinks he ought to have, and giggles at his comment on literally - literally! - color coding. ”We should try to match our surroundings when we can, though I’m not sure it’s easy for so many of us.” Her eyes glance up to the tuft of neon orange, and she smiles, just a little.

He doesn’t want to talk about himself. It’s fine, she thinks; she spends most of her time talking, anyway, performing and such, and so precious little of it listening, these days. She wants to know his story. Everyone has one, and if it is good, it’ll be retold, and what sort of immortality is better than that? ”I aim to indulge,” she says, tipping her head briefly, flirtatiously. And she thinks: Perhaps I should tell my own story, just this once, and not someone else’s. Just a little bit. And then, maybe, he'll tell his. ”I’m from somewhere far away, a little glade where misfit children have their own misfit children, and among them…” She breathed in, ”I was a misfit. Can you imagine?” she smiles, but it’s wounded, ”No one expects that of pretty girls.” But she sighs and says, ”Like a fairytale, a magical caravan of singers and dancers took me away, and since then I have seen many worlds and learned many languages, and perhaps even seen a fair bit of metalworking.” Mesnyi looks back to the book in her grasp. ”That's the abridged story, anyway. Your language isn’t hard, I suppose, it’s a bit like one I’ve seen before, and since I realized that, I’ve been able to make the connection between the two and pick it up more easily. But that’s the way it is, isn’t it? Being a linguist already tends to help, even if I’m no scholar.” 

@Hugo