strrive-deactivated20140202 ;   Red String of Fate

Our muses were star-crossed lovers in a passed life,
but in this life they are destined to never fully fall in
love with anyone else, but they’ll never remember
their pasts fully either.

         _{If hard pressed she would not know whether to say she believed in such a thing as reincarnation, in such an idealistic notion that life never disappeared, only continued to cycle, because she would not be sure. Never was sure of much, except for when she was holding a brush or a pencil or a piece of charcoal in her hands and was creating something, creating anything on a blank canvas, a sheet of paper, in her sketchbook. Always messy in one way or another she worked and she worked, creating images of places and times and people that she saw flash whenever she closed her eyes and dreamed.}

                  _{So often were there flashes of silver, images of shining aquamarine eyes, a face that felt so familiar yet she had never truly seen it before. The face that littered so many of her sketchbooks when she was a child and did not understand, could not comprehend—but she stopped, after a while. Because it did not feel right to draw such a face she did not know, because she felt a yearning towards it yet a yearning towards others, and she drew them instead.}

                                    _{Yet every time she dreamed she could not escape him.}

_{— — — — —}

         _{A touch was what started it. Something fleeting, an accidental touch of shoulders that made him turn and look to her and made him apologize while she smiled in return, head turned down as she curtsied, saying that it was okay. Such a simple thing, yet after that she could not stop herself from looking for him, and he could not stop himself from looking for her—they gazed at each other and smiled and adored and loved.}

         _{Slowly and quietly they came together and she told him of things that she sometimes felt, pressing at the tips of her fingers, threatening to spill over. Perhaps she may have cried when she told him but he simply smiled at her and stroked her hair and told her he would never tell a soul—}

                  _{Yet blurs of a man approaching her, of her screaming and drawing on her only defense, the only thing that could possibly save her, the only thing she had because she was small and helpless and so, so weak.}

         _{Names were flung, curses thrown towards her, and she was dragged to the small town’s court and sentenced within moments and she let it happen, head bowed and tears streaming silently down her face. Still they fell as she was dressed in plain clothes and dragged off to the village square and tied to a pyre.}

                           _{Fire was pain.}

                                    _{Yet she saw him standing there with tears on his face and she smiled.}

         _{And she looked at him, only at him, until the flames engulfed her and she was no more.}

— — — — —

         _{Friends, she supposed. Friends. Close friends, friends who spent a lot of time around each other and knew each other through and through. What the other was thinking and how they were feeling, and she adored him and he adored her, yet neither really knew if they could cross that line, if that line was crossable. Or even if the feelings were mutual, really, because they were dumb and young and clueless.}

                                                      _{So, so clueless.}

         _{Promises made to see each other soon because school was over and it was time to go home but they were going to meet up, because it was finally the weekend and they could finally spent some time together and go down to the beach with the others. And maybe, just maybe, it would be their weekend.}

         _{There was a stupid hope that blossomed in her chest at the thought and she wondered why it was him for her, when he was so clueless rough around the edges, but really she had always known the reason. Always kind to her, always sweet, always showing a more gentle side to her that others did not get to see, and he got to see sides of her that others did not get to see either.}

                                             _{Perhaps that’s why it felt like her world was ending
                                                      when she learned he got run over and died on impact.}

— — — — —

         _{People liked to say that babies were not aware of anything, aware of nothing really, except for themselves, but that would not explain why he as a child burst into bawling tears when he heard his mother talking to her friend. An innocent conversation, albeit about a sensitive and tragic topic that had to be handled with some care, and his mother was frantic when she heard his sobs.}

                           _{Always he had been a quiet baby.}

                                             _{Until he learned that a woman down the street had a miscarriage.}

— — — — —

         _{Really it was dumb, incredibly so. And it was his fault in the end, for deciding to fall in love with her, the girl who was quiet and shy and never said a word, never uttered a single thing, who smiled politely but whose smile never quite reached her eyes. Eyes always empty, always yearning for something that he could not see, no one could understand.}

                  _{But she was just so beautiful, so graceful in the way that she took care of and followed her lady around, the daughter of the lord who was visiting his father’s castle. Oh how idiotic it was to fall for such a commoner yet he wanted to be nearer to her, wanted to hold her close and tell her how he had been captivated with her from the moment that they met, yet they could never be together. Yet she was forever unfeeling, constantly blank faced except for her polite smile, as if she were detached from the world and there was no way to bring her back.}

                                    _{The warm and pleasant smile she gave him was the last thing he saw.}

                                             _{There was a knife in his gut and sorrowful eyes peered into his soul.}

                                                      _{Oh, he had always been a pawn.}

— — — — —

         _{Destiny was a funny thing, or he had always thought so. Never did he put much thought into it, only in moments when he woke up dazed and sweating from the dreams that he had, from the images that still splashed across his vision in vivid colors. Of the girl with soft blonde hair and bright blue eyes that he could not escape, could not get away from, no matter how much he threw himself into other things.}

         _{So close he got to falling in love with others, to wanting to give himself to them—not that there were many, oh no, his heart was guarded with intense and immediate caution. But he could never truly love them, never truly give them his everything, there was no way that he could fall in love with those blue eyes or that brown hair or that smile—}

                                             _{Not when his heart already belonged to her.}

                                                               _{The girl in his dreams.}