Scene From Somewhere Later In The Story

"I don't tell anybody this, because the act of doing so is like superman willingly embracing kryptonite. I don't tell anybody this, because I'm afraid someone else does the same thing, and thiat kills my uniqueness. I don't tell anybody this, but every morning when I wake, I stare at myself in the mirror, and I feel like crying my heart out. Except, the tears don't come. They well up and gather behind I my eyes like some geyser. It almost burts, but it never does. Because I tell myself that I'm the most beautiful, the most handsome, the most desirable person in existence. I tell myself - before the tears flood - that people don't see me in that light, because they're too closed minded, too ignorant, too stupid, and that someday, when I'm gone, they'll reliase it and regret their ignorance for the rest of eternity."

He paused, probably to save himself the further embarrassment of letting me hear his voice choke. I could see the redness in his eyes. The shine of brimming tears about to flow. My stomach constricted. Why was he telling me this?

"I'm sorry," he whispered, voice trembling, "Telling myself all that, helps to stop the tears. but only for a while. Because I start questioning myself. If I'm so desirable, why do my relationships all fall apart the way they do? I think of myself as a failure. It's instinctive. It's been drilled into me ever since I was a kid. " He paused to draw in breath, and I realised I was holding mine too.

"The screamings," I ventured, "the name calling, the counters whenever you try to defend yourself. It didn't matter if you were innocent or not. Once he believed you did something, there was no convingcing him otherwise. The announcements that you were stupid and useless. The twisting of the words you used in your defence. And if you were somehow right, and he could not find anything to you did wrong, he'd dig up an old issue and start getting angry all over again. The months of silence, of ignoring you evenever you greeted him. And the sudden eruption when you stop. And the worse part is when he storms off into his room. You hear his door open, and...-"

"The seconds before the slam drag themselves into eternity. And then the door does slam shut, it feels like your world has ended, like you've been tossed into a maximun security prison."

"For life. Yes."

He stared at me for a while before continuing. His watery eyes boring into me like I was some intruder on his moment of self-gloryfying pity. How dare I have similar experiences as him.

"And so I force all those emotions into a small unused corner of my heart, and I encase them within a cavern of the coldest ice. So cold that it burns. And in the void that is left, I try to fill it up with positive emotions: love; happiness. Stuff they taught us during therapy. It's all bullshit. They are the mercutios that jest at woundless scars. Nothing works, ever. Nothing, except telling myself that I'm..."

"God."

"...Yeah." He looked at me again, the tears flowing freely from both our eyes. "Yeah."

I picked up a pebble and tossed it with a frustrated grunt into the water. The ripples raditated out from where the pebble entered, disturbing the tranquility of the pond. It was as if I'd destroyed the equilibrium of the world. Upset Ying and Yang. The fish certainly seemed to think so, crowding at the other end of the pond , as far away from the evil pebble thrower as possible.

And at the very center of the ripples was a small patch of calm water, almost like a void. A calm center when the rest of the world is in upheaveal. I wished I could have been that center.

We sat there by the pond, side by side, for the next few hours. Neither of us saying anything. Neither of us wanted to. Besides, there was nothing to say. I watched as the sun set behind the trees with practiced bravado, seemingly all-knowing. Dillian directed his gaze towards the ground, fiddling with a twig he'd plucked from somewhere. He sighed alot. It was as if that was the only way he could breathe. I wished he'd stop doing that.

It reminded me of my father during the periods of silence when you were simply waiting for him to explode, and there's nothing you can do. He sighed alot during those times. It's like being stuck in a well at the foot of an awakening volcano. There's no way out of the well and it was only a matter of time before the volcano erupted, sending its lava flowing down and into the well, slowly boiling the water as it burned and...

You get the picture.

The street lamps flickered on along the path behind us, attracting moths and other insects. I sighed and turned to look at him. He was still fiddling with a twig, his eyes glazed and staring at some point in space.

He was actually wuite attractive, if one thought about it. I wondered why I never noticed it before. My eyes traced the outline of his side profile, harshly lit by the glow of the street lamps. Forehead, nose, cheekbones... lips.

I shook myself at that line of thought, slightly amused. This was probably where (according to depictions of teenagers by popular culture), after having shared our hearts' deepest secrets, we elope in the moonlight. I wouldn't put it past Dillian to actually sit there, pretending to be the brooding protaganist of his story, waiting for me to finally cave in and grab him by the collar and drag him in for a kiss.

MEN! He probably engineered the whole setup, this whole conversation, in an attempt to get into my pants!

I calmed my self, seeing no productive outcome in being angry, besides, I couldn't even prove anything. He may have been sincere when he said that he needed to talk. Fine. I'd give him the benifit of the doubt.

He looked up, probably alerted to my fidgiting. I froze as his brown eyes -dull from the emotional toll of our conversation- searched for mine. We locked gazes for a few seconds before he adverted his to the ground, then looking back up at me, as if asking for permission to even look at me. Oh how my heart fluttered, he was so adorable! I blinked rapidly, absolutely horrified at what I was thinking. What kind of evil hex did he cast on me to make me all muddled like that? The nerve!

We were both staring at each other, blinking and looking like total idiots. And just before it got awkward, he asked,

"You all right?" His bass voice -still caked with emotion and slightly rough from not speaking for so long- reached out and flowed around me. He never had any proper vocal training, and as such, his voice tended to run amok on the octave scale. Yet another adorable quirk that hinted at vulnerablity. I was flooded with protective emotion for this person in front of me. I was so close to breaking out into childish giggles. I was feeling guilty for even looking at a guy in this light. I was tempted to kiss him. I was disappointed that he'd only said 3 words...

I was going to strangle him for making me feel this way.

"Uh...Gwen?" He probed again, this time more in control of his voice. But it was no less intense, the way the air seemed to viabrate with the power of his untamed vocals. And I was being drawn into his eyes. It was like being sucked into a dying tornado, and being held suspended in its heart. You know full well that when the tornado dies, the vortex will cease to exist, and you'd plummet to your death. But you want to linger, because the view is too damned beautiful.

Then he looked away, searching for something on the ground, and I felt plummeting back to earth.

He reached out and poked me in the shin with the twig.

"Hey, Gwen."

"WHAT?!" I yelled, absolutely enraged that he broke the spell. And even more angry at the fact that he'd casted one in the first place. Damned ninny should have just leaned forward and... "Uh, sorry. You know what? I think we should leave. It's getting dark and our training session starts in about an hour anyway."

I chewed my lip and hoped he did not notice.

"Hur... Yea. Yea, lets... Do that. Okay. The car's that way. Let's go?"

No you idiot, just shut up and kiss me. This is the ONLY time you'll be able to without losing your life. " Yea. Get on with it already."

And so we left the park, with him leading the way, and me entertaining alternate fantasies of kissing him and slapping the daylights out of him.

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this scene is to be slotted into a later part of the story.