![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
The antique store: Ella & Will
Who: Ella and Will
When: Recent
What: Window-shopping at the antique-store.
Warnings: Doubtful.
It was a bad day, in so much as Will could quantify any day in particular as such. There were scales, of course. Ways of cataloging days with tags, much like the little paper ones associated with objects under glass in the window in front of him. One might tack 'bland, middling grey' on a particular day and 'sunshine and optimism' to another. It was not a bad day on the other side because Will knew those kind perfectly well. The bookstore, being his measurement in all things, had gone shadowy and blurry in the corners and sleep had been something desperate and hard to dig oneself out of and the taste of metal on his tongue numbed anything appetite-shaped to the inconsequential. Those bad days were familiar. He counted the spaces in between. Five was the worst, but five had been almost nothing at all to convert the bad into ordinary. Five had been his own blood and he had a scar along the flat of his left thumb that suggested five hadn't gone anywhere at all.
He'd held out for twenty before. Twenty was good, except he'd started seeing the world in copper shimmers, waves that rippled out from behind people. He'd heard things, birds mostly and Will had stopped hoping twenty would come back again ordinary because he thought twenty was now long past. Fifteen was ordinary now. Fifteen was manageable on a small scale, but he was thinking as he looked at what must have been a blessing-cup, ornate wrought silver and beautiful in a heavy, mad kind of way, that fifteen might be pushed at the corners if you could do something big enough. The problem was how big, and with Carver in town Will felt guilty even speculating on big.
But it was a bad day the other side of fifteen, which meant he knew without looking at his own reflection that today his eyes were all inked-pupil, and he was the color of rubbed paper. He was thinner today because of the thick taste of pennies on his tongue for the week and he wore a sweater dragged over a shirt because he was cold, immeasurably so. But the thing about bad days this side, when the world wore a little bit of what it could possibly be if you reached out and pushed at it with a little bit of what you had with you, Will thought dreamily, was that you could undo the bad all at once, if you wished.
Of course, that way madness lay. The very predictament the bad day was all about. But there were things to look at. Will liked the new owner of the antique store because the display changed often enough to be interesting. So he leaned, peripherally with his elbow braced against the wall, and he looked because just then he'd felt last night reach up and grab him by the back of the neck in an all too unfriendly fashion.
When: Recent
What: Window-shopping at the antique-store.
Warnings: Doubtful.
It was a bad day, in so much as Will could quantify any day in particular as such. There were scales, of course. Ways of cataloging days with tags, much like the little paper ones associated with objects under glass in the window in front of him. One might tack 'bland, middling grey' on a particular day and 'sunshine and optimism' to another. It was not a bad day on the other side because Will knew those kind perfectly well. The bookstore, being his measurement in all things, had gone shadowy and blurry in the corners and sleep had been something desperate and hard to dig oneself out of and the taste of metal on his tongue numbed anything appetite-shaped to the inconsequential. Those bad days were familiar. He counted the spaces in between. Five was the worst, but five had been almost nothing at all to convert the bad into ordinary. Five had been his own blood and he had a scar along the flat of his left thumb that suggested five hadn't gone anywhere at all.
He'd held out for twenty before. Twenty was good, except he'd started seeing the world in copper shimmers, waves that rippled out from behind people. He'd heard things, birds mostly and Will had stopped hoping twenty would come back again ordinary because he thought twenty was now long past. Fifteen was ordinary now. Fifteen was manageable on a small scale, but he was thinking as he looked at what must have been a blessing-cup, ornate wrought silver and beautiful in a heavy, mad kind of way, that fifteen might be pushed at the corners if you could do something big enough. The problem was how big, and with Carver in town Will felt guilty even speculating on big.
But it was a bad day the other side of fifteen, which meant he knew without looking at his own reflection that today his eyes were all inked-pupil, and he was the color of rubbed paper. He was thinner today because of the thick taste of pennies on his tongue for the week and he wore a sweater dragged over a shirt because he was cold, immeasurably so. But the thing about bad days this side, when the world wore a little bit of what it could possibly be if you reached out and pushed at it with a little bit of what you had with you, Will thought dreamily, was that you could undo the bad all at once, if you wished.
Of course, that way madness lay. The very predictament the bad day was all about. But there were things to look at. Will liked the new owner of the antique store because the display changed often enough to be interesting. So he leaned, peripherally with his elbow braced against the wall, and he looked because just then he'd felt last night reach up and grab him by the back of the neck in an all too unfriendly fashion.