Re: Coffeeshop: Hannah/Si
Hannah never trusted anything, but her way of dealing was to accept it. She accepted that things weren't like they seemed, and that people weren't like you believed they were. She had thought everyone was good once, and she'd been wrong, and then she'd believed everyone was bad, but she'd met people who weren't, and now she just went. Like a leaf on a river and carried by wind and ripple, she went. This wasn't good, but it existed. This moment existed, and it could lead somewhere good. It didn't have to go to bad places, and she knew that. Standing there, with everyone looking and looking and craning and staring, she knew that.
Hannah was alone, was what it came down to it. She had people, and her garden was filled with flowers she'd collected along the way, but she was still alone, and she didn't know how to answer his questions or be what he needed. If she had someone to talk to about it, to talk to about it for real and in truth, then it might help. But she didn't have that, and she stepped back from the hug and touched his cheek, and that was all she knew to do. She was warm, alive, and nothing not human, and it was times like these when she was most confused. "I'm sorry," she said of the broken promise, the wispy memory of it something insubstantial and floating, like reveries over their heads. He didn't look pretty, but that didn't bother her. "I'm sorry," and she wondered where everyone else had been.
She squeezed his arm, and she pointed him at a little table, and she went to the counter and ordered him his coffee. His coffee, and a mocha for herself, and a danish, the cherry kind. She came back with the things, and, if he was already sitting, she sat. Her mannerisms were the same, they weren't even echoes. She moved like a dead woman, and she placed an elbow on the table and cradled her cheek in her hand. "Do you want to hear everything about everyone?" It might help a little, she thought.