Re: lake, by the shore
"They don't," she agreed readily of jokes and feeling words. Madness didn't take away her ability to understand about jokes but she hadn't been talking about that anymore. Her thoughts, like her mind, wandered from point of light to point of light, and it wasn't his fault that he couldn't follow the moonbeam constellations in her head. "Being red wine isn't bad," she told him. "I know someone who isn't very nice, but he's the nicest person I know." There was sanity in the madness of her contradiction. "The people who don't add soft words are the most truthful sometimes. You value truth." The question was not a question. It didn't even come with an inflection that indicated it should be a question, and the girl was comfortable around this man whose speech contained no pillows or soft blankets to curl up in.
"There are nice people here. Does that mean you have nice people?" she asked. She wasn't asking because something incandescent swallowed told her she needed to. It was in her person, mad or sane, to ask and to want to know.
She sat beside him now on the shore, and she looked down at him. "I can make you feel better. Do you want me to?" She expected he would say no. She expected he would discount the offer as more delusion. Foolishness like fish that sang and lights that beat, like the ship carrying people across the lake. Like her obsession with an island that was nearly close enough to stretch out her fingers and be touched. She wondered, as she awaited his response, if spreading her fingers toward the mound of floating land would create a bridge of sparkles that could hold her lanky weight. Had it been that easy? Was her failure all the greater if she learned how attainable the unattainable had been?
She looked down at the man. "Regret is part of every day, but I mean the big things. Do you think back on the big things and wish you'd been fearless?" She didn't mention fate or that her choices had already been made. It was dangerous to change things that were meant to happen, but she wasn't sure she cared. With the world singing carillon in her ears she could close her eyes and see the entire planet as a connection of constellation people, layers and layers over years and years. She didn't think he'd comprehend, but she liked him all the more for it.