Re: carnival: sparrow/matt
She knew nothing about him.
She knew nothing about his past. She knew nothing about his fears. She was no one he needed to worry about. She wasn't conniving, and machination didn't take root in her veins and pump blood to her heart. She was just what she was, and she was just what she appeared to be. She was a young woman, and she was kneeling on the floor and holding up her own ballet slippers, and she was interested in what he had to say. None of it was fake; she didn't know to be fake. There was something about deception that required memory, something that required a centering, something to lie around, and she didn't have that. Even her scenarios, the made up things that she spoke as truth, those weren't really, really lies. They were maybes, and they were possibilities, and they were wishes and dreams; they weren't lies.
"I make things up too, but they aren't lies." As if the distinction was an important one in her mind. "They're maybes." She hadn't told anyone that before, not directly, not honestly, and she didn't know why she was telling him. Perhaps it was because of the ballet shoes, and girl that might have existed, and the fact that he didn't know. "But I don't maybe remember ballet shoes, and I don't maybe remember a ballerina. I don't maybe remember anything." She paused, and she bit her lip, and she tried to decide if she should speak the next words that were brewing in her mind. "Is it better, remembering something that you aren't sure about? Or would it be better to not remember anything at all?"
And that was why she'd been honest. To ask that one question, and he was the only person she knew that could answer. Because he remembered a girl that he might've made up, and the woman with the ringlets, she wanted something, a light, a glimmer, even if it wasn't real.
But there was nothing. Blank, blank, and an emptiness in her belly. Low, low, and like someone belonged there. She had hints, clues, but nothing she remembered. Not even a maybe.
He said non, and he didn't want her to wear the shoes, and she tucked them safely away. Then she took his hand, and she stood close and smiled. She had to tip her head back to look at his face, and she was small of stature, 5'3, and only if she didn't slouch. This close, she was honey and vanilla, milk and skin, shimmer on her skin from the show and that robe off one shoulder. "Why did you come, if you didn't know?"