Re: carnival: sparrow/matt
"I think it's winter." She said the words like they meant something. As if winter was more than a season, and as if it was more than an omen. "There are really, really good things in dark places, just like there are really, really bad things in sunshine." Plain logic, and spoken husky soft in a tin can laced with ruffles. She knew that what she said was true, though she had no data, no facts, no dates to prove it. Her convictions would hold up in no court, but she knew the things she said to be true. She knew, and she knew in the same way that she knew her own nothingness.
She didn't need to pretend; she was this. Maybes, again, weren't pretending, and she looked over at him, his eyes haunted dark, and she rethought what he said about remembering. Perhaps it was better not to remember shards and slivers, and she could make up good things and fold them up like origami cranes, give them flights and leave the badly folded birds out of sight, beneath bedskirts and slumbering with dust bunnies, things she didn't need to recall.
"Oui." Her response to his passable, and she didn't ask. She was good at listening, but she didn't push for words. She didn't dig her fingers behind his teeth and try to drag out confessions with fingertips. Non, she just let him be, and she let him stay. It was cold outside, and winter was coming, and she didn't think he was interested in warming her skin and making it pink with living. But he sat, and he was a person, alive and breathing the same air, and that could be almost enough. Nearly, nearly, it could be enough.