Enjolras (capable d'être terrible) (revolutionary) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-11-09 18:03:00 |
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The sun set so early now, and even though the hour had been dropped weeks ago, there was still no getting used to it, and even though the weather was nice enough to sit outside, there was just no time. Days felt like they were ending before they'd even started. And that's what she thought, while she sat on the bench, near East 67th and Fifth, just down a tick from the 107th Infantry Memorial. The Memorial, with its soldiers that looked almost copper in the light of the sun, already starting to set at half-past four. Her book, which she'd given up on, Quintessence of Ibsenism, she folded on her lap against the dying of the light. He rounded the corner, when she noticed him, seeking something to look at now her hand was sandwiched in her book to keep her place. His hands were in the pockets of a dark coat that seemed a size too big in the shoulders and a size too small at the waist. His neck and nose buried in the folds of a burgundy scarf and his hair, tousled and wild looked copper like the monument; looked gold like the leaves that stuck to the pavement and congregated on the park lawn like pigeons around an abandoned lunch. Everything about him seemed to come to a point, from the small angles his feet made as they hit the pavement to the sharp, purposeful bend of his elbows. Even his stride itself seemed rigid somehow, even as he slowed down he looked determined. The look he gave the monument was -- she imagined, she couldn’t see, he was turned away -- as piercing and needle-like as the rest of him. She buried her face in the scarf around her shoulders, hiding her lips. As he leaned forward to read the plaque on the side of the statue, she leaned too, unaware that she was mimicking his actions. Past the monument he saw him. Not on the path, but the lawn. He was tall and slender, wrapped in blues and greens and clouds of purple. The twilight seemed to follow him, like a shadow chasing away the sun. It would be rude to say the he could smell Grantaire from here, he couldn’t. Synesthesia, it was called. That smell that wasn't a smell, but a memory. He kicked up gunpowder when he laughed, he spilled wine bottles when he breathed. And when he stopped on the grass and they caught sight of each other, the sun seemed to stop in the sky. Seven months they’d been dead, and seven months they’d been here. It was too unChristian to be purgatory, too dull to be heaven and far too tame to be hell. It was strange to shelf books or meet beside monuments in parks or kick up leaves and not gunpowder when they laughed, but here they were at the end of another Monday and the weather was a little colder, and a girl put her book away and got up from the bench and Grantaire walked closer and the sun moved again. He leaned against the concrete corner, seven soldiers with bayonets, guns and ambition grew cold as the sun’s light retreated, but the light still seemed caught in in Enjolras’ hair. He lifted his face from his scarf and tilted his chin towards the blue-green shadows. «J'ai quelque chose pour toi.» |