Oneiric; #1 Open

She had never been easy.

Even mysteries failed to solve her, to find out what her eyes had said.

He would glance from the corner of his eyes, heart beating faster than light, memorising each end of her smile, each bob of her head.

When she talked… oh, when she talked. It was the most exquisite of voices, eternity flowing in her words.

God,she made him nervous.

Once every few days (twice if he was lucky), he would get the chance to talk to her. To listen to her babble about anything and everything– from poems, to colours, to her journal of what ifs.

Not that it mattered what it was about. It was impossible to remember half the things she would say, much less control his newfound shiver under her gaze.

Fool. He was drowning in her laugh.

Lord knows how he held back from running his fingers through her chocolate hair, across her ruby cheek. From holding her warm hand, from embracing her when she was sad.

Live
here with me
in temporary
and be my only
permanent.

Worry gnawed at him when she wasn’t with him, by his side. He didn’t give a dime’s worth of care for her ruining him. To be destroyed by a storm like her, a storm so beautiful in all its toxicity, was a sight very few had ever admired.

But he did worry about her leaving. About her seeing him for what he truly was, and turning away, never to come back again.

When she was with him, his skin crawled with nervousness, afraid of saying something wrong, and chasing her away.

He didn’t have it in him to lose her.

And then– she would look at him. Really look at him. Her eyes sparked with curiosity at first, and then, that gradual smile would ease across her lips.

She knows, he would think.

***

+Manushrie Verma+