๐ฆ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฝ๐ฎ ๐๐พ๐ผ๐ฝ๐ช๐ท๐ฐ
๐๐ช๐ป๐ท๐ฒ๐ท๐ฐ๐ผ : older Ellie (30s), younger you (21), fluff, swearing, mentions of y/n.
๐ช/๐ท : i had a really fun time writing this. Despite not being 100% fluent in english, my words come from the heart. Thanks for reading! Tune in for chap 2! ๐ค
The day i saw your white Mustang...
It is a sunny, warm afternoon. The sky blue and clean, the grass from the sidewalk a vivid green and the crowd of people around the rows and rows of classic cars stretched across the fairgrounds, gleaming beneath the sun. People wandered between them with cameras around their necks and drinks in hand, stopping every few feet to admire polished chrome or ask owners questions about restorations. You walk rather slowly, simply admiring old cars and bending over sometimes to read the plaques if it interested you. The people around you are mostly of age, tattoos, long gray beard and a pinching stare that enhaces its power due to your status: young, alone, a woman in the middle of such contrasting scene...Yet you've grown to quite like it. With your earphones playing Lana Del Rey and Mazzy Star on Blare, sometimes taking a break to listen to the birds chirping and the thick, raspy voices from old car owners in the middle of obsnoxious conversations.
You enjoy the foreign place, the foreign faces. It allows you to be your own quiet self. It allows you to be serene and observant, quite nosy if you were to describe it yourself, because you like to see the things from an unseen angle, from an underground perspective. You like to see things that are yet to be seen by each and every eye surrounding you. So you walk in the same pace as before, slow, unbothered by time and space, listening to the rarely-spoken voices of car owners who don't receive so much attention since, now you find yourself closer to the other side of the festival.
If someone asked you anything related to horsepower or engines, you'd simply nod politely and flash a meek smile. You have no idea how to describe in simple words as to why you came here.
But if anyone, and you mean it, anyone who asks with mild interest, you'd explain it is because you feel the need to explore more of this big world that seems so gray in the day a day, tiring old routine. To understand different minds. To touch your sensitive heart with the poetry of vividness, of finding your place in earth through foreign experiences. You want something solid, something real. Something that pulls you out of this dissociative bubble you created in your head, something that can roar you to life back again. Something sweet, but roughened by time, sharpened by life and imperfect by its odds and scars and scrapes. You wish, and by acting on it, immediately succeed on finding new ideas and words and brands, hues and inspiring faces to write about. It fills your artist vein and heart with joy to think that, to simply have inspiration, you can simply step outside and look around your tiny world.
You absentmindedly stepped closer, wide eyes, and delicate hands clasped behind your back, leaning just a tad bit, just enough to notice the chrome trim that isn't flawless, slightly dull and thick, the small scratches near the wheels, aย few areas where the plating had started to pit ever so slightly, a tiny chip in the windshield, a faint discoloration where a sticker might have once resided. And the insides..Brown leather seats, richly worn, with a deep, almost earthy tone that deepened with age. This car is what you look for. It is the ideal of lived-in, loved, cherished and constant that you perhaps could only find in an object. A car whose owner placed an invisible brand on it. A quite possesive one, you noticed as you lean closer, inspecting its worn, yet undeniably polished leather seats. You suddenly cling to the idea that its owner is completely and intrinsically related to this car, even so they are reflected through it. You see a person that is secretly careful with the details, but isn't afraid of imperfection, an owner whose identity revolves into something closed off, yet blooms at night, when the sunny, burning unpleasant eyes of strangers won't touch their hidden secret wounds. You smile to yourself, crouching down to touch the wheel, the one and only place you felt like allowing yourself to do so. Because exposing such thing? showing such vulnerability to the world through a car is brave. And braveness is something so...Untouchable. So deeply foreign for you. And it's what makes it so intriguing. You like unfamiliarity.
The raspy, undeniably feminine, rough voice caught you by surprise. As if popping you from the observer bubble and forcing you back into reality. You jumped before you could hold yourself, eyes wide like the ones of a deer caught in the headlights, parted lips, crouching to the floor as if you've been caught. Caught, doing what?
You fix your posture and stand up, legs wobbly from being crouched in the same postion for so long, tucking a strand of hair behind you ear nervously. So this is who you are looking for.
The woman, apearing to be somewhere in her 30s, visibly older than you, visibly more aware of her surroundings, furrowed her brows, that constellation of freckles on her forehead creasing slightly.
You blinked once...Then twice. And pressed your lips in a thin line, a deep sigh erupting from your nostrils as you looked down with a small apologetic smile, hands resting on your sides.
"shouldn't have touched it."
The woman in front of you chuckled, a worn out, soft sound. She seemed so...Used to people. It is evident she is older. More experienced. And it leaves you quite infatuated by it. Why is it?
Perhaps as if those seemingly rough-to-the-touch hands could protect, the same way she did with her car. Hands that seem so direct and straight to the point at first glance, but could be gentle when it meant to take care of delicate things.
"You weren't trying to steal it, right?"
You panic. Because the mere prospect of being caught, or being perceived as doing such thing gives you chills on your spine. Disturbing people is one of your biggest nightmares. You shake your head and force a nervous laugh out.
"no-no....No..I wasn't..Stealing. Or..Attempting to."
The woman's eyes narrowed a fraction. And she laughed. Gods, she was messing with you. And you knew it from the beggining, but once again-the prospect, the mere prospect...
And how could you ever begin to ignore it? That quiet, raspy laugh, and this sudden joy erupting your senses when she expressed her own amusement so interestingly. How her lips twitched, but didn't quite reach out for an actual smile. You were truly captivated by the way she so casually read the room and was so nonchalant over messing with people jokingly. You could never. The mere prospect....
"It-She. She, is very beautiful."
You corrected with a small, sheepish smile, trying to comprehend the relationship of the woman with the car by tasting the car's pronouns in your tongue.
You held your mouth when those lidded green eyes landed on the vehicle once again.
She looked away, so it was tempting to say something bolder when that deep, searching gaze is not keeping your every move at bay. You part your lips stubbornly, your shyness begging for silence, but the artistic side of you- the side you feel necessity to put out, to express it, wins.
"i guess...It makes me think of its history. It is connected with something."
When the auburned haired woman turned with the slight curiosity you noticed in her eyes, you sighed shortly. Well, there's no way out, now.
"i mean...Some people like things when they're new because they're perfect, easy to handle. But I think there's something special about something that has been through stuff. And is still here. I can't bring myself to say "despite the odds." I think the odds are..Nice."
Oh. The silence can be so welcome. So divine, sweet, delicious when it allows you to hear the birds and the trees dancing with the wind. And, eventually, if you stop to listen the thump thump of your heartbeat through your ears, it soothes you into a deep meditation state. But if you quit tripping, and if you have a conversation in progress with a woman years ahead of you whose infatuation affected you from within in these short moments you shared together keeps the silence, then it is indeed something you would worry about. Perhaps only you, and your overthinker, overwhelming and barely contained machinery of thoughts would worry about.
the silence stretched for a few seconds, but to you, a hundred years had passed. When she finally spoke, it was nothing but a simple repeated sentence.
This time, it was Ellie's turn to taste the other's words, it seemed. You watched her with the eyes of a girl who expected, who yearned for more, for something like "i understand", but was brutally attacked by the overwhelming thought that she might be weirded out and incredibly awkward right now.
Your eyes flicked down as you contemplated the situation you find yourself in. A small thought crosses your mind, and before you could rethink about if whether you should ask, you uttered,
"how long have you had it?"
Ellie seemed to know how to answer this, she probably had practice, because she was quick to say,
10 years. It echoed in your mind like reverb. You wondered how much time did it take for her to see this car as a "she". To mold this car as her own, to understand it as an artwork based on her life story, manipulated by it, even. Your eyes scanned through the convertible wondrously.
Her lips threatened a smile once again, you could notice.
The way she answered, short, straight to the point, and quite dryly made you wonder if you were being a bother, and soon concluded you were, being one. The silence stretched once again, the eyes ran out of sight from the woman's after your glances met, and you let out a short breath.
"well...I should..Probably let you get back to your day."
It seemed funny to you, how she frowned. It was almost comic, the idea that your presence could be possibly a positive thing. Her eyes blinked slowly, like the ones of a lazy cat staring right back at you with what seemed like disdain.
"But you didn't even ask to get in it,"
She said after a lick of lips, it obviously caught your attention. A glimpse of her tongue. Your eyes flickered wide, shifting slightly on your feet, not knowing exactly what to do with that answer. Such an odd observation. As if she was noticing a pattern missing, a lost piece in the puzzle of her interactions in this context.
"I didn't even tell you my name."
Oh...Oh, right, names. You huffed a small laugh, your grin coming easy, but still sheepish with the way you looked down, then up at her with a faded smile;
"Right. Tell me your name. I'll tell you mine."
She said, no hesitation in her tone. Such a gentle name, with such a sweet pronunciation that rolls out the tongue smoothly. But the woman guarding it with those lean muscles under that white wife-beater acts like she is anything but, and you wondered if the softness you saw in her eyes was real, if it wasn't the romantic, dramatic traces of yours speaking louder.
You say softly, the silence that followed bringing you to laugh nervously. Eyes that once felt distant now looked at her with presence, caught up in the moment. When her lips formed the shapes necessary for her to utter your name, you swallowed, chest tightening, you felt enchanted.
Ellie. Ellie, Ellie. You repeated it a few times in your head. This name felt like it came to stay. It hit you like lightning. You smiled back at her tiny little attempt of a smile, and felt content enough to leave. Enough. Not content. You'd be content if she invited you in for a ride. You'd be content if she asked for your number. You'd be content in a lot of contexts, but this was not one of them. Leaving without asking for any other informations about the woman made you feel that tiny lump in your throat, that lump of yours, oh so familiar that appears whenever you feel restrained by your own timid nature.
It seemed like fate. It seemed like the universe must have defined the very moment when she called once again, by your name, concurrently to the overwhelming mantra of her name replaying in your mind over and over. You looked over your shoulder with widened eyes, thrilled, enticed by the simple, familiar pronunciation of your name. Although in her lips; In her lips, it sounds softened, as if she's handling something fragile with her tongue, as if recognizing your sensitivity.
Ellie sighed, and scratched the back of her head.
You didn't frown because that is not the sort of reaction you would like to receive in this kind of situation. But you couldn't help tilting your head ever so slightly, a small, barely present smile on your lips.
Ellie shook her head with a dry chuckle. Your eyelashes batted in confusion. If there was one thing you were not, it was clueless. But, right now, you could not have expected that confident woman to reduce herself into an embarassed teenager asking for someone's number.
"Nothing. Whatever. You...Uh..Number?"
Whatever. You despise this word, and what it implies. As if you were not interested or engaged enough to wish to listen to someone's words. Or as if the person had simply dismissed you as unimportant. Or as someone unworthy of holding something as precious as...Whatever that was. You found yourself reading into the situation a little too much, your reaction coming up quite a bit delayed. When you focused on her hands, she already had her phone out, waiting for your reply.
The apology came out so automatically, you barely noticed how insignificant it was. You tuck a lock of hair behind your ear before typing in the numbers on her phone, and your name in the box over it.
You handed her the phone back, taking notice of the grasp of her hand, of its warmth, its calloused digits and short nails caught by your eyes in a millisecond. You gave her a small, Diffident smile, chin dipped slightly lower than usual, your wavering gaze meeting her steady pair of eyes in a brief moment, before pulling apart from each other.
I left as slowly as i came, the cars around me seem all the same.
The woman behind me watches as her name
Spirals in my wondrous head, and soon fly away
With her sleeping beauty eyes and hair wild to tame,
She stands beside her, her white mustang.
areudirty
pixelskylines
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2087
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