continued from here. with @xfnoah
she lets out a staccato laugh, the sound of it low and harsh in her throat. it’s less like a laugh and more like the breaking of a boiler, the cutting of an engine, the closing of a door. something mechanic in the sound of it, almost hollow.
“the way you talk--- you speak like a prophet...” the side of her mouth twinges into something like distaste, as if she’d mistaken her paint water for tea and sipped from the wrong mug. he talks of consumption, of girls who are eaten by what came before them, but the ghost of eileen ( while never far ) lingers farther from her. she’s more interested in what he has to say. to forsee. was he perhaps consumed by an ailment of his own ; guilt, lust, love, pride?
“what do you know of being devoured?” not old enough to drink in a bar, but old enough to know her own mind, her own soul. “why--- you’re just a boy.” and the way she says it --- the sound of it frail on her tongue --- almost renders him so. it’s like, with the curse and the gift of living in the shadow of a girl already dead, she’s inherited a wisdom beyond her years, but it comes from the bubblegum mouth of a child. “---did you know her? my sister.” isla asks, after a pregnant pause wherein time had caught hold of her ankles and pulled, leaving her stumbling to catch up. “they say that she was the best of us. that she had this gentle elegance to her... like a flute. or a clarinet. but in a place where people hadn’t learned how to breathe above water.” no one ever got eileen --- how something so soft and beautiful could come from such an ugly patch of land --- but isla thinks maybe she understands. “eileen was perfect.”
