#dphq:start

[kindnesspvnk]

Emmett had been sluggish to actually get ready for work.  Everything was a bit too comfy or morning cartoons a bit too interesting.  Eventually he pulled himself away and made it out the door only to be greeted by his morning bus rushing right past him.  With just a small sigh he walked to the bus stop and greeted someone who was there.  “You missed the bus too?”  He pulled out a bag of eggs out of his pocket.  “Do you want an egg?”

[absolutesfm]

jo missed the days in college where he wrote for the newspaper, but one of the things that he would never, ever miss were the man on the street interviews. he wasn’t the type to just approach people in public. but there was one thing that was worse than social anxiety, and that was writer’s block. it was an old trick, to approach someone and then take away the values, write about it. he left his laptop at his table at the pub, taking a seat at the bar instead. “what are you reading?” no introduction, no greeting.

[lostanachronism]

amidst the summer-haze, in the very back of beyond, cecilia had basked in vaguely interesting self-punishment. the peculiarly pleasant numbness came with boredom, the tingle of youth’s restlessness fizzing in fine bones as though hebe herself were calling her away from the imperious shadow of tallis house: go somewhere, cecilia! do something. be someone! and of course, being bid to — as is usually the way in life — inspires resistance, because it is not so easy to do so until you know there is something to push against. 

once you know, however, the urge to defy surges. to confront, to be sharp as a knife-blade, do nothing unless it is the most satisfying exercise of your will, what better thrill could there be ? 

and yet still, that required far more effort than cecilia was willing to undertake, so she languished in her closed-off room piled high with unfinished stories and cigarette-smoke, knowing that she could not for much longer tolerate the uncertainty about the progression of her own. that the restlessness was not a temporary feeling that would pass — that her time leaning on the pockets of her father and migraine-addled mother was soon to be up.

a hidden truth found, the door to adulthood a treasure trove of tastes and experiences unlocked by the shattering of the old. the old, in this case, was a vase belonging to their uncle clem. pulled — roughly, in spite of the fact that love is so wholly tender and fragile, especially that which was young and new — pieces broke away, perhaps like innocence does. perhaps it peeled away in layers with every second robbie turner’s blue eyes lingered on her water-sodden frame after she surfaced from the fountain-water with a gasp like being born again. perhaps it continued with every word she read, the strange anatomic nature of his wrong-lettered affection ? and perhaps it was irreversible, when his hands slipped onto the bare skin of her back in the library ( lifted her, exalted, like some kind of angel ! ) and they became beings of desperation, for a time. was she still a being of desperation ?

had she had time to stop being so since dinner, when flush still coloured her cheeks and even happy-go-lucky leon had spotted the innocence vanishing from her eyes ? could you be innocent once you knew of love, or was the inevitability of loss what so scared her younger sister in moments she did not as yet know about ?

cecilia surfaced from reverie ( pleasant images of his cheek when he chuckled ‘not anymore it isn’t.’ ) and blinked vigorously at the figure trying to snap her out of the apparent trance she’d fallen into, fingers curling into the fabric of her dress. he had touched it. thusly it was sacred. she arched an eyebrow and tried, less than successfully, to attain her usual detached severity: “do i know you?”