Whisperings { open }
Zoe could count the number of times she’s been into a bar on one hand. She’d never been drawn to them the way so many others seemed to be - hurting souls, desperate for the dulling mercy of liquor to ease the burden of their misfortunes. Relief, courage, escape; the reasons for them to come here were endless, and she felt them all heavy on the air like a despairing fog.
She sat alone, at a table against the window, enjoying the way the moonlight diffused through the glass to reflect against the smudged table before her. In her hands were seventy-eight of her closest friends, seventy-eight unique whispering voices, the familiar weight of them like a living pulse against her palms. Her fingers moved through them with a loving ease, shuffling them idly as her mind wandered an array of various, aimless directions. Twisting paths, leading nowhere, but somewhere sometimes, to years that have long since past, to encounters she has yet to still have, returning every so often back again to the dull mumblings of those sharing the bar with her.
And then, she felt it - that distinct tickling of another’s gaze falling upon her. Blue eyes, her two cold, twin glaciers, fluttered upward to find the one whose energy called for attention. “Greetings,” she welcomed, her tone as sweet as fresh honey. “You have something you’d like to know, don’t you?”