OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

001 || Night Affairs

CHAPTER ONE —    Night Affairs ..

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          "What do you hear?"

There she went again with her trick questions, Coriolanus couldn't help himself the troubling thought, stirring him into correcting his posture and realigning his shoulder blades back on the cold and moist grass of the park. There was always some trick to most her questions and much as he feared Dr. Gaul, he could bet to be trapped inside Daphne Ravinstill's mind for merely just a day would positively outmatch any horror that woman could conceive in her cages.

Then again, while those mutts had earned themselves nothing but unkind words from his mind's deepest thoughts and the nightmares they awakened in him whenever he had time enough to sleep towards the cradles of dreams, the products of Daphne's mind seemed to mirror instead her favorite poems of Baudelaire and challenge him to see beauty in what also made him shiver.

One truth remained — she was the best conversation partner anyone could ever wish for. Especially this late at night.

Coriolanus attempted to satisfy her question at first with a simple shrug, but tangibly feeling the tension rise between them in that single point of touch existing between their shoulders, he corrected his answer painfully brief, "Nothing."

"Wrong."

"I'm sorry," he puffed through a chuckle. "I wasn't made aware this was a test."

"It isn't."

"Then how do you presume to know what I am hearing, Miss Ravinstill?"

"I presume knowledge over no such thing, Mr. Snow," Daphne responded blissfully innocent, playing along their taunting little game of formality, what would otherwise be expected and considered impeccably proper of them at all times. Perhaps some time, long ago, this would have been the standard, but now, they've known each other for so long that he even allowed her to call him Coryo and sometimes, she even let him call her Daffy — like her mother used to call her. "I am merely stating a fact. There is no such thing as 'nothing'."

"Oh, really?" Bored with staring up at the starry night that watched over their dangerously late meeting, Coriolanus found that his sarcasm demanded of him to turn on his side and plant his elbow better in the grass. His temple fell on his palm's bridge and his gaze lowered to find the night sky's reflextion in Daphne's eyes. She had a truly remarkable pair of eyes, much more interesting, he would admit, than his own plain blue. Depending on the light that fell upon them, her eyes seemed to change color and no matter how many times he got to witness that miracle up-close, as they were just then that night, Coriolanus always felt a smiled reflexology come into play on his side.

"Well, of course," Daphne moved her eyes off the stars and looked at him with that delicious glint in her eyes that seemed to communicate a second before her lips curved into a satisfied grin — I got you, you little idiot. "Nothing means the world is dead and we are too. So, as long as we are still here, there is always something." Just as abrupt as it was for her to let her gazes meet, she interrupted that connection, looking back ahead of her, at the stars. "Describe it for me, please."

"It?"

"The silence, dummy."

He hated when she called him that and admittedly, she called him that quite a bit; Coriolanus found it irritating each and every time. Nonetheless, it provoked within him that exact desire to prove himself, a desire that brought him this far in life and he knew it would take him as far as he was willing to go.