Reign || Harry Styles

30: Tender

Hot steam, like having a mind of its own, smoldered from the yellow mug wrapped in the hands of Elsie Waters and swirled livelily in the free air. It was from the beverage in her favourite mug, the one she got as a gift for her birthday.

(It was from Louis.)

Not only was yellow her favourite colour, yellow was also the basic hue of her hair. The basic colour of her being, too.

Elsie Waters had yellow smiles, yellow touches, yellow laughters, yellow kisses, yellow cuddles and yellow yellow yellow yellowyellowyellowyel—

Harry Styles, who had changed into a plain white t-shirt, eyed his girlfriend from behind the kitchen counter where he poured hot water into a mug of his own. The first thing he noticed was her hair. It was left rather wavy from the ponytail, and the sides tucked back behind both ears, with a few lone strands dangling at front. He wanted so badly to play with it, twirl it around his fingers, but Elsie was not exactly in the correct mood to play with.

Then he noticed the way she sat. Cross-legged on the sofa, like her usual meditating pose. Her posture, also, was unnaturally stoic, and it had been that way since she started sitting.

She made the least movement possible, only the bare minimum. Like a computer on power-saving mode with the brightness turned down to ten percent.

It was a particularly dim night anyway. Even the stars forgot to shine.

The curly-headed bloke lifted his mug by its rims and walked over to the girl on the sofa, sat right next to her. She sipped on the steaming hot camomile tea, and lowered her arms back to their previous position.

There was something odd about her look. Something . . . robotic. Those usually gleaming blue eyes stared straight almost absently. If you trace her line of sight, it is possible to figure out that she was staring out the window, eyes lost in the pitch black hemisphere.

Where the stars—perhaps, the most dazzling element of the sky—forgot to shine that night.

But there would always be the moon.

A full moon, to be precise. A bright, spherical, full moon.

"You know, Elsie," started Harry, voice coming out rather gravelly, so he coughed it off afterwards. "The stars we see in the sky are actually the stars eight minutes ago, because of how light has to travel through the vast distance in space to finally reach Earth." Elsie was still engaged with the view. "The stars we see right now might already be dead."

"But there are no stars right now," she said, soft and low.

"They're all dead," he responded tartly.

"That's a very negative outlook, Harry."

He said nothing.

With one robotic movement, she placed her yellow mug on the coffee table with a soft thud, and sat back to her previous position. There was a looming silence, for a moment. Harry spent that looming silence by taking a few sips of his camomile tea.

Then another, and another, and another.

"Do you still love me, Harry?" said Elsie, all so sudden. The words came out rushed and forced, though they did not tremble at the slightest. Elsie Waters had been building up her strength for this moment. For this question. The question that she forced herself to spit out into the free air, and now it hung idly in time and space.