AS YOU MELT THIS HEART OF STONE

BEAUTIFUL

"I see your face in every sunrise

The colours of the morning are inside your eyes,

The world awakens in the light of the day

I look up to the sky and say -

You are beautiful....."

                                       - Phil Wickham

-----------------------

"Tell me I'm beautiful, Rickard."

She pleaded as she writhed in pleasure underneath me.

I looked into her pleading eyes. They were large and hollow, dark circles rimming them.

Her skin lost its natural glow. Her former long, lush hair looked lifeless.

She was a ghost of her former self.

Yet, she was trying, trying really hard to gather her broken pieces. At least she knew that she had choices. She called me to give her those.

She needed to hear this.

I looked straight into her eyes and said,

"You are beautiful woman, Aria Faulkner."

****************
I don't know how many minutes passed since I'd been driving in silence.

My mind was full of the strange encounter with George Faulkner and the memory of his dead daughter.

Aria Faulkner.

She was an ideal example to what happens to children when the parents are too busy enjoying their own lives.

She was one of those people who, not finding any other way to escape reality, decided to submerge into the nothingness only drugs can provide.

My mind wandered to those blurry days when I decided to loose myself in drugs in stead of facing the dim aspects which reality had to offer.

A muffled sniff brought my attention to the present, to the person sitting beside me in the car.

Charlotte Thorne.

I looked at her through the corner of my eyes.

She was hugging herself vulnerably to stop herself from shaking. Then I noticed that she had been crying silently for quite a few minutes. Her downcast face seemed blotchy.

A foreign feeling of care and concern surged into the farthest corners of my heart.

I was taken aback by my own reaction.

What was the matter with her? Why was she crying? She seemed to be in pain...

But more than those, another question was more nagging at that moment-

Whatever happened to her, why was that a serious concern to me?

Well, it was, in no way, a new question. Day by day this very question was arising more frequently, every time without any satisfactory answer.

The sniffling turned into sobs, which were becoming louder and louder with each passing moment. She was uncontrollably shaking now, covering her face with both of her hands.

What the hell was wrong with her.

Was she injured?

She was completly breaking down in front of my eyes, taking down layers of my mental shield with it.