The Lost Souls

I Won't Give Up On You

For a place that freaks me out way too much I'm here far too often, I think to myself. Fate seems to keep bringing me here, all the more reason to believe I'm meant to play this part. The house shudders, from the cold and the impact of it, I hear the clinking of glass from the above windows, the wobble of a plate in the direction of the kitchen. It's angry again, so furious it has the power to shake a temple of concrete and plaster. Imagine if I was still out there, I would have been blown away by now. Maybe even dead. Thrown against a tree, the crack of my skull. Possibly. I sit in silence, my breathing loud but settled, way calmer than I was an hour ago. My fingers were shaking too much to find my own keys, that's why I'm here again. Now I can feel the metal jagged sticks in my fingers, they jingle as I play with them, my little finger tracing the grooves. He fumbles around, digging through the duffle for something I probably don't need; I'm not bleeding, just distraught. Or maybe he's just busying himself so we don't have to make conversation when he made a promise not to. That promise is pretty much non-existent now; we're breathing the same air. Getting home tonight seems to me as an idea that is too far away from me to grasp.

The Samoyed watches me attentively at the furthest corner from me, I thought dogs acted on fear, not understood it. I never got its name; I doubt 'bro' is it. Its head lies on its paws, its tail thumping against the floorboards, it stays put, blinking at me and I wonder if it has intelligence. One medium-sized candle with a metal casing around it sits on a plate on the slanted table. Just the one and I can't see any others here. I realize now that living in a place where no has lived for years has no perks, he has barely nothing to live on. It just seems weird to me, Virtues have everything and have nothing here doesn't bother him. If he's limited to just a few candles, what else is he limited on? How can he still smile with all these limitations? I just don't understand him at all. A fleeting thought of sparing a few candles passes through me, I shrug it away.

His hair drips rhythmically into his sweat-stained shirt, he stares out of the shattered window, deep in thought, his arms crossed on the ledge. His jumper discarded, slung over the arm of the couch carelessly, I can see the tightness in his arms. SNAP! My shoulders shudder violently like the house. I will never be prepared for that attack. The flash of electricity makes his hair look blonde for half a second, his eyes silver, but it has no effect on him otherwise, his stance at the window is unfaltering in the slightest. It's almost as if he's seen it before, many times. He's a Virtue, lightning can't be recreated either. My clothes are damp from rainfall; my nose is cold with sickness. I have a headache on the right side of my head.

"At first I thought it was the rain that bothered you because you kept looking up at the sky. But I realize now it's not the rain, it's the dark.", He muses; I'm broken from my rambling thoughts to stare in the suddenness of his observations. A sad smile plays on his lips, his extends his hand through the hole of which glass joins in jagged ends, droplets coating it like how a dog would lick your fingers. I stay unresponsive, keeping to my end of the promise, playing with my keys. My fingers fumble and it falls to the floor in a crash of jingles. I pick it up clumsily, its rattle swallows up his observations, at least I hope it does. "What scares you more, Nanook or the dark?", I realize Nanook is the name of the dog as he gestures to it with a jerk of his chin. It stands on its legs at the call of its name and I feel tense again. I don't want to answer those creeping questions either.

"Why did you promise to stay out of my way if you couldn't do it?"

"Turns out promising something like that was out of my hands. Meeting you there was a coincidence, in fact I never saw you that deep into the forest till today. Besides, you needed help. Didn't you?"

"I was fine."

"If you were fine, would you be here?", He's relentless at trying to figure me out and I wish he would stop trying. I want to be kept a secret, a mystery. He pries at my frayed ends, pulling at them so the fabric comes loose and unravels me. He has to go, or I have to go. If I stay here any longer, if coincidence puts me in the same place as him again, he'll keep trying to figure me out. Or maybe I should do the same. Would he stop trying to figure me out if I tried to figure him out? But could I do it? I'm not clever, not even near as smart as a Virtue, he works me out in seconds, it'd take me days if I tried. The skin tears again, at my lip, my fingers bothering it and making it sore. It throbs in time with the ticking of the clock. The storm won't let up, I want to go. Nanook closes his eyes, its body limp with sleep on the floor.