Promises Unkept

Midnight kisses.

Perhaps it was as such. Perhaps for Maggie, fantasies were the ground holding up her breath.

And when Eden asked her to stop living in fantasies, so she did.

She stopped living in fantasies. She lost her ground. She stopped existing altogether.

The instigation grew too much upon her making her already wounded nails dig into the windowsills and her jaws ground together.

An ephemeral wish to throw herself off the ledge flickered in her head.

She staggered away from the window with a start, breathing heavily, stumbled on the by-stand and knocked the sophisticated vase off balance.

Before she could help or hold onto the handles of the chinaware, the porcelain crashed on the wooden floor with a deafening clamor, its shattering cry ringing loud in the dead of the night and the echo that followed bellowed the walls of her room making her flinch in shock, cover her ears and shut her eyes hard.

As if, if she were to refuse acknowledging accidents, they would stop happening actually.

Long after the vase had witnessed its tragic end, long after its pieces had been speckled all over the five feet circum on the floor, long after its infringemental racket had died and so had its echoes, Eden dared opening her eyes.

She winced at the sight of tiny, jagged pieces of the bone china, wondering who on earth caused such indemnity in middle of the night.

She stood a moment there, staring at the mess. Slouching.

Wondering suitable excuses for next morning.

There then, hunching down, she reached for the largest shard of the ware, grimaced at it and started collecting rest of the pieces, as quickly as she could when footsteps from beyond the door made her fingers freeze in dread.

She was still drooping on the floor as the door of her room was rammed open, showing up a very bewildered Lord Stephen at the door, with a lit candle in his hand.

From between his Lordships feet and the doorframe, a tiny head popped into the room, Pie_ that was, and then a tiny body squeezed in and Pie was into the room, woofing at Eden in what appeared_ a midnight salutation.

Eden straightened slowly, the shards from her hand, meanwhile, slipped off with exhorting din, making her look chastised as if she had been caught in a mid-foolery.

"What even were you trying to do?"

His voice was gentle and somewhat hoarse from sleep. His eyes looked drowsy from this mid-sleep dilemma but equally bright from the reflection of candle from his emerald irises.

Pie yapped at her.

"I was only_ I was opening the window." Eden explained to Pie, avoiding Lord Adelwood. "This stool came in way."

Pie ignored her, and busied himself in sniffing at the broken chunks littering the floor, hoping to find something of its interest.

Stephen, on the other hand, leaned his head onto the door-frame, sighing. He watched her stand penalized in the moonlight, the radiance assigning an enticing shadow to her face, by her small nose and slim lips, making him wonder how he had ever thought of her to be unsightly.

Eden felt even more convicted for disturbing him in sleep as he accessed her from across the distance with intense force of eyes.

"Was it much expensive?" She blurted out as her nerves got better of her.

"Quite." He answered.

"How much?" She asked.

"It was imported."