SG's Short Story Thread

[Richard Parker]

Hey everyone,

These are some of the short stories I've written; since I write a lot of them I thought I'd just put them all in one thread. xD I'll post them in separate posts, and I'll undoubtedly add more as time goes on, so please come back to read the new ones.

Thanks for reading,
~Survivor Guilt

[Richard Parker]

This is a short story that I wrote last weekend; I hope you like it!

An Angel x Her Statue
Altagracia x Calx - Young and Old

I open my eyes blearily, the brilliant light all around stunning me as I do so. It is a few moments before I am finally able to see and, when I am, I gasp at the sight before me.
A beautiful woman, with flowing brown hair and kind red-brown eyes, is standing before me with a knowing smile so stunning that it takes my breath away.
"How are you?" she asks me gently, taking a step forward to lay a hand on my arm and peer into my eyes concernedly.
"I am perfectly fine. In fact, I have been made wonderful by seeing you," I reply, completely dazed by her radiance, and she laughs, a sound so melodious that it makes the best opera sound out of tune in comparison. Suddenly it occurs to me that it must look like something is wrong with me for her to ask such a thing, and I question, "Why do you ask, milady?"
"Look down at yourself," she merely responds, her smile getting bigger at the amazed look on my face as I do so.
The best I can tell, I am completely and solidly stone. I am a uniform dark grey color everywhere that I can see, and, as I raise a hand to knock on myself, I don't feel anything but hear a dull knocking sound that confirms my suspicions.
"But... but... how is this possible? I should not be alive, if I am stone!" I exclaim, continuing to look myself over in a state of amazement as I remind myself to breathe. I suppose I don't really have to breathe, considering I have no lungs that need air or any living flesh that needs oxygen, but breathing feels natural, somehow, like it's something I'm supposed to do, even if I don't have to do it.
"I gave you a consciousness, and then gave you a spark of life, so I assure you, you are very much alive," the woman tells me as she gives me a wise smile, and I look up at her in surprise and realization. For her to have made me alive, she must be something more than just an ordinary life form.
"Who are you?" I ask her quietly, my eyes locked on hers, and her smile deepens some as she answers, clearly not intending to give me the information I am after, "Altagracia."
"High Grace," I translate immediately, to stun even myself. How on earth do I know a different language, when I was apparently a statue before this?
"So you do know Latin," Altagracia murmurs, her expression becoming even more pleased as she looks me up and down. "Apparently the Roman heritage of where you existed as a statue got inside of you somehow, so much so that you can apparently speak their language."
Immediately, without any warning, she switches over to an entirely different tongue that I originally do not understand at all. However, after listening carefully, I am able to understand that she is asking me, "What is your name?" and I answer, in the same tongue, "I do not know what my name is, so I shall go by Rock."
"Calx, then," she says, in the language we were originally speaking in, and gives me a pleased smile.
Suddenly it occurs to me that, presuming the civilization that originally sculpted me hasn't disappeared, Latin is still spoken, and I ask Altagracia, "Why are we speaking in this foreign tongue, if Latin is still being spoken?"
"Because this tongue - they call it English - is the language that will take over the world and be spoken almost everywhere in about fifteen hundred years, so you should get all the practice speaking it now that you can so you are fully prepared, come fifteen hundred years from now." She gives me a beaming smile, and, even though I'm stone, I feel like I'm melting from the warmth radiating out from her.
"What do you mean, about being fully prepared to speak English fifteen hundred years from now?" I ask her, and proceed to think aloud, "Does that mean I will be alive - well," I quickly amend, seeing as I'm not technically alive right now, "have a consciousness - in fifteen hundred years?"
"Hopefully you will still be by my side in fifteen hundred years, yes," Altagracia replies, her smile getting even larger at the look of amazement on my face. "You do not think I made you for no purpose, did you? I need a lieutenant, one who is made of strong enough stuff to last a while with me, and, as I was perusing Rome, you caught my eye and I decided that you were it, you were the one who would be my lieutenant."
Altagracia's lieutenant, for fifteen hundred years? I couldn't ask for more; in fact, if I were not afraid of her changing her mind and deciding that I am not mature enough to be her lieutenant, I would be jumping and down with joy right now.
"I would be honored to spend any time as your lieutenant, milady," I tell her sincerely and solemnly, bowing to her as I try my hardest to stop a huge grin of pure joy from breaking out across my face.
"Thank you, Calx," she responds, and I look up from my bow to find her giving me a caring and knowing smile. "And as for your original question, of who I am," she adds, and her smile changes to become almost playful now, "I am an angel, one of those beings created to save humanity one person at a time, and now you are my lieutenant, a saver of the world in your own right." Her smile changes to become knowing again, as if she can see into my soul and recognize my sheer joy at this great piece of luck, and she waves her hand and a huge hole, upon which a peaceful forest slumbers, appears in the whiteness around us.
"We have much to talk about, Calx, so let us do it in your world, the world of the humans," she tells me, and I immediately step through the hole, without any further prompting from her, to hear the cracking of twigs underneath my heavy stone foot.
I then wait for her respectfully, and follow her as she picks a path through the forest, my mind continually occupied by the fact that, even though I could spend forever with her and still not have enough time with her, fifteen hundred years will have to do.

"Calx, sometimes I wonder if the human world is beyond saving," Altagracia says with a deep sigh as we look down at the battle raging below us. United States Marines, in camouflage fatigues with M-16s in their hands, are firing at a group of Taliban fighters, who have taken over a local town and are holing up inside the buildings for now. There are at least five dead and ten wounded on each side, and still they continue to fire at each other and leave the wounded out in the line of fire.
I look over at her to see her beautiful face, which has not physically aged at all over the last sixteen hundred years, is incredibly sad and realize, with a start, that she seems almost older, and weary. I suppose I can't really blame her though, with all of the brutality and blood we've seen and all of the people we've failed to save.
However, her saying something like that is unacceptable in my eyes, so I immediately tell her, "Altagracia, don't say that! Think of all of the people we have saved, all of the lives we have changed, together!"
She looks over at me, and a sad smile takes over her expression. I don't even have to look down to know the reason for her sadness: I am falling apart, literally, as sixteen hundred years of trying to save humanity has not been kind to me at all. For the last hundred years, I have been steadily crumbling, with a large chunk of my left hand falling off twenty years ago and hunk of my back giving way just a week ago. The black, leathery wings she gave me to help me keep up with her when we fly are now scarred and tattered in places, and the steel armor I earned during the Crusades is now rusty and dented. Both of us know that it isn't much longer before I completely fall apart and am done in for good, but, of course, neither one of us says this because neither one of us wants to face the reality that we will be losing the other very soon.
"Calx, you yourself are a perfect example of all of the brutality humanity has put us through," she says quietly, her eyes, which used to be filled with happiness and energy but are now filled with sadness and weariness, locked on mine, and I can't help but think that, if I am falling apart on the outside, then she is falling apart on the inside.
"The fact that I am crumbling after sixteen hundred years is no reason to stop believing in the inherent goodness of humanity!" I protest, and Altagracia looks away, her expression now just unbearably sad. Suddenly it occurs to me that she hasn't been this sad ever before, and that there must be some other reason besides the fight going on below us for her to be so melancholy.
"Milady, what is wrong?" I ask her gently, reaching a stone hand out to touch her arm.
She looks back up at me to meet my gaze again and whisper, "I do not want you to leave me, Calx."
"I do not want to leave you either," I respond, my heart filling with the same anguish that's dominating her expression.
"It is hard to believe that it has been sixteen hundred years since I first gave you life," she murmurs, and I nod my head in agreement. The millennium and a half we have spent together has gone by so quickly that it's almost impossible to think that it was sixteen hundred years ago when she first gave me life.
"Forever with you would seem like an unbearably short time," I add quietly, and small, incredibly sad half-smile flits across her face for a moment. I have been in love with her from the moment I first laid eyes on her, and she has known it all along too, although she has never said anything about it. However, some part of me now wonders if she shared my feelings some.
After a few moments of silence pass between us, I finally work up enough confidence to say the thought on my mind, and tell her, "Milady, I do not want to die when nature says I should die. I want to die on my own time, and on my own terms, so I am asking you to take away my life-force, like you once gave it to me." I meet her slightly stunned gaze confidently, and, after a half-second of considering what I've said, she asks me, her tone grave, "Calx, are you sure this is what you want?"
"I have never been surer of anything in my life, milady, except my love for you," I answer, and she bows her head slightly.
She then looks back up at me and questions quietly, her eyes locked on mine, "Are you ready?"
I nod my head wordlessly, and she extends her hand out to lay it on my chest. Immediately, I feel my life force being drawn out of me, and, a few moments before it feels like I'm going to be just be an inanimate statue again, she asks me, as she meets my gaze, "Any last requests?"
"That you don't forget me, milady," I reply, just as everything starts to go grey and my senses start to fade.
However, my eyes are still sharp enough to see her close the gap between us with a step, so that her face is only inches from mine, and my ears are still keen enough to here her murmur, "I could never forget you, Calx."
My sight then gives out, and my hearing follows immediately after, but my sense of feeling remains intact, so that the last thing I feel before everything goes away is her lips on mine.

[Richard Parker]

This is a story that I wrote at the end of July, and I think I did a decent job on it; again, I hope you like it!

A Man x His Guardian Angel
James x Katherine

Light invades my newly-opened eyes, and I blink rapidly and squint. Wiping my eyes, I yawn and pull myself into a sitting position, then run my hands through my silver hair. It’s been silver since I was born, and, since it’s a far different color from the gray that takes over people’s scalps as they age, I’ve never really thought much of it. Slowly I slide my feet off of the end of the bed to have them touch the cold wood floor, and I stand up.
Instinctively I look over to the other side of the mattress, a small glimmer of hope building up inside of me, and sigh when I see that she’s not there. Martha’s never home when I wake up anymore; whenever I ask her about it, she always says she has too much to do to get a late start on the day. I guess she has so much to do that she can’t wait to leave till six in the morning to say goodbye to her husband.
Shrugging my shoulders, I let a large sigh of weariness escape me, and pad out to the kitchen slowly. I pour myself some coffee and take a few fortifying sips before I sit down at the dining room table and look at all the bills that have to be paid. I toss the water and electric bills aside, since those will be paid last, and look through all of the other charges Martha has racked up over the last month. About five hundred dollars in new clothes from some online department store, three hundred dollars in new shoes from another online department store, a four hundred dollar hotel bill… Wait, a hotel bill?
Martha and I didn’t go to any hotels last month; in fact, we haven’t gone to a hotel together in almost two years, so why on earth were we sent a hotel bill? The first thought that runs through my mind is that they sent the bill to the wrong people, that there was a mix-up and this charge doesn’t actually belong to us. However, that theory is proved false when I open the bill and find the name Martha Slayter at the top of the invoice.
Shaking my head in confusion, I run over the potential reasons as to why my wife stayed in a hotel for two nights without telling me. Maybe she just wanted some alone time away from everyone, so, instead of going on that business conference she told me about, she went to a hotel instead. That doesn’t make sense though; Martha doesn’t miss business conferences, and she doesn’t need or want alone time either. To be perfectly honest, she would probably die if she had almost no interaction with people for two days, as her whole life revolves around socializing and getting out and gossiping. She tries to fit in with the wealthier people at her work, so she always ends up outspending what we have to make herself look and act and live like them.
There is one other possibility, one that I do not want to face, that explains her behavior: she is seeing someone else, and is trying to hide it from me. As soon as the thought pops into my head, I immediately wonder why on earth she would be having an affair. I have been everything she ever wanted, given her everything she wanted, done everything she ever wanted. I have always been there for her, I have always loved her with all of my heart, and I have done – or at least I thought I did – everything right.
As I run my hand through my hair and desperately try to come up with other explanations for her behavior, the reflective glimmer of something on the countertop catches my eye, and I rise to my feet to find myself staring down at Martha’s phone. She never leaves her phone, never, since she likes to be able to communicate with people twenty-four/seven, so I am stunned and more than a bit suspicious now. I pick the phone up and am about to flip it open when I pause. I really don’t want to search her phone, and violate her privacy, but I also want to know why on earth she was at a hotel for two days last week when she should have been at a business conference, and her phone could potentially hold answers.
Eventually my curiosity wins out, and I flip open the phone to find the last-called number – which, according to the phone, also happens to be the most-called number – on the screen with the contact name of ‘Ivan’. I stare at the number for a few moments before pressing the green button to dial it, and I almost cautiously hold the phone to my ear to hear it ring.
On the second ring, a man with a thick Russian accent picks up. “Hey, baby,” he greets, and I can almost see the stupid smile on his face.
I snap the phone shut, and my hand curls into a fist around it. Suddenly there’s a noise at the front door, and I look up find Martha coming in, looking very rushed. Her expression becomes confused when she sees the stony look on my face, and her eyes dart to the phone in my hand. Realization flashes through her eyes like electricity, and she murmurs, as she runs up the stairs towards me, “James.”
Numb in my anger, I ignore her words and set the phone down to grab my jacket from the back of my chair and walk past her down the stairs that lead to the front door. “James, please give me a chance to explain!” she cries, but I continue to pretend like she doesn’t exist.
It’s only when she runs down the stairs to grab me by the arm that I finally say something. “Martha, I have given you plenty of chances. You do not get another one,” I tell her quietly, meeting her tear-filled eyes for a moment before walking out the door.

I shove my hands into my jacket pockets, where they immediately ball into fists. Lowering my head against the wicked, frozen wind, I let myself think about what Martha cheating means for our relationship.
I’m going to file for divorce as soon as I can, since I am a firm believer in the ideal that, if you don’t have trust in a relationship, you don’t have anything at all. The house and both cars are mine, technically, since I had them all before I married Martha three years ago, so I guess I won’t have to worry about losing them. In fact, I won’t have to worry about losing anything – except for Martha.
I don’t know what I’ll do without her. She has been my whole life for the last three years, so I don’t know how I’ll fill the void that she’ll leave in my life. I suppose I could always find another person, or discover a hobby to occupy my time, but neither one of those is likely to happen anytime soon.
My eyes rove over the pavement in front of me, seeing but not really paying attention, and, as they pass over a huge, deep sinkhole in the sidewalk in front of me, I think absentmindedly that someone should really fix that.
All of a sudden, a beautiful woman with white eyes and white hair and white skin dressed in white appears in my mind, and she yells, “Stop!”
Snapping to attention and looking up, I find that I am one step away from my death. I peer down into the sinkhole in front of me and see that it’s probably at least twenty feet to the bottom, and I shiver involuntarily. I hate heights and looking down, since they both remind me of how small and fragile I am, so I quickly step away from the hole and turn around. I think of the woman, and how she saved my life, and I shake my head in confusion.
I know that there is a rational explanation for her appearance, that she didn’t actually just appear in my mind out of her own accord. No, I tell myself, she was my subconscious’s way of warning me of the danger; why my subconscious chose to warn me by using an angel, I don’t know. I am sure that she was an angel, as she was far too beautiful, far too white and far too wise to be anything else. I find that kind of odd, as I have never believed in God or angels, but maybe that’s my own way of telling myself to go to church more.
I sigh and shake my head again, and something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye. Looking up, I catch a flash of pure white – and then it’s gone as quickly as it appeared. I stare at the spot I saw the white for a few seconds until it occurs to me what actually happened: I’m hallucinating.
“Oh my God, I’m going crazy!” I mutter, and shake my head one more time, in an attempt to clear all insane thoughts out of my mind. However, I notice that there is a small church on the street corner, and I can’t stop myself from entering the building.
Inside, it is incredibly quiet, and, as I step into the main chapel, I am amazed by the richness of the place. The carpet underneath my feet is unmistakably red velvet, and there is what has to be gold inlay in the wood of the well-worn benches. Squatting down, I reach a hand out to touch the benches and find myself tracing the golden patterns with one extended index finger. After a moment, I realize how stupid I must look, and immediately I stand back up and brush myself off, as if I can brush all memory of that foolish act off with the dust. I then continue my approach down the center aisle and towards the ornate cross that takes up the end of the center aisle.
I continue to look around me as I walk, still very surprised by how fancy the little church is. When I am about five feet away from the cross, I freeze, as I don’t know what the proper etiquette is for approaching a holy symbol. A vague thought that I should probably bow surfaces in my mind, so I bend over in front of the cross. Even though I know I probably look incredibly stupid right now, I can’t bring myself to stop bowing to the cross, because I don’t think that God – if he/she/it exists – really cares about what you look like when you’re respecting a holy symbol. All of a sudden, I hear the beautiful, clear laugh of a woman ring around the church, and I immediately stand up, glancing around at my surroundings. I have an urge to cry out, “Who’s there?” but I don’t when I see that there’s no one around. I then get a feeling that it’s the angel I saw earlier, although I never hear her speak, but that feeling disappears as soon as my common sense and logic set in. Shaking my head – like I could actually get rid of my hallucinations that way – I look around me again. The laughter sounded so real, and nothing like a trick that my mind played on me at all, that I can’t help but wonder if I actually did hear it.
I wait a few seconds before continuing to walk towards the cross, and, when I do, I’m moving at a much slower pace. At about a foot away, I stop and regard the cross for a few moments, then hesitantly reach a hand out. For some reason, I feel compelled to touch the cross, as if feeling the wood and metal underneath my fingers will get me divine guidance or will somehow help with my problems. Even though my common sense tells me that’s all false, that I can’t get any help from a piece of wood and metal, I still find myself laying a gentle finger on the surprisingly warm wood.
As soon as I touch the cross, the angel appears in my mind again. “James,” she murmurs, and gives me a radiant white smile. She opens her mouth, like she is about to say more – to vanish when I pull my hand away from the cross like the wood burned me.
Holding my hand up and staring down at the index finger that, a moment ago, was resting on the cross, I examine it carefully, looking for any signs of abnormality or anything at all that could rationally explain what just happened. When I find nothing out of the ordinary, I shake my head and bury my face in my hands.
My fear and confusion turns to anger after a few moments, and I yell up at the church ceiling, “Stay out of my mind!”
“But I am only trying to help you, James,” a voice whispers in my brain, and I know, without a doubt, that it’s the angel.

I flee from the church like I committed a murder in it and find myself at home in only ten minutes, half the time it took me to get to the sinkhole and then eventually the church. Martha is gone, of course – I didn’t expect her to be home – and I sigh in relief as I flop my jacket over the back of my chair and walk to the bathroom down the hall to turn the water on cold. The angel cannot find me here, I think to myself.
I run a hand through my hair, and, after about a minute of just standing in silence with water running and hopefully letting myself return to sanity, I cautiously allow myself to think about what happened before and during the time I was in the church. The angel appearing to me as I was about to step into the sinkhole was just my subconscious’s way of warning me, and the flash of white I saw out of the corner of my eye a few seconds later could have been anything. The laughter, the vision from touching the cross, and the voice in my mind were all made up, all hallucinations. None of them were real, I tell myself, and I make myself believe it. Believing in angels and gods hasn’t gotten me anywhere before, so I’m not inclined to think that it will get me anywhere now. I cup my hands under the stream of water, and bend down to splash myself in the face with the cold liquid. Dragging my hands down across my cheeks, I stand up again to look at my reflection in the mirror. I suppose I was handsome once – apparently not too long ago, if a woman as beautiful as Martha married me only three years ago – but now all I am is tired and weary and sad. Even my electric green eyes, which generally dance with energy, are dull and empty.
Sighing, I turn the water off, exit the bathroom, and am about to retrieve my coffee cup from the countertop in the kitchen when I realize how tired I am. I turn around in mid-stride and walk slowly up towards Martha's and my bedroom – I guess it’s just my bedroom now – to fall onto the bed and close my eyes.

The angel is there, waiting for me. “James,” she murmurs, smiling at me, just like she did in the church, but I do not open my eyes or attempt to break away from her this time.
“It is nice that you have finally decided to stop running,” she tells me, her voice the most stunning thing I have ever heard, and lays one pure white hand on my forearm. “Come with me,” she bids. “We have much to talk about.”
I grin despite myself and let her lead me to a set of two stairs as white and bright as everything else around me. At her gesture, I take a seat on the top stair, and she sits down next to me, a serene, wise smile on her face and her eyes locked on mine the whole time. “James, do you know why Martha cheated on you?” the angel asks me, and burst of anger shoots through me. It’s not her business to be asking me something like that!
“No, and I’m not sure I want to,” I tell her curtly as I drop my gaze, only to have her gently cup my chin in her palm and raise my head so that I am looking at her again.
“James, Martha cheated on you because she thinks she can do better than you, because she wants money that you don’t have but that Ivan does,” the angel murmurs, her gaze locked on mine, and a spasm of rage – this one directed at Martha – shoots through me again. I am just about to rise to my feet when the angel’s voice halts me. “But James, what she did not realize is that money doesn’t really matter, and that she cannot do better than you.” The angel pauses for a moment. “James, you are perfect for her. All you need to do is make her realize that.”
I nod my head in understanding of the angel’s words, flooded with a wave of relief and determination, and we proceed to sit in silence for a few long moments. Surprisingly, the quiet is not awkward at all; in fact, I feel almost awkward breaking it by speaking. “May I ask you two questions?” I question the angel, and she nods her head in confirmation.
“Of course,” she answers, giving me a smile. “You may ask me anything you like, but please know that you may not get the answer you are looking for.”
“I know,” I tell her quietly, giving her a grin of my own, then ask her, completely overwhelmed by curiosity, “What is your name?”
“Katherine,” she answers, and I idly think that there isn’t a person in the world who could carry such a regal name better. After a few more seconds pass in quiet, she prompts me, “And as for question number two?”
I hesitate, not knowing if I should ask her but desperately wanting to. Her words about me being able to ask her anything pop into my mind, and, before I know what I’m doing, I burst out, “Do you exist?”
“That, James,” she begins, a small smile quirking her lips as she stares over at me, “is for you to decide.”

[Richard Parker]

On Chicken Smoothie, I'm participating in the Halloween gifting game Lights On Lights Off, and this is the story I use for trick-or-treating. I think it's decent, and I hope you find it decent too.

[Only admins are allowed to see this image]

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Muñeco asks dubiously as he looks down at himself. The devil costume he’s wearing has hidden a good deal of the patches covering his body, but it’s still obvious that he doesn’t have normal human skin.
“Of course I am,” the little illuminary, that goes by Jack, says as it leaps around Muñeco to be directly in front of him. “Muñeco, I’ve been your official Halloween costume designer for a hundred and twenty two years, and we haven’t been spotted by the humans yet!”
“You better be right Jack, otherwise I’m going to let the fire from your candle finally eat you,” Muñeco threatens, but they both know that that’s an empty threat.
Even though Jack can be incredibly annoying and really make Muñeco want to let him burn up sometimes, Muñeco would have no one if that happened, and he knows all too well that having no one is much worse than having a talkative, hopping, boastful little Halloween illuminary whose candle you have to re-light every few hours.
“Now, no talking this year,” Muñeco tells Jack sternly as he bends down and sticks out his hand for Jack to leap up. As soon as Jack does, Muñeco stands back up, as Jack hops up Muñeco’s suit-sleeve and finally comes to a stop on Muñeco’s shoulder. “You gave that poor old lady a heart attack last year, and I don’t want to have to flee the scene of your crime again, alright?”
Muñeco twists his head so that Jack is in his view, and the little illuminary nods – well, folds the top part of himself down in what is supposed to be a nod – his understanding.
“Got it, no talking this year,” Jack echoes. “I will be dead quiet, as quiet as a fox, and as sneaky as one too. Oh, that reminds me, did you see-”
“Can you start being dead quiet now?” Muñeco interrupts Jack, and Jack immediately shuts up, much to Muñeco’s relief. Jack can give you a headache when he’s not talking directly into your ear, so Muñeco probably could empty an entire Advil bottle after five minutes of Jack chatting on his shoulder.
Suddenly, the old grandfather clock in the living room begins to ring, and eight chimes echo through the house before everything falls silent again.
“Alright, let’s go Jack,” Muñeco says, as he picks up the pitchfork that completes his costume and his pumpkin-shaped candy bucket to collect all of the goodies everyone’s going to be giving out. As Muñeco reaches the door and pulls it open, a devious smile spreads across his face, and he murmurs, looking absolutely frightful in the low light, “It’s time to go terrorize the neighborhood.”

[Richard Parker]

This is a short story I wrote about the main character of my novel, Lizzie Lightning, and another character of mine, Thalamon. Like always, I hope you like it, and feel free to comment/critique anything you read.

King Thalamon of Athens x Elizabeth Eleanor Marie Lightning

"Well isn't this wonderful?" I mutter under my breath as I peer out into the street. In accordance with Greek culture, I can't be seen out without a male escort, so I'm going to have to be sneaky in getting out of the city. "I'm lost in a different time with no way of getting back home." I'm estimating that it's about 400 BC, which means I'm about twenty-four hundred years out of date. Going back in time isn't in itself unusual to me, as I've gone many past places without ceremony. However, not being able to open a gateway back home is very unusual, as this is the first time it's happened and more than a bit disconcerting, since I really don't want to get stuck in Athens, circa 400 BC.
I don't see anyone else out on the street right now - it's about twilight, so most citizens are in their homes with their families - besides the guard at the gate, and I know I can take him out easily as long I sneak up on him. However, if I'm caught-
Suddenly there's a cry of, "Woman!" in Greek behind me - I am fluent in Greek, as well as many other languages - and I sigh to turn around and find a startled shop owner staring at me in shock and fear, the pottery he was holding a shattered mess on the ground at his feet. I hadn't seen him before because he was in the back of his shop, so I guess there's nothing I could have done to avoid this. It's a shame that I'm going to have to kill him before anyone else hears.
Drawing an arrow from the quiver on my back and fitting it into my bow, I aim at his heart and am about to fire when a pair of arms grabs me from behind. My bow and arrow clatter to the ground, and I immediately begin to wriggle and squirm for all of my might. I manage to turn around and face my assailant, who happens to be the same guard I saw at the gate and a good five inches shorter than I am, and headbutt him for all I'm worth. Instantly he lets go of me and falls to the ground, unconscious.
I then turn back to the shop owner who originally raised the alarm to find two other guards coming at me now.
"Oh, beautiful," I growl under my breath as I watch them approach me warily. Deciding to take a less violent approach, I stand up and tell them clearly, in perfect Greek, "I mean you no harm. I just wish to leave the city."
The guards seem very surprised that I speak Greek - it's not like I look Greek, after all - but the one on the left quickly recovers from his shock to answer, "You are a woman, and you cannot be out on the street without a male escort. I'm sorry, but we have to apprehend you."
"That's too bad," I say, and the guards immediately get suspicious again. After all, I'm supposed to be giving up. "I didn't really want to hurt you two."
The shock is just starting to register on both of their faces when I charge them, find the pressure point in their shoulders, and grip their shoulders tightly until they both fall to the ground, unconscious like the first guard.
However, the shopkeeper has been yelling his lungs off during the whole exchange, so by this time a crowd of at least twenty guards has gathered. Balling my hands into fists, I watch them all warily as they slowly walk towards me, and feel my heart sink into my stomach when I realize I'm surrounded with my bow kicked off to the side. I still do have arrows, which I suppose I could throw like darts, but all of the guards are wearing fully body armor and have swords and daggers hanging from their belt.
"I guess this is what they call going down fighting," I murmur, steeling myself for the guards to rush at me. Suddenly, before I can do anything else, a guard grabs me from behind, and two more grab my arms and pull them behind my back before I can even try to fight the first guard off. I feel something tightening around my wrists and sigh as I feel the rope binding them together. It looks like the guards are going to apprehend me after all.

I look up in surprise when I hear the sounds of a large crowd ahead of me, and see that there are in fact at least two thousand people lining the sides of the streets. My gaze then falls on the procession in the middle of the streets, and immediately I understand why.
Sitting at the head of a long parade of nobles, astride a majestic bay stallion is a young man who could only be King Thalamon, the ruler of Greece who the people love with all of their hearts. He smiles and waves and occasionally even throws coins into the crowd, and his golden cloak ripples out behind him in the wind as his blue-green-gray eyes dance. He seems to love the people as much as they love him.
Suddenly the king sees the escort of twenty guards, with me in the middle being securely held by four of them, and his eyes meet mine for a moment. In that moment, I see right into his soul, and the intelligence, compassion and love for these people and this city that I find there greatly surprises me. I mean, he's king of the most powerful empire on earth, and he's not even arrogant!
Apparently he sees something in my eyes that intrigues him as well, as he gestures for the leading guard to approach his horse. The guard immediately does so, and falls to his knees in reverence before the king. I smile slightly when I see the exasperated, almost annoyed expression on the king's face, and realize that he must not be a big fan of being treated like a god. Of course, I can't blame him.
"Why does it take twenty men to apprehend a woman walking on the streets alone, guard?" the king asks after the guard gets to his feet, his eyes on me with an amused interest.
"She is a very skilled fighter, and succeeding in defeating three guards before we managed to apprehend her, your Majesty," the guard replies, bowing conspicuously after he's done talking, and I can't help but roll my eyes at the gesture. That would get really annoying really quickly.
The king seems to notice my eye-roll, for a smile crosses his face, and he slides off of his horse to walk towards me. I realize, with a start, that he's actually about three or four inches taller than I am, which is very surprising given the time period. He must be almost a foot taller than average for an Athenian man.
He stops when he is about five feet away from me, gestures for the guards to release me, and says with a grin, "I have not seen a girl so adept at embarrassing my best men as you seem to be. Tell me, what is your name?" His eyes are locked on mine, and it occurs to me, with another start, that, despite his size and intelligence, he can't be more than twenty-one years old.
"Lizzie," I reply instantly, not even bothering to think about using a false name to throw him off.
One eyebrow arches in skepticism, and he asks, "Just Lizzie?"
"Well," I concede, "Elizabeth Eleanor Marie Lightning, but Lizzie's a lot shorter."
"Indeed it is," he agrees with a smile, and, taking me by surprise, turns to his second-in-command - who is by his side now - and says in a loud voice, "Prepare a meal and a bed for her in my quarters. It seems that Lizzie and I have much to talk about." He then closes the gap in between us with three strides, wraps his arm around my shoulders, and walks me back to his horse, at which point he insists on helping me up.
After mounting behind me, which I find very disconcerting, he murmurs in my ear, apparently sensing my distress, "I'm sorry if you find this inappropriate at all; this is just the only way for us to be able to talk, as I am very interested to hear about how you got these incredible fighting skills of yours."
Even though I'm surprised at the amount of respect he showed me - after all, women are basically on the same level as slaves in Athenian society - I'm still not happy about being apprehended, and even less happy about being picked up by the king. "It's a very long story, your Majesty," I reply stiffly, wanting nothing more than to slide off the horse and bolt for the gate.
"Please call me Thalamon; I will have none of that 'your Majesty' nonsense from a foreigner too," he tells me, and, upon hearing the disgust in his voice, I know that my suspicions about him disliking the gestures made to him because of his status are correct. "And I have all the time I could ever want at my disposal, so I would love to hear your very long story."
I feel him smiling over my shoulder, and can't help but sigh slightly. All I want to do is get out of this damn city, not spend hours telling the king about my days as an assassin!
However, I can't let any of my reservations manifest themselves, lest I get caught in the midst of forming my escape plans, so I reply, "My story you'll hear then," not being able to resist adding a slightly medieval flair to my words.
"Good. I look forward to hearing about it over dinner." I feel him smiling again, and immediately my eyes shoot open at the 'over dinner' part. Do I honestly have a date with the king of Athens?

Part II

"Do you play?" Thalamon gestures to what appears to be an elaborate chess set - some of the pieces are different, but it seems to be essentially the same game - laid out on a small table in the corner, his eyes on my face the whole time. I don't think he's stopped looking at me for a moment since we first sat down to eat and talk two hours ago; the complete attention he pays to me is almost unsettling, especially since I know what it most likely means. While I truly do like him - he is just as intelligent, kind and witty as I first judged him to be - I don't like him like that; I will never be able to feel that way about another man, not with the ghost of Luke haunting me everywhere I turn.
"I do, in fact," I answer with a smile, thinking that, even if I don't understand all of the rules, I will catch on quick enough, and cross the room to help him pull the table and chairs out from the wall.
When the table is fully pulled out and we're both seated, he asks me respectfully, giving me a kind smile, "Which color would you like?"
"Black," I reply immediately, without even thinking. I have too much bad experience with white things - namely a certain white city - to want to be white ever again.
Thalamon seems slightly surprised and almost skeptical at my choice, considering that black moves last, but turns the table without comment and then makes the first move.

"I give up," Thalamon exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air in capitulation and frustration. "You would have had me in five." It turns out the game is exactly the same as chess, so I'm absolutely destroying Thalamon.
"I would have had you in two," I correct with a smile, and his eyes shoot open wide in surprise. I then demonstrate how I would have checkmated him, and he shakes his head in amazement.
"You're amazing, Lizzie," he murmurs, and I unwillingly meet his gaze to find his eyes so full of intensity and longing that I have to resist the urge to rise to my feet and leave.
Fortunately, I am saved from having to answer by Thalamon's chief adviser, an average-looking but intelligent man named Marius, walking into the room and annoucing to Thalamon, "Your Majesty, Lady Auralia is here."
Reluctantly Thalamon tears his gaze away from me to look over at Marius, and immediately says, "I am busy; send her away."
"But Your Majesty-" - I can't help but notice Thalamon cringe slightly at the 'your majesty' part - "-Lady Auralia and her family have come all the way from Delphi-"
"I do not care," Thalamon says, his tone much firmer this time. "Send her away." He turns his gaze back onto me to x-ray my expression carefully. I wonder what he's looking for.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Marius says, bowing his head slightly in respect, and leaves the room as quickly as he came.
"Who is Lady Auralia?" I can't help but ask, and I can immediately tell, from the way his lips press together and his face darkens some, that he doesn't like her very much.
"She's fourteen, mindless, and scared out of her wits of me," he answers, shaking his head. He rises to his feet and turns away from me to exclaim and turn back to me after a moment, "And they expect me to marry her!"
"Well, you're the king," I reply, not seeing the issue. "You're the most powerful man in Greece, so can't you just not marry her?"
"I have to marry a lady, a woman of noble blood, and they are all fourteen and mindless and scared out of their wits of me," he says quietly, and drops his gaze to the floor to search the tiles for a moment. He then looks back up at me, looks me in the eye and tells me, "I don't want to marry any of the ladies. I want to marry someone intelligent, with their own opinions and thoughts and words, who's brave enough to stand up and make those opinions known, and who's closer to my age than those ladies. I want to marry someone I can have a decent conversation and a good debate with, and I want someone I can laugh with and play chess with, someone who truly can understand me, on a human-to-human level, someone I'm in love with. I want to marry someone like you, Lizzie," he finishes, his voice dropping to a whisper as he stares me down. His gaze is filling with intensity and longing again, and the urge to run out of the room has filled me again too. However, he isn't done talking yet, and continues, "Lizzie, I have only known you for three hours, and I already am hopelessly in love with you. You are everything I could ever want, and everything I do want, and I will give you anything you want - anything at all, no matter how big or how small - if you marry me.
"Thalamon, I can't..." I begin, shaking my head. While he is very attractive physically, and a perfect match for me mentally, I will never be able to love him, because my heart died with Luke two and a half months ago. Unfortunately, I can't tell him all of the details surrouding that, so how on earth do I get myself out of this one? I mean, he's the king of Athens, and he could have me killed if I don't marry him! Besides, the only thing I want is something he can't give me, something no one except for death himself can give me: Luke back.
"Why can't you?" he asks me, his eyes glued to my expression. He takes a step forward to lay a gentle, reassuring hand on my arm, and surprisingly I find that I don't want to pull away.
"Because my heart belongs to a dead man," I murmur quietly, and he bows his head in understanding and removes his hand from my arm. A few moments go by in silence, neither one of us knowing what to say, until my sympathy for Thalamon's situation boils over and I burst out, "I would marry you though, to stop you from having to marry one of those mindless, frightened fourteen-year-old ladies." I've already told Thalamon that I am a lady - technically I'm a princess, with my dad being King of Storms - so I would fulfill his requirements for a noble bride.
A huge smile breaks out across Thalamon's face, and he asks me, "You're not joking?"
"No, as long as you understand three things." His smile is infectious, and I can't help but feel the corners of my mouth turn upwards as I look at him.
"Of course," he immediately replies, all trace of the beaming grin that was on his face seconds earlier completely gone and his expression absolutely serious.
"Number one: This is merely a favor, to stop you from having to marry one of those mindless little girls, and does not mean that I share your feelings or am attracted to you in the slightest." Thalamon instantly nods his head, and I continue, "Number two: I will not get physically intimate with you at all." Thalamon nods his head again, although I can see a little disappointment in his expression, and I finish, knowing this one is going to be the hardest one of all for him to swallow, "And number three: At some point or another, I will have to leave."
Much to my surprise, Thalamon merely nods his head a third time and tells me with a smile, "As long as I get to kiss you at the wedding."

"Do you believe in the gods?" Thalamon asks me, his eyes locked on mine. We're both sprawled out on our stomachs on the richly carpeted floor of his bedroom, the modified Greek chessboard we've played on so many times before between us. Like usual, he's losing magnificently.
"I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion," I answer after a moment, then make another move. We've been married for five hours, and we've spent three of those five playing chess and just talking. It's an excellent honeymoon, in my opinion.
"I'm not a big fan of religion either," Thalamon says with a smile, and, as he looks down at the chessboard, throws his hands up in capitulation, pushes the chessboard towards me and shakes his head.
"Is the king giving up?" I ask him teasingly, a smirk on my face.
"No, the king is admitting that he can't win against such a good opponent," he answers, trying his best - and failing miserably, I might add - to keep his dignity intact while essentially saying that he is giving up.
Smiling at his compliment, I say, "I have played this game with those pawns being real men. It greatly improves your appreciation of the game."
"Indeed it does," Thalamon agrees, his eyes locked on mine. Clearly he is wondering where I would have gotten experience directing troops, but he knows well enough by now not to ask, for fear of stumbling upon another backstory that takes an hour to explain.
A few moments go by in silence before I tear my gaze away from his - I have recently decided that he has the second-most beautiful eyes I have ever seen, as he edged out Marshall Moore for the second spot by a tiny margin - and realize that we were talking about religion before this. "I find religion to be organized hypocrisy, to be perfectly honest." When Thalamon nods his head in agreement, I continue, "I mean, even the claimed purpose of the institution - to worship the god or gods - is hypocritical, because the institution is in fact just another way to frighten, control and brainwash people."
"I agree completely," Thalamon says, "but I find the priests to be far more hypocritical than the religion itself. For example, they claim to be holy men of the gods, free from temptation and sin, yet they frequent the brothels and steal money from the temples and are far worse human beings than most of the rest of us!"
"Agreed completely," I reply, shaking my head. "The priests - those holy men of the gods-" - I can't help but snort derisively at that description of the priests - "-are honestly some of the most corrupt humans I've ever seen." Suddenly the comment about the priests visiting the brothels floats to the front of my mind, and I can't help but wonder if Thalamon ever did that.
My morbid curiosity gets the best of me after a few seconds of quiet, and I ask him, "Have you ever... done what the priests do?"
Immediately he understands what I'm talking about, and shakes his head vigorously. "Oh no; I have never been with a woman at all, in fact." He pauses for a moment, then questions me, "Have you ever been with a man?"
"No," I reply, shaking my head. "There was one man I wanted to do that with-"
"The dead man your heart belongs to?" Thalamon interrupts, and I nod my head yes, and finish my sentence.
"-But we never actually did." Thalamon nods his head in understanding, and the room falls silent for a few moments longer.
Suddenly a question that's been hiding out at the back of my mind for a while floats to the surface, and I ask him, "Thalamon, how old are you?"
"Twenty and five months," he replies, and immediately questions, "How old are you?"
Twenty and five months, huh? He's exactly as old as I thought he was. "Seventeen," I answer, and I can't help but smile when his jaw drops so far that it's in danger of hitting the carpet.
"You must be joking," he says. "There is no way you are only seventeen."
"Well, I'm seventeen and five months, but-" My sentence is interrupted by a yawn, and I raise a hand to my mouth to stifle it.
However, none of it escapes Thalamon, and he rises to his feet and walks across the room to pull back the curtain and peer out into the window overlooking the street. I can see from my spot on the floor that the moon is about in the middle of the sky, which means that it's almost midnight. It's amazing how quickly time flies when I'm having intelligent conversations and actually enjoying myself with Thalamon.
"Well, it's getting quite late, and I think we should turn in for the night," Thalamon says, then adds with a smirk, "After all, I don't really want to hear the servants whispering rumors about what we're doing in here."
"Yeah, I don't really want to hear the rumors either," I agree with a rueful smile, and rise to my feet. However, it immediately occurs to me that there's only one bed, and that I can't go out into the rest of his quarters to find another bed because we're supposed to be sleeping together.
Thalamon immediately notices me glancing around and says, his tone apologetic but also definitely excited, "I thought we could spend the night in the same bed. However," he immediately adds, although his voice markedly loses enthusiasm, "I can send for the servants to bring in more blankets and pillows, and I can sleep on the floor if you'd like."
"Oh no, this is fine," I quickly say, and, when Thalamon begins to walk towards the bed, I do as well.
It takes a couple minutes for us to get completely situated and comfortable in the bed, which is small enough to make it so that we are always touching each other, no matter how close to the edge of the feather matress I get.
Finally I just give up on the idea that I'm going to be able to spend the night without touching Thalamon and roll back over so that my head is resting on his chest. I can tell from the way that he stiffens slightly that he's surprised, but he quickly recovers from his surprise and wraps his arms around me possessively.
My heart is threatening to burst, as this is reminds me so acutely of how Luke and I used to sleep in the same bed, when Thalamon gently kisses my forehead and murmurs, "Good night, Lizzie," before his breathing slows and he drifts off to sleep almost immediately afterwards.
"Good night, Thalamon," I say after a long second of silence, and fall asleep soon afterwards.

I last about a week before deciding that it's too painful to stay around in Athens with Thalamon. The way he looks at me, the deference and devotion he shows me, even our relationship - where I'm faking and he's not - are too acutely reminiscent of Luke and the relationship we had early on for me to be able to bear it much longer.
I make plans - and bribe a few servants with gold to keep them quiet - to sneak away in the night, and find myself frantically packing a change of clothes and some food and water into a small leather bag that I sling over one shoulder. I also managed - by way of bribery - to get my bow, quiver of arrows and sword back, and am in the process of strapping them on when Thalamon walks into the room I'm in, whistling a happy tune. That's the one good thing that’s come out of this marriage, besides him not having to marry a mindless fourteen-year-old: he's become noticeably happier and more tolerant of the people around him.
However, all happiness disappears from his face when he finds me standing there, with my bow slung over my shoulder and my hands at my sword-belt, and he immediately asks, "What are you doing?"
"Thalamon, I told you that I would have to leave at one point," I begin, and see his expression fall fifty stories when he realizes where I'm going with this. "Well, that point is now."
"Alright, ok," he mutters, dropping his gaze to the floor as hurt blankets his entire being. Looking back up at me, he says quietly, "I just didn't realize you would have to leave so soon."
"I didn't realize I would have to leave so soon either," I reply quietly and completely truthfully. I honestly thought I would be able to last longer than week - I thought I would make it to a month at least - but I guess I overestimated my ability to forget Luke for any length of time.
A few moments go by in an incredibly sad and depressing silence until Thalamon finally murmurs, looking up at me and capturing my gaze with his own swirling-blue-green-gray one, "Well, I guess this is goodbye."
"Yeah, I guess it is," I agree softly, not trusting myself to say anything more. I hesitate for a moment, fighting the urge threatening to take over, but finally let it control me, and close the gap between Thalamon and I in four long strides to look him directly in the eye and tell him, my heart breaking at the pain on his face, "I'm sorry." I then stand on tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek, and quickly retrieve what's left of my supplies before walking hurriedly towards the door and exiting.
I am just about to close the door again when I hear Thalamon's voice, and I can't help but stop and listen.
"I will love you always, Lizzie," he whispers, and I see a singular tear make its way down his cheek and drip onto the marble floor with an eerily loud splash.
Before I can even think, I find myself turning and running out of the palace, and out of Athens, the empty hole in my chest bleeding for all it's worth as I think of King Thalamon of Athens, another name to add to the list of my broken boys.

[Richard Parker]

This is a story I actually wrote this last April, and, now that I read it over, I can't help but wish that I could write short stories like this now. xD

Death x A Mortal
Thanatos x Sapphire

She tapped her chin thoughtfully with the end of her pencil, her eyes distant as her mind wandered through unseen worlds. She dropped her gaze to the paper, the depths of her sapphire eyes searching the parchment for answers, inspiration, advice - anything really. Looking up, she began to tap her chin with the pencil again, her eyes clouding over with the fantasies of her imagination. In the five days he had been watching her, she had never deviated from this pattern, even though he knew that she had something to write, something to say. Was she perhaps afraid of being heard and being rejected for her opinions? No, he knew she was far too bold to be afraid of that. Well, what then? He looked her up and down, x-raying her with his blood-red gaze, taking note of every pore on her skin, every freckle, every minuscule detail that, even though it was often overlooked, made her unique, made her who she was. He longed to reach out to her, to touch her, to feel her, to see if that sponge-like nature of hers would take him in too, but he knew that he couldn't; he knew that if he touched her, she would end up like everyone else he had touched: fertilizer for the grass. He couldn't help himself though; he had to at least talk to her! Finishing his coffee, he rose to his feet silently and walked over to her.

"Why do you never write anything down? I know you have something to say." Startled by the mellow, seductive voice, Sapphire jerked out of her trance and looked up to see who had asked her such a question.
She just sat there with her mouth open, admiring his pure physical beauty of his tall, lean frame, dark, slightly haunted features and blood-red, almost unsettling eyes, for a few seconds before she responded. "I... I don't know." She bit her lip, feeling completely and utterly stupid for not being able to articulate a simple sentence. "I guess... I guess I just think that my ideas aren't worth writing down because no one will listen to them." She looked up at him, terrified, for once in her life. No, not because of the fact that he probably had thirty pounds on her and could hurt her very easily if he wanted to, but because he was curious and his curiosity was leading him to pry at the shell she kept herself locked inside of at all times.
"I will listen," he told her gently, uttering those words she so wanted and yet so feared to hear. He sat down almost silently in the chair next to her and then affixed her with that gaze that gently poked at and completely ripped open your soul in the same millisecond of its intensity. When she didn't answer due to drowning in those pools of blood he had for eyes, he murmured, breaking the spell he had created, "Well?"
She blushed slightly, embarrassed at making him wait and angry with herself for becoming so distracted, and then began to speak.

"I feel like this society as a whole is broken, is torn, and we don't have the tools to fix ourselves like we think we do." There was no hesitation in her voice now, only raw, unbridled passion for the subject at hand. Glancing over at him quickly to make sure he following - as if he wouldn't be! - she continued when she his gaze on her. Well, it wasn't just his gaze on her - it was his everything on her. He was clinging to every word she said like a dying man to the hope of life; he had dreamed about the chance to talk with her, to be near her, for every day of the last two weeks, and, now that he had gotten such a chance, he certainly wasn't going to waste it.
"And what do you think can fix us, if we cannot do it ourselves?" He was genuinely interested in her answer, and for more than just the fact that she was speaking.
"Another person. Well, to be specific, the love of another person." She smiled a distant smile at him, her eyes and mind no longer in this world. "Call me a romantic, but I believe that we need someone else to truly make ourselves whole, to truly fix our flaws." She shrugged, her eyes and mind returning to Earth from their adventure into lands of thought.
"I admire your romanticism," he told her, returning her smile with a genuine but small one of his own. Oh, how long had it been since he had last smiled! It felt good - no, excellent - to truly have a reason to be happy.
"Well thank you." She nodded her head gracefully in recognition, the sapphire depths of her eyes dancing a jig to the happy tune of her heart. "Not many do."
"And shame on them for not," he replied elegantly and eloquently. The smile on his face grew a tad larger as he discreetly looked her up and down, still trying to piece together the puzzle that was her; he found her incredibly hard to read but also incredibly attractive because of all the unique little facets of her personality. Suddenly it hit him like a brick wall; he had been talking to her for nearly fifteen minutes and hadn't yet asked her name! How foolish he was! "You know, I just realized that I have not yet had the pleasure of knowing your name," he murmured, meeting her slightly puzzled yet charming gaze with a ravenous one of his own. From the moment he had set eyes on her, he had wanted her, wanted her so bad that the hunger hurt, and currently the fact that one touch of his could kill her was the farthest thing from his mind.
"My name is... Sapphire." She seemed rather unnerved by his unblinking, single-minded stare. He couldn't blame her; it probably was rather daunting to have such an insatiable gaze fixated upon you. "And yours is?" He almost missed what she had asked, due to his incredible focus upon her, but he heard it well enough to know that he was a fool.
He couldn't tell her his name, so why did he ever ask her hers?! It was a simple reaction to ask someone their name when they asked you yours, but clearly he had been too distracted, too sidetracked to bring logic into it, and now he was paying for his stupidity! What would he do now? Tell her a false name and then disappear, never to been seen from again, like he had done with every other woman he had ever fallen in love with? No, it was time to break the pattern, he decided. It was time to return the favor and be as open and honest as Sapphire was; he knew and appreciated how brave she had been to come out of her shell for a complete stranger, and felt that it was the least he could do to mirror her and do the exact same thing.
"My name is..." There's still time to turn back, Thanatos, and leave her behind, jabbered the little, logical voice in his head, but he brushed right past it; now was not a time for logic and planning, it was a time for passion and spur-of-the-moment decisions. "Thanatos." As he finished the sentence that he never thought he would finish and sat in front of the girl he never thought he would sit in front of, he reveled in the overwhelming feeling of success, of victory. In a sense, he had been victorious - over himself and his damned logic and secrecy that had kept him locked up too long. However, his attention was drawn away from this great conquest of his by Sapphire.
"You're too beautiful to be death," she murmured almost inaudibly, her gaze that still wasn't frightened fixated upon him with the utmost attention. So she had figured it out.
"Death can be the most beautiful thing in the world to the right person, Sapphire." He returned her gaze evenly, knowing that now was definitely not the time to falter. "If life hurts you so bad every day that you can't bear it any more, death is a wonderful, dazzling escape, a promise of no more pain and suffering."

"But..." She grasped at words, searching for some to vocalize what she felt, an feeling that maybe couldn't be vocalized. "How? How do you exist, how are you here, of all places!?" She was stunned, completely and utterly blown away, and saw that as he reached a hand out to comfort her, he pulled away at the last second. "I'm dead if you touch me, aren't I?" she asked him quietly, searching his unsearchable face for a reaction.
He nodded his head in response, his gaze on his lap, clearly not able to bring himself to admit such a thing. He looked up at her and she saw tears forming in those rubies of his eyes. He opened his mouth and murmured, unbearable pain infusing his voice, "I guess this is it then. I leave you be, once and for all; you'll forget about me eventually, I can assure you." He rose to his feet and turned to leave, everything about him broken.
"Thanatos!" Sapphire called after him, her heart aching for his pain and at seeing him go.
Much to her surprise, he stopped, turned around to face her and asked, "Yes?"
"It is better to die in love than live without it." She closed the gap between them and kissed him.

[Richard Parker]

As someone requested this story on my couples thread on Chicken Smoothie, the actual characters aren't mine, but I was given creative liberty to give them whatever personalities I wished, and I think I did a decent job.

Rose (f) x Vixen (m)

I stroll down the street casually, my hands in my pockets and my long blonde hair rippling behind me in the wind. It's a beautiful day, about eighty degrees, sunny, and with enough of a breeze so as to make the eighty feel like seventy-five. I would go as far to say that it's a perfect day, especially with all that happened earlier.
My boyfriend proposed to me - I said yes, of course - I graduated from med school at the top of my class, and accepted a position at a nearby hospital. After all the trouble I went through to make myself successful, I'm finally there, and I couldn't be happier about it.
Whistling under my breath, a stupid smile permanently glued to my face, I look around at all of the shops lining the sides of the street I'm walking on. Downtown Boulder really is a nice place, I think to myself. A little jewelry shop on the other side of the street catches my eye, and I decide to go spend some of the money I have on me to get a necklace to match my new engagement ring.
I pause at the stoplight in front of to have to wait less than a second before the light turns green and the 'walk' sign flashes. Smiling to myself and still whistling, I begin to walk across to the other side of the street, cocooned in my happiness and completely oblivious to everything around me.
However, I do not stay that way very long, as someone's sharp cry of warning and fear breaks through the almost-trance I'm in and causes me to look up. When I do, I see why they cried out.
Hurtling directly towards me at at least forty miles an hour is an out-of-control bus, filled with screaming passengers and a frantic driver. I don't have to do the math to know that, in less than a second, I will be a spot on the pavement and that there's nothing I can do to stop that. There's no time for me to scream, or try to get out of the way, so I just stare at my approaching doom calmly, my mind still numb at the realization of what is about to happen as I wait for death.
"Goodbye, Jason," I whisper as the bus comes up on me, and I close my eyes, bracing myself for the impact and the pain. Hopefully I'll die quickly; I would hate to lie on the pavement in complete agony for a while before my heart finally gives out.
However, I don't get to experience being hit by a bus, as, a millionth of a second before I roughly calculated that the bus would hit me, someone grabs me by the waist, picks me and carries me out of the way of the bus. I open my eyes in shock - I mean, there's no way anyone or anything could have moved fast enough to save me like that; maybe the bus actually did hit me and I've lost my mind in heaven - to find something even more surprising than being saved from the bus: a completely black, hooded figure crouching over me.
"Are you alright, Miss Rose?" the figure asks me, and I stare up at the person in shock for a long moment before finally coming to my senses enough to reply.
"Yes, thank you very much," I tell the person faintly, a million questions about who they are and how they know my name and how they could have moved fast enough to pull me out of the way of the bus - which, thank God, hit a guard rail a few moments after nearly hitting me and did no damage to anyone or anything except the guard rail. However, I don't think it'd be polite to drill my savior, so I keep all of these questions to myself and merely staring up at the shadowy form above me.
All of a sudden, the person pulls their hood off some so that a part of their face is visible, and I gasp in surprise as I take in his - the person above me is most definitely a man - appearance. It's not just his cloak that is black, as his skin is as dark, if not even darker, than the material he's wearing. However, that's not the most surprising thing about his appearance; that honor goes to his eyes.
They are a stunning, piercing, beautiful blue that makes the deep azure of my fiance's Jason's eyes appear dull in comparison. They are the most radiant things I have ever seen, and I could have laid there and drowned in them forever.
However, the hooded man seems to have other ideas, as he quickly jerks his gaze away from mine, pulls his hood down so that I can't see his face anymore, and rises to his feet.
He glances at the street around us - even though I should probably find the fact that everyone seems to be frozen in time more interesting, I can't help but devote all of my thoughts to the man who saved me and his beautiful eyes that drown me - and looks down at me one last time and whispers, "I will come back for you, milady."
He then leaves as quickly as he came, disappearing into the thin air with a flash of black to leave me lying on the street, unharmed but utterly confused and maybe even completely insane.

"Rose!" Jason calls as soon as I walk into our apartment, his voice tinged with relief and worry. Even though he can't be more than fifty feet away from me, his voice sounds like he's a mile away from me, or we're both underwater, and it takes him running to me and kissing me passionately to snap out of it and realize what's going on.
However, even when I do come to my senses, my arms don't lock around him like they usually do, and I don't kiss him back like I usually do, because I can't shake the feeling that I saw longing in the blue eyes of the man who saved me and can't bring myself to stop being curious about that long enough to think about anything else.
Jason doesn't seem to notice though, as he immediately asks me when he pulls back, his eyes searching my face worriedly, "Are you alright? I saw on the news that you almost got hit by a bus, but that a freak gust of wind blew you out of the way and that you didn't get harmed at all. I need to hear it from you, though," Jason finishes, and I pull myself out of my thoughts long enough to realize he's talking to me and process what he's saying.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I hear myself replying. "I'm just a little shaken up, that's all. Is it ok if I go lay down?" My heart begins to race at the thought of laying down, as I have a feeling that the man - well, I guess he's not really a man, considering he moves fast enough to save me from a bus going almost a mile a minute and can slow time down and twist human memories to his will - who saved me will be there waiting for me.
"Of course, Rose," Jason answers immediately, and I can't help but smile slightly at his predictability and goodness. "Whatever you need."
"Thank you, Jason," I tell him sincerely before walking down the hall towards my room to collapse onto my bed and close my eyes.

"I knew you would come," the man whispers, his blue eyes locking on mine as I look around at the world I'm in. Everything is very dark, but not completely black, like the difference between twilight and midnight. Everything, that is, except for the man. He is the one completely black thing in the world, and that makes him stand out as much, if not more, than it would if he were the one white thing in this world.
Suddenly I realize why I could have sworn I had seen the man's eyes before today: I actually had.
I had a dream, when I was about five, that I went into a great room of people all like the man in front of me, and was told by a group of five that seemed to be council that ran the place that I had to pick one of the people in my room to be my guardian. I looked at about half the room until I met the eyes of the man who saved me earlier - he was a boy back then, actually, and only seemed to be a few years older than me - and I knew that he was it, that he was my guardian, no questions asked.
I informed the council of my choice, my eyes locked on the boy I chose the whole time, and they wrote my name and the name of the boy I chose down on a huge slab of marble, and I got the feeling that he would be my guardian as long as that marble was intact. I could read my own name, of course, but I couldn't quite read the name of the boy I chose with my limited vocabulary, and didn't get a chance to spell it out and try to pronounce it before one of the council members, the one who appeared to be the council chair, waved his hand and the dream ended.
Thinking back to that day and trying desperately to remember the boy's name, my eyes shoot wide open in surprise when it finally comes to me, and I look back up at the man in front of me to whisper, "Vixen?"
He bows his head slightly in admittance, and I stare at him openmouthed for a few moments before coming to my senses enough to say something else.
"You stuck with me all these years?" I murmur in amazement, my gaze locked on his face, and I see a hint of a smile cross his handsome, dark features.
"I could never leave you, milady," he replies quietly, his gaze glued to mine, and I can't help but think how nice the way 'milady' rolls off his tongue and sounds in his voice.
Walking towards him and meaning to cross the distance between us, I see him start slightly at me approaching him and stop to tell him, "It's alright; I just want to get closer to you."
Even though he still looks uneasy, he doesn't try to move back again when I continue walking towards him, and looks down at me solemnly when I stop about five feet in front of him. He's a good six inches taller than me, and practically towers over me, but I don't mind looking up at him, because he seems to be the perfect height for a guardian.
Completely taken aback by the sheer handsomeness of his features, I take three steps forward and raise a hand, meaning to touch his face, to have him start in surprise and leap away from me immediately.
Shaking my head slightly and telling myself to snap out of the trance I was in, I look up at him to find him staring down at me in pure horror, and I can't help but feel a little insulted. Is me touching him honestly that revolting?
"Why did you jump back?" I ask him, not able to keep the surprise and hurt out of my voice. I immediately feel kind of bad when I see his expression become sad too, and I tell myself not to get sad around him anymore, because I can't bear to see such handsome features twisted up in distress.
"Your soul will be stripped from your body if you touch me, milady," he tells me quietly, and my mouth immediately opens in a silent "Oh" of surprise. Well, I guess that explains why he wears the cloak. "I do not want that to happen to you, milady," he adds quietly, and instantly I feel bad. I shouldn't have gotten upset with him for jumping back, since he only did so for my own safety.
Vixen doesn't seem to like me getting sad anymore than I like him getting sad, as he tells me quickly, "Do not feel bad, milady. You did not know better."
The comforting sound of his voice immediately makes me feel better, and we stand in silence for a few seconds until I finally work up the nerve to look up at him again and ask, "What exactly would happen to my soul, if I were to touch you?"
I can see the wariness in Vixen's gaze, and he answers carefully, "Your soul would be pulled from your mortal body, and you would be made into a guardian, like me. You would never be able to go back to your mortal body, and you would never be able to enter the mortal world again unless the person you are protecting is in danger. You would be stuck in the dream world for eternity."
Even though Vixen's words were clearly meant to deter me from wanting to touch him, I can't help but think about how good that sounds. Forever with Vixen... I don't think I could ask for anything more. After all, I've only met him three times and said a grand total of six sentences to him and am more in love with him than I am with Jason, and I've been dating Jason for almost three years now. It makes me wonder how in love with Vixen I would be if I got to spend eternity with him.
"And you would be stuck in the dream world forever too, right?" I ask him, wanting to make sure that I will get to spend forever with him before I actually touch him.
"Yes," Vixen replies quietly, and I can tell that he knows he's arguing a lost cause, especially since I can also tell that part of him wants me to touch him too.
I stare up at him and raise my hand again, my fingers trembling as they inch closer to his face, to hesitate, with my fingers millimeters from his cheek, when he speaks again.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asks me quietly, his blue eyes locked on mine. I feel myself drowning in them again, but don't make any effort to stop myself this time.
"Yes," I hear myself saying, then, seized by an incredible desire for him, fling my arms around the back of his neck and press my lips against his.
In the back of my mind, as I feel my conscience slip away from my body, I hear the sound of stone breaking, and can't help but smile through the kiss. The marble has broken, because he's not my guardian anymore; no, now we can both guard each other.

[Richard Parker]

This is another story that was requested I write; I hope you like it! :)

Conis (m) x Clara (f)

"Conis, I'm sorry, but I don't feel that way about you," Clara tells me as she looks at me with unbearably sad eyes, and I feel my heart fall out of my body and shatter on the cold tile floor. "You're like a best friend, or a brother to me, not like a boyfriend. I'm sorry," she repeats quietly, just driving her rejection even deeper into my heart. After all of the time we've spent together, and her helping me overcome my mother's death, I thought that maybe we had a chance, that the look I saw in her eye when I caught her staring over at me was mutual interest.
"Well, I guess I'll go then," I mutter quietly as I stare at the floor, and I cross the room to the door of Clara's apartment without another word passing between us. I've opened the door and am just about to leave when I feel Clara's gaze on the back of my neck to turn and meet her eyes, which are so incredibly sad still. Briefly it crosses my mind that she doesn't have a reason to be sad - I mean, it's not like she's the one who just had her heart broken - but all other thoughts except for the fact that I don't know what I'm going to do with myself now are pushed out of my head by my heartbreak.
I then step out of her apartment, for what is unfortunately probably the last time and trudge down the hallway towards the elevator, my head hung lower and my heart even lower.

"Clara?" I exclaim in amazement as I peer closely at the brown-haired girl in front of me, who immediately whips around when I speak. I gasp in surprise when I see that it actually is Clara, and a jolt of recognition shoots through her eyes as she looks at me.
"Conis?" she says, and I nod my head in confirmation, a sad smile spreading across my face. The year that it's been since that fateful night at her apartment has only made her more beautiful, and, as I look her up and down, her words of rejection echo around inside of my head and hurt my heart.
"Wow Conis, you've changed a lot," Clara tells me, with a tone to her voice that makes it sound like she thinks my change is a good thing. And I guess she's right: along with celebrating my twentieth birthday last month, I also celebrated the fact that I am now six-three, five inches taller than when she last saw me.
"You've only gotten prettier Clara," I reply, giving her the most pain-free smile I can, and her face falls some. I guess I shouldn't have brought up our previous relationship so early on into this conversation, but oh well. Our previous relationship - and why on earth she rejected me - has been haunting me for a year now, and maybe I finally have an opportunity to talk to her about it.
"So where are you flying to?" I ask her, to break the silence that draped our conversation for a moment, gesturing to the plane ticket in her hand.
"Oh... I'm flying into Portland so I can go to Corvallis, to go see my older brother play for the Beavers," Clara answers with a shy smile, and my eyes shoot open in surprise.
"Hey, I'm flying to Portland too," I tell her, giving her another grin. "Maybe we can sit together on the plane," I suggest, looking down at her and noticing her glancing around concernedly.
"Maybe," she replies lightly, although her tone is distant and obviously very worried and she doesn't even look at me when she answers, as she's too busy looking around at the airport.
I am just about to ask her what she's looking for when boarding for our flight is announced over the intercom, and we both make our way up to give our ticket to the steward to walk through the jetway and board the plane. I let Clara go first, gesturing for her to walk in front of me, which she does, and promptly makes her way to the very back of the plane to take the window seat in the last row to the right.
Since I'd much rather sit next to Clara than a stranger - and because I might actually get to have a real conversation with her now - I take the seat next to her, and we both watch the plane fill up in front of us in silence. When everyone has boarded and sat down - thankfully no one sat in the seat next to me - and the plane is up in the air, I stare at my hands in my lap for a few moments until my curiosity finally gets the best of me and I burst out, turning to Clara, "Why did you dump me, that night a year ago? What did I do wrong?"
Clara sighs, and her beautiful face is immediately covered by a mask of sadness and weariness that makes her look ten years older in just one second. "Conis," she begins, meeting my gaze, "you didn't do anything wrong. I was the one who did something wrong."
I look her in the eye uncomprehendingly for a few moments before I realize that she means she regrets something about that night, and I ask her, my curiosity getting the best of me again, "What did you do wrong?"
"Well, I guess I did two things wrong," Clara amends, to elaborate, "Number one, I let you go, and number two, I didn't tell you how I truly felt."
"You mean that you didn't dump me because you didn't want to be with me?" I question, staring over at her hopefully and apprehensively. If she says yes, I still may have a chance at getting the girl of my dreams back. If she says no... well, she's already broken my heart once; why shouldn't she go for two?
"Conis, I wanted to be with you more than anything," Clara replies, a slight smile on her face at the amazement that has begun to overtake mine.
"Then why didn't you say yes to me?" I ask her. It all seems pretty simple from where I'm standing: if she wanted to be with me so badly, why didn't she be with me?
"Because saying yes to you would have gotten both of us killed, Conis," Clara bursts out, her eyes locked on mine. When I look over at her in complete confusion for a few moments, she elaborates, "My dad's an assassin, and he likes to think that I'm daddy's little girl, so he'll kill anyone that gets involved with me and probably even me in the end."
My mouth hangs open as I stare over at her, and, after a couple seconds, I finally come to, close my mouth and reply, "Couldn't we have just hidden from your dad?" I would like to say that my voice didn't shake at all, but that's unfortunately not true; after all, if Clara's dad could scare someone as brave as Clara as much as he clearly does, then he must be some scary guy. "And, why would he kill you for getting involved with someone?" I add, as I think about what she's said.
"You can't hide from my dad, not with the contacts he has," Clara replies matter-of-factly. "He would find you and kill you no matter you went. And, as to why he would kill me, he's kind of a psychopath," she finishes, and I nod my head in shocked understanding, even though i don't really understand any of it at all.
"So what do we do, then?" I ask out loud, to immediately tack on, "I don't want to spend any more time without you, because this last year without you was the worst year of my life, so what should we do?"
"I don't know," Clara responds frankly, pursing her lips in thought. After a half-second, she looks back up at me, meets my gaze and says, "All I know is that I don't want to spend any more time without you either, because one year was one year too long for me too." She gives me a sincere smile, and, despite the fact that we're talking about very dangerous, potentially fatal things here, I can't help but feel my heart swell with joy and give her a beaming grin in return.
"Well," I finally begin, after a few seconds of content silence, "I guess we're dying together then," which kills off all of the content, happy tone to the air.
"Yeah, I guess so," Clara agrees, and I look over at her to see a little bit of fear in her eyes. However, that fear is very short-lived, and is soon replaced by a burning determination that I see the full force of when she turns to me to meet my gaze and tell me, "But maybe that's a good thing, because living without you isn't really living at all for me."
I'm staring at her in amazement and am about to ask, "Are you serious?" when I catch myself and tell myself that of course she's serious, that she wouldn't be telling me these things after not talking to me for a year if she didn't mean them. Instead, I just tell her, "I've missed you, Clara," and lean over to wrap my arms around her and hold her against me.
"I've missed you too," she murmurs into my chest as she works her arms around me, and we just lean into each other for one perfect moment.
Suddenly, a voice calls to our left, "What would you like to drink?" and Clara and I quickly pull away from each other to turn and see a smiling flight attendant standing there with a pen and paper.
"Sprite, please," Clara answers coolly, which prompts me to say not-so-coolly, when the flight attendant turns her expectant gaze on me, "Uh... I'll have Sprite too, please."
The flight attendant nods her head in understanding, and Clara and I tell her simultaneously, "Thank you!"
A few moments later, she comes back with two cans of Sprite, two little cups partially filled with ice, and two napkins, which Clara and I accept with a murmured word of thanks.
We then open our Sprites and pour some into our cups at exactly the same time, and, struck by a sudden inspiration, I raise my cup and say, "To the time ahead of us. Even if it is short, it is at least it is spent together."
I give Clara a smile as I do so, and my action prompts her to raise her cup as well and say simply, giving me a grin of her own as she does so, "To us."
I nod my head in agreement, and tap my plastic cup almost solemnly on hers before tipping it back and drinking to the fact that Clara and I are finally together, even if death is waiting for us not too far off.

[Richard Parker]

This is also another requested story, and I think I did a decent job on it. :)

Alexadrea (f) x Tarwen (m)

I dream of hearing a lot. I vaguely remember being able to hear, as I was five when I lost my hearing in an explosion that blew up my house and killed my parents. The sounds that I remember the clearest are the ones that I know I will never hear again: my mother's honeyed voice, my father's hug but incredibly kind tone, the low barking of our German Shepherd Max.
I also think about death a lot. I'm enchanted with the idea that, when I die, I will get to see my parents again, and my ears will miraculously heal, and I will get to hear again. I even have dreams about going to heaven and having just that happen, and I always wake up with a smile on my face that soon fades when reality sets in and I realize that I'm not dead, that I'm not heaven, that I'm not going to hear my parents anytime soon. I always tell myself that I shouldn't dream and think so much after I have one of those dreams, but my warnings to myself never seem to work, because I always have that dream again.
I also have one more dream that I can hear in, and, in that one, the laugh of a joyous little girl with flaming orange hair and brilliant blue eyes calls me ever forward. I wonder about the identity of the little girl a lot. I asked my aunt and uncle a while back, who I currently live with, if I had any close friends at the time of the explosion, and they told me that they couldn't remember, and then they asked what my question was about. I dismissed their question with the lame answer of, "Just wondering," but I can tell that they are still worried about and maybe even suspicious of me. But, with my focus on the mystery girl bordering on all-consuming at times, they probably have a reason to be worried about me.
She haunts me wherever I go. Even though I have long grown used to a world without sound, sometimes I hear her laughter as I sit on a park bench and look out at the children playing with each other and with their parents. Other times I think I see her in those same children, at which point I become worried about myself. It then occurs to me that, if she was about my age when the explosion happened, she would be around twenty now, like me, which causes me to wonder what she looks like nowadays. I have a feeling that she is beautiful, and intelligent, and funny. I also have a feeling that she is not as outgoing as she was when she a little girl, as most people aren't.
It brings a sad smile to my face to muse about her, as I will never see her or speak to her or hear her laugh ever again. I know it is useless wondering about her, that all I will accomplish by doing so is making my heart ache even worse than it already does, but I can't help it. She has become just as much a part of me as my eyes or my smile or my inability to hear, and sometimes I think that the irrational hope that I will get to see her again is the only thing that keeps me going. I know almost nothing about her, not even her name, but that does not deter me from thinking about her. In fact, every day, I run over two or three times the things that I know for certain about her, which number three.
1. She has the orangest hair I have ever seen, and the most electrifying blue eyes that could ever exist.
2. She is most likely my age.
3. Her laugh is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard and ever will hear.

I collapse into my usual seat at the coffee shop, giving the guy behind the counter - Eric - a smile as I do so. I see him smile sheepishly back and give me a look of longing underneath his long eyelashes, and I think idly that it would be great if everything was so easy to confirm as my suspicions that he liked me. However, after seeing his grin and glance, I completely ignore him, and turn all of my attention to the pencil and notebook in my hands. In that notebook contains all of my life's work, everything that could make me rich and famous and someone more than just Alexadrea the loser.
Of course, I have to be discovered first, which I am in the process of doing. I have submitted my writing to many publishers in the last few weeks, and haven't heard back from any of them yet. Waiting and knowing that the people in those publishing companies that could be reading my work right now have my dreams in the palm of their hands is unbearable, and not even writing can take my mind off of it for any length of time.
Ingesting as much caffeine as I have been probably isn't helping my mental state much either, but I can't help that. I've been addicted to coffee since the day I turned thirteen, and I have no intention of quitting drinking it anytime soon. I mean, if I'm this crazy with caffeine, I don't even want to know how insane I would be with caffeine withdrawals.
Suddenly the bell on the door of the coffee shop tinkles, and I look up momentarily to see a young man probably as old as I am walk in. He is tall, with at least eight inches on my five-foot, four-inch frame, and his short, fluffy brown hair is disheveled in a very cute way. He's attractive too, with a nice face and a decent smile, judging from the small grin he gave Eric, but the most striking thing about this mystery boy is his eyes.
They are a beautiful and strangely familiar bluish-gray that reminds me a lot of water, or the color of the sky after it's rained and the clouds are clearing, and they radiate kindness and caring. Upon first glance, that is all the emotion in his eyes, but, as I stare at them more intently, I can tell that there is a sadness in them too. However, as soon as I begin to wonder what his eyes could be so sad about and why I feel like I've seen them before, he looks over at me, and immediately look away. Being caught staring at a stranger in a coffee shop definitely won't do anything to improve or change my status as a loser.
Unfortunately, the boy seems to notice that I was staring at him, and he sits down next to me, a smile curling his lips. "Hi," he says quietly, looking over at me, and the sheer willpower of his voice draws my eyes unwillingly to his face. There is something about the tone of his voice that suggests it isn't used very much.
"Hi," I tell him in reply, then drop my gaze to the notebook in front of me again. However, I can't help but notice the way he stares so intently at my mouth, and all of a sudden it hits me: he's probably deaf. I don't have an issue with people who have disabilities; true, I haven't really met many, but I don't have an issue with it. In fact, when I was five, I even had a friend, Tarwen, who went deaf after being so near the explosion that blew up his house and his parents. Unfortunately, I didn't play with him much after that, because he went to a different kindergarten, one specifically for deaf children, and moved across town to live with his aunt and uncle. I was very sad upon learning that Tarwen moved away, so much so that I locked myself in my room and cried for a day straight until my parents finally lured me out with the promise of food. I thought about him a lot in the weeks and months after he moved, and I always told myself that he would come back, and we could play that stupid castle game we made up where he was the knight and I was the princess and he always saved me. He never came back though, and with every day that he wasn't there, he faded farther out of my mind until he was a memory of a memory, someone that maybe, at one time, I knew. And that's when it hits me: the boy sitting next to me is Tarwen.
I'm surprised that it took me that long to identify those eyes, considering that they're downright unmistakable. As I look over at him and realize that it's the same color of fluffy brown hair, the same kind smile, the same warm gaze, I find myself completely stunned at this meeting of ours. I thought I would never see him again, that eventually he would cease to be part of my memories altogether. I guess this is God's way of telling me that old friends shouldn't be forgotten.
"Your name is Tarwen, isn't it?" I ask him quietly, and his eyes shoot open in surprise and then realization.
"You're the girl, aren't you?" he questions me in return, and I take that as a yes. When he sees my confused expression, as I have no idea what he's talking about, he elaborates, "You're the girl with the fire-orange hair and the electric blue eyes and the laugh that sounds like heaven on earth."
I smile slightly at his description of me, feeling incredibly flattered by it, and I nod my head in answer. He then regards me carefully for a few long moments before speaking again.
"You are the girl I've been dreaming about for the last fifteen years. You are the girl whose laughter haunts me. You are that girl." He stares at me in amazement, and I lower my eyes, completely taken aback by his statements and the emotion in them.
We then sit in silence for a couple seconds as he gazes at me some more, and finally the awkward quiet is broken by his voice.
"Can you tell me one thing, mystery girl?" he asks me quietly, and I nod my head in reply warily, wondering what on earth he could want. "What is your name?"
I look up suddenly, completely surprised by his question, and, after staring him down for a few moments, answer slowly, "Alexadrea. You probably knew me as Alex though."
"Alex," he murmurs, and all of a sudden I see longing shoot through his eyes. It then occurs to me that he probably wants to hear my name be said aloud, and I've even more shocked and flattered by that.
"You are just as beautiful as I thought you would be," he tells me, and reaches a hand out to gently touch my hand. I briefly think about pulling back, but there is something in his gaze that stops me from doing so.
"I am not beautiful at all, Tarwen," I mutter, tearing my eyes away from his face but not taking my hand away. I have so many scars - physical, mental, and psychological - that I don't really attract anyone I'd actually want to be with or have a relationship with. I see him smile out of the corner of my eye, and I wonder why on earth he would be smiling at a reply like that.
"You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen with the most beautiful laugh that I have ever heard, Alex. I have known that for fifteen years." The pure emotion in his voice draws my gaze to him again, and I find him regarding me intently.
After a few moments pass in silence, because I have no idea how to respond to something like that, he speaks again, and this time his tone is hopeful and apprehensive. "Alex, will you go to lunch with me?" I look up at him in shock, realizing what he said and what it means but not truly being able to comprehend the magnitude of something like that being said to me. It takes a few moments for the words to completely sink in, and, when they do, I open my mouth to reply. When I try to speak, I find that I can't, so I close my mouth quickly and simply nod my head as a smile creeps across my face.
"I'll see you tomorrow at the deli down the street then," Tarwen tells me, a beaming grin breaking out across his face, and he rises from his feet, clearly intending to leave. However, before he turns away from me and towards the door, he says one last thing to me.
"You know, Alex, I don't think I'll stop dreaming about you anytime soon."

[Richard Parker]

This is another that someone suggested I write, so, again, the characters technically aren't mine. However, I think I did a decent job capturing their personality, and I hope you like it. :)

Trevor Jackson (m) x Luna Burkens(f) with Thomas Gregor on the side

"Can I help you with anything, sir?" The woman's clear voice rings out across the bookstore, and I instinctively jerk my head up, even though I haven't been able to see who's speaking to me for almost ten years now.
"Um, no, I'm fine," I tell the woman quietly in response, looking in what I hope is her direction. "I'm just listening to my book." I pull out the iPod in my pocket and show it to her, and add, with a big smile, before I turn away, "Thank you very much though."
I sigh quietly to myself when I hear her footsteps walking away from me, and, like I do every time I hear the woman's voice, I find myself wondering what she looks like. I've been blind since I was eighteen - my eyesight just completely failed over the course of a month, although my eyes never showed any signs of clouding - so I haven't been able to see anything for nearly ten years. However, to be honest, there hasn't been anything I've really missed seeing or want to see, except for the woman whose voice captivates me every time I hear it.
I think that she must be beautiful, to have a voice like that, and, in the few conversations I've had with her, she seems very intelligent and warm also. Even though I know that I will never have a chance with her, that she is undoubtedly with someone and wouldn't be interested in me even if she was single, I can't help but hope irrationally that eventually she will notice me and realize how much I truly care for her. The only flaw in my plan is that I don't even know her name, and she doesn't even know mine; I guess I have a lot of work to do if I'm going to make her fall in love with me.

The doorbell tinkles, and I don't even have to look up to know that it's my fiancé, Thomas; the scent of the incredibly expensive - but rather bad-smelling - cologne he always wears permeates the air around him so much that you can smell him before you can see him.
"Thomas, what do you want?" my sister Kacey asks him flatly. She hates Thomas, and I suppose she has reasons to; after all, he did blackmail Kacey's and my parents into making me marry him. I guess I have reasons to hate him too, but I have decided to try to have a positive outlook on the situation and make the best of what I've been given.
"Why are you so touchy Kacey?" he asks her dismissively, his eyes brushing over her with a contempt that suggests he considers himself better than her. "I'm just here to see my wonderful bride-to-be." He gives me a beaming smile that makes me feel like a prize rather than a person, then pulls me into a big kiss. I stand motionless, praying for it to end quickly, and have to stifle a sigh of relief when he finally pulls back.
"It's not like I'm here to see the books," he adds, contempt in his voice as he looks around the store with his nose in the air, and I ball my hands into fists and force myself to take a few deep breaths. It definitely wouldn't be good if I broke Thomas's nose.
"That reminds me, Luna: when we get married, I want you to get rid of all of this. I mean, it's not like you're going to need to work, so why would you keep this store? Might as well sell it and get rid of all these books." I hear Kacey's gasp of horror and rage, and, even though I'm very angry myself, I place a hand on Kacey's shoulder to stop her - and maybe myself as well - from hurting Thomas.
These books and this store have been Kacey's and my whole lives for nearly five years now, and neither one of us have any intentions of giving them up. Well, until Thomas announced he wanted us to give them up. Whatever Thomas wants, he gets; after all, it's his money paying for my parents' medical bills after they got into the huge car accident about a month ago. In fact, he demanded my hand in marriage as the first prize for taking care of my parents' expenses, and it's not like I could turn him down and leave my parents with over a hundred thousand dollars to be paid, a hundred thousand dollars that they don't have.
"Thomas, we're not giving up this store," Kacey snarls, and, as I feel her prepare to launch at Thomas, I quickly walk around behind her and grab her arms to stop her from hurting him.
However, Thomas, seeming unperturbed by Kacey's determination to kill him, just laughs and replies, "Oh, I think you will. If you want your parents' bills to be paid at least."
Instantly Kacey stops fighting and sighs, realizing that it's hopeless getting angry about something that's inevitable. "Alright, Thomas, we'll shut the bookstore down," she murmurs, dropping her gaze and walking away with her head hung low.
"Well I didn't think that you wouldn't," he says, his tone surprised. "I mean, you two are better daughters than that."
I feel a flood of rage wash over me and I ball my hands into fists again, telling myself that breaking Thomas's face would definitely make him stop paying for my parents' bills.
Suddenly I find myself desperate to get away from Thomas and his arrogance, and, spotting the man in the corner standing there and listening to his audiobook, I immediately run over to him, even though I talked to him a minute earlier.
He hears me coming and looks up, his green eyes fixed on my neck with a slightly unfocused look that they seem to always have. That and his continuous purchases of audiobooks have intrigued me for quite a while, so, since I’m frantic to make conversation and keep Thomas at bay, I say to him, “Excuse me, sir, I know it’s not my business, but I was just wondering why you always buy audiobooks. I mean, your eyes seem to work perfectly fine to me.”
Much to my surprise, a small, bitter smile crosses the man’s face and he replies, “I actually have been legally blind since I was eighteen. I had a rare condition, in which my eyesight completely failed in a month without any obvious damage to my eyes.”
“Oh,” I mutter, and the man smiles a true grin at that. His green eyes twinkle as he looks down at me, and I can’t help but notice how attractive he actually is. He’s tall, probably six-three, with a nice tan and spiky black hair just short enough that it doesn’t fall into his eyes. However, I immediately realize how stupid it is of me to be even slightly attracted to him, as Thomas is a very jealous man, and I quickly tell him, “Well, I’m sorry about asking.”
“Oh, no problem,” he replies, an amicable smile stretching from ear to ear. “I can’t blame you for asking, since you can’t tell I’m blind from my eyes.”
Our conversation then lapses into silence, and I search my brain desperately for something to talk about that will give me an excuse to stay away from Thomas.
However, the man does that for me, because, after a moment has passed, he says to me, his voice suddenly slightly intense, “You know, I’ve been coming to this store for almost three years, and, even though I’ve always wondered about it, I never did find out your name until today. Luna,” he murmurs, and I can hear the tone in voice that tells me he’s considering it. “I like it,” he says after a second, and nods his head and smiles down at me. “By the way, my name’s Trevor, Trevor Jackson.”
He holds his hand out to me and I accept it shyly as I respond quietly, taken aback by his compliment, “Well thank you, and it’s very nice to meet you Trevor.”
“Luna. I like it,” a mocking voice says behind me, and I whirl around to find a furious Thomas glaring at Trevor and me. “If you want to flirt with this pathetic blind guy, have fun, I just don’t want to be around to see it,” he tells me.
He then whips around and is about to storm out the store when I stop him with a dismayed cry of, “Wait!”
Instantly I freeze, not sure what I should say to Thomas. A new wave of anger at Thomas’s words washes over me at that exact moment, and, instead of apologizing and begging forgiveness like I was going to, I say to him coldly, “Take your ring with you too then,” and rip the engagement ring off my finger to throw it at him.
Thomas stands there for a few moments, completely stunned, until he recovers enough to say, his mouth hard with anger, “You and your parents will regret this.”
He turns and leaves without another word, and, before I can start asking myself how I could be so stupid as to do something like that, someone – undoubtedly Kacey – starts clapping loudly behind me. I am about to whip around and chew her out for congratulating me on losing the money to keep our parents alive when I hear someone next to me clapping quietly too.
Looking over in surprise, I find Trevor standing there and looking down at me with a small smile on his face. He apparently reads my shock and anger, because he stops clapping and says, “He was a jerk, and I think you deserve better than that.” I see the unsettling, intense look in his eyes and immediately look away, made uncomfortable by the emotion he’s directing onto me with his gaze.
“Well, if money is all you need,” Trevor begins, and I turn back around, perplexed by the tone of his voice, “I would be happy to pay your parents’ medical bills; I need to get rid of all this money I’m never going to use anyways.” A smile breaks out across his face as he beams down at me, and I’m completely and utterly stunned by his offer and the generosity it implies.
However, I don’t have time to reply, because he adds, “There is one condition though,” and my heart immediately drops. I haven’t had very good experiences with rich men giving out their money with conditions. When I don’t say anything, he keeps on talking.
“You go out to dinner with me tonight, just somewhere casual,” he finishes, his tone suddenly hopeful and apprehensive. “If you do that, you can have as much money as you want.”
I stare up at him in amazement, even more stunned by his condition than by his offer. All he wants is a date with me? I mean, I would go out on a date with him even if it wasn’t the condition to his offer.
It takes me less than a moment to recover, and I quickly reply, a smile breaking out across my face, “I’d love to.”
“Great,” he says exuberantly, his grin getting so big that I think it must hurt his cheeks, then tells me, “I’ll pick you up here at six then.”
“Alright,” I agree, happiness brimming up and overflowing inside me.
Trevor says, “Well, it was great actually meeting you, Luna, and I guess I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Yeah, it was great meeting you too, and I guess I’ll also see you in a few hours,” I answer, completely and utterly joyous at the turn of events. I dumped Thomas, found another person to pay for my parents’ bills and got a hot date all in five minutes. This really must be my lucky day.
“Well, goodbye for now,” Trevor tells me, then gives me one last smile and turns towards the door to leave.
“Goodbye,” I call after him, and he stops just outside the door to wave at me before he turns and walks away, whistling quietly, with a beaming smile on his face, as he does so.
Turning away from the doorframe where Trevor just stood, I look up at the clock on the wall and murmur to myself, “Six o’clock can’t come fast enough.”
After all, with all the great things that have happened to me in five minutes around Trevor, I can’t help but wonder and be hopeful for all the great things he’ll cause in an hour.

[Richard Parker]

This is a story I wrote earlier today because of a request, and, with Halloween so close, I made it kind of spooky and had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you like it! :)

Jackson Freiborn, Vanessa Demion Blood, Lilian Blood (Cursed Ghost) and Trick-or-Treaters

"You know the rules, Lilian - even though it is Halloween, you are not allowed to go outside or scare any of the neighbor children," I tell my daughter, who happens to be a ghost left on this world with me, to have her groan in disappointment.
"But Mother, can't I scare one neighbor child?" she protests, and I immediately shake my head no.
"Lilian, we had to move because you scared a neighbor child, remember? Well, I like it here, and I do not want to have to move again, so you are to be on your best behavior. Do you understand?" I ask her, to have her glare at the wall in defiance. Sighing deeply, I stare into her mind - I happen to be literally looking through her head as well - and compel her, by using my powers of mental manipulation, to look at me and nod her head yes.
When I've released her from my control, she shakes her head and huffs in disapproval. "I hate when you do that," she mutters, and I am about to tell her that I wouldn't have to do that if she would cooperate when the doorbell rings.
"Lilian, go," I whisper at her, and she silently nods her head and glides away to pass through the wall between the hall closet and the main entryway and disappear from sight.
I then retrieve the candy bowl from the kitchen - I personally don't understand how mortals like this stuff, when all it is is an overpowering concentration of sugar - and check my appearance in the mirror hanging on the right-hand side of the hallway - I'm as supernatural and haunted as always, with my crystal-clear silver-blue eyes, bloodstains on my pale skin, white-pink hair and hangs just barely visible underneath my top lip - before answering the door with the scariest smile I can muster.

My blood immediately chills as I take in the appearance of the woman answering the door. She is incredibly beautiful, with incredibly pale skin, very unusual white-pink hair, and captivating silver-blue eyes, and also a few years younger than I am, as she looks to be about twenty, but something about her doesn't feel right. The fake blood on her face looks scarily real, and the pair of vampire fangs glistening in her smile look too natural and dangerous to be fake.
However, as soon as I realize what I'm thinking, I immediately shake my head and tell myself to snap out of it. Of course the blood and fangs are fake; I mean, it's not like she's an actual vampire, because those don't exist!
Feeling reassured by my logic, I brush past all of my bodily warning signs to put my best smile on my face and motion for the kids I'm escorting to speak, which causes them to cry, "Trick or treat!" in unison.
When the woman seems almost perturbed by the kids' volume, I give her an apologetic smile and tell her, "Sorry about that. They can be rather loud."
"Oh no, it's quite alright," she answers, in the most melodious and hair-raising voice I've ever heard. Its smooth, incredibly beautiful tone with something almost predatory behind that makes me think of a leopard that purrs at a capybara to lure the rodent in and then attacks and kills the capybara as soon as it's close enough. The worst part is that I have the feeling I'm the capybara.
My thoughts are broken by the sound of glass clinking on wood, and I look around to find her placing the bowl of candy that was in her hands on a chair by the door and telling the kids, as she gives them a beautiful, deadly smile, "You may each have three pieces of whatever you would like."
As I watch her, I can't help but wonder why she wouldn't just hold the bowl and let the kids pick out of it that way, or even just hand the kids whatever candy they asked for, as she has at least ten varieties of chocolate and not in the bowl, but I'm not complaining about her setting the bowl down, because that gives me time to talk to her while the kids pick.
"So I've seen you around some in the last few months, and I've never had a chance to ask you your name," I begin, to have her turn her stunning and utterly frightening gaze on me. For a moment, I get lost in her eyes and completely forget what I just said to her, and only manage to remember when she moves her eyes away from mine to gaze over at the children and I snap out of it.
"Vanessa," she replies quietly, as she watches the kids almost hungrily. "Vanessa Demion Blood. And yours?"
"Jackson Freiborn," I respond, giving her my best smile. "It's nice to meet you," I tell her, to which she nods her head in agreement or recognition, which I can't tell.
"You have a very Halloween-sounding name," I can't help but say after a few moments go by in silence, a smile spreading across my face, which causes her to turn her gaze back onto me and stare me down almost fearfully for a moment.
After a moment, she apparently sees what she's looking for and relaxes some to answer, a small smile that's almost sad coming across her expression too, "Yes, I suppose I do."
Suddenly it occurs to me that I haven't heard her use a contraction yet, and, as I gaze over at her, I murmur, my stomach sinking and all of my bodily warning signs coming back in full force, "You don't speak like you're from this time. You speak like you lived a hundred years ago."
She whips her gaze back onto me again to look me up and down with that same wary look in her eye, and, like before, she seems to find what she's looking for after a moment and stop scanning me so thoroughly. "Well, I suppose you could say that I am rather antiquated."
"In what sense?" I question, as I watch her watch the children.
"I should have died a long time ago," she responds softly after a few moments, her eyes suddenly sad, and I am about to tell her that she shouldn't have died a long time ago and that it's a good thing she's alive because she's such a lovely woman - I have been completely and utterly entranced by her almost supernatural beauty and mystery and sense of danger that she instills in me the whole time I've been talking to her - when one of the children screams in horror and points wordlessly at something in the house.

"Lilian, what are you doing?" I hiss, so silently that the mortals can't hear me but that she can, at her, as she floats in the middle of the hallway, in full view of the children.
"Having fun," she replies nonchalantly, as she rattles her chains and waves at the children and Jackson. "You had to know that I wasn't going to behave, not when I can get so much amusement out of terrifying these mortals."
By this point, all of the children have begun to scream, and, while Lilian might like the sound of their cries of fear, I don't like it at all; in fact, my head has begun to hurt.
"Vanessa, what's going on?" a scared, shaking voice comes from behind me, and I whip around to find Jackson's gaze flitting between Lilian and I in fear. Gesturing at Lilian, he asks, "That's just a hologram, right?"
"Jackson," I begin, meeting his gaze and forcing most of his fear out of him by controlling his emotions, "do you believe in monsters?"
"What kind of monsters?" he questions in reply, his voice not shaking nearly as much now. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to realize that most of his fear is gone, which means that he won't be able to connect me to its disappearance.
"Ghosts and vampires," I answer, to have him look between Lilian and I one more time before his eyes shoot open wide in realization.
Before he can say anything, I silence the children by breaking into their minds and removing Lilian from their memories, then step forward to take Jackson's arm in my icy, iron grip and guide him into the house with a murmur of, "I think you should come inside."

"I can't believe it," I murmur, shaking my head. "You're real." I look back up at Vanessa to find her watching me with an amused smile on my face, and then look over at Lilian to find her watching me almost with disappointment. I guess she's not happy that she didn't get a chance to truly scare me witless before Vanessa told me about what they are. In fact, Lilian glides away in boredom after a half-second, her expression truly let down.
"You actually believe me?" Vanessa asks, with more than a bit of surprise to her voice. When I gaze over at her in surprise myself, she elaborates, "You are a man of science. I did not think you would believe in the supernatural so easily."
"How can I not believe when you're sitting right in front of me?" I question in reply, to which Vanessa doesn't answer.
A few moments go by in an awkward silence until Vanessa breaks them by gesturing to the locket around my neck and saying, "That is very beautiful. Where did you get it from?"
"My wife," I answer shortly, my mood immediately falling.
Vanessa, of course, notices this and asks quietly, "How long ago did she pass?"
"Two years," I murmur quietly, and Vanessa nods her head in understanding, and I know that she does understand. She told me about all of the men she had the misfortune to fall in love with over the years, and how they always died and left her alone because they refused to become a vampire, or, when they actually wanted to, she refused to change them.
Suddenly I realize that I want to be one of those men that she's loved, but the one that actually succeeds in staying with her forever, and I look up at her to meet her gaze and tell her, "Vanessa, if you would make me like you, I promise I would not leave your side ever, and I would be with you always, because I have grown to love you with all of my heart in the few short minutes I have known you. Despite the fact that you are not technically alive, and despite the fact that I didn't think your kind existed up until twenty minutes ago, I feel closer to you than to any other person I've met. I want to be with you, Vanessa, and I want to be like you too, so that I can be with you forever."
"Jackson, you will a half-life, a sort of hell on earth, with no end if you become a vampire," Vanessa warns, but I brush right past her warning.
"It wouldn't be a half-life or a hell if I spent it with you," I reply, and she lowers her gaze as she realizes that she's not going to dissuade me.
After a few long moments, she looks back up and asks me seriously, "Are you sure this is what you want?"
"All I want is to be with you, so yes," I answer with conviction, meeting her gaze evenly, to have her sigh.
"Well, if you are so willing to be my human sacrifice, I suppose I cannot help but be your end," she murmurs quietly, and rises to her feet to motion for me to do the same.
She then glides towards me, and, just as her lips meet my throat and her fangs pierce my skin, I murmur, "You are my beginning, not my end."

[Richard Parker]

This is another story request I had that I finished earlier today, and I think I did a decent job on it. :)

Serena (f), Xavier (m) and Jake (m)

"You're way too pretty to be sitting at this bar alone," a voice from the left of me came, and I turned my head to find a tall, handsome, well-dressed man, who was probably at least three or four years older than my twenty-two, with dark features and burning eyes that just freaked me out taking a seat next to me.
However, since I didn't want to be rude, I forced a smile onto my face and then turned away from the man, hoping he would take the fact that I wasn't interacting with him as a hint to go away.
Unfortunately, the man either wasn't as observant as I had hoped or just didn't care, as he told me, "My name's Jake Anthony. Yours is Serena, right?"
I whipped my head over to look at him in shock in suspicion, as I had no idea how he knew my name. "Yeah," I answered slowly, searching his face warily. "How did you know that?"
"You're wearing a nametag," he replied, a small smile crossing his lips as he gestured to my chest, and I glanced down briefly to find that I in fact was still wearing my nametag from my day of volunteering at the elementary school.
A few moments went by in an awkward silence, me doing my best to watch the football game on the TV screen above me and pretend like Jake wasn't there, before Jake asked me, scooting his chair a little bit closer to mine, "So do you come here often?"
"Not really," I responded through clenched teeth, as I resisted the urge to scoot away from him. "Just waiting for a friend, actually." A wave of relief washed over me as I remembered that Xavier was on his way to meet me here right now, and that I would be saved from Jake as soon as Xavier arrived. I then said a prayer in my mind for Xavier to speed as fast as he could and get here as quickly as possible.
"Oh," Jake replied, and his tone almost seemed more excited. Obviously he thought my friend was going to be another young woman he could hit on. A half-second passed in quiet before Jake told me, "Here, let me buy you a drink," and then waved the waiter over to order a vodka cranberry without giving me a chance to say that I don't drink and that the dark pink liquid in my glass was a small strawberry lemonade.
The waiter returned with the shot glass a few moments later, and placed it in front of me after Jake waved him in my direction. I stared at the liquid dubiously, thinking about how everything I had heard about vodka was that it was incredibly high in alcohol content and also burned your mouth and sinuses badly. A quick sideward glance towards Jake showed him watching me expectantly out of the corner of my eye, and, with a small internal sigh, I reached out, picked up the glass and took a sip.
The first thing that ran through my mind as I held the vodka in my mouth is that I couldn't spit it out, no matter how badly it burned my mouth. And it did, so badly that I felt like I had just coated my throat and sinuses in oil and then lit them on fire. I forced myself to swallow, coughing a bit as I did some, and took a long sip from my glass of strawberry lemonade to try to cool down my flaming mouth and nose.
Xavier, hurry it up before he orders me another one, I thought to myself as I set the glass down, trying to catch my breath and ignore the pain in my mouth.
Jake, who had been watching this whole thing with a small smile on his face, asked me, when he saw that I was done, "You don't drink much, do you?"
"Not at all," I answered truthfully, and took the time to glance around the Red Robin briefly to become even more desperate when I didn't see any sign of Xavier. Turning back to Jake and forcing myself to calm down - having a panic attack just because I took one sip of vodka wasn't very smart or realistic, even though there was a lot more for me to be panicking about, like Jake's obvious interest in me - I asked him, "Was it that obvious?"
"Kind of," Jake replied with a smile, his eyes locked on my face the whole time, and the pure desire I saw in their red depths not only repulsed me but made me look away before I felt compelled to scoot away from him.
Suddenly my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I stood up to pull it out of my back pocket and shoot Jake, who had been watching it all with renewed interest, a glance of distaste that he thankfully didn't notice before checking my phone to find one new message from Xavier.
Be there in five; sorry I'm running late, the message read, and my heart plummeted as I processed the words in my mind. I now had to survive five more minutes of conversation with Jake, which I wasn't sure I could do.
"Is that your friend?" Jake asked, breaking me out of my thoughts and causing me to look up to see him gesture at my phone.
"Yeah," I answered shortly, not feeling up to adding any more details unless they were asked of me.
Fortunately, Jake actually did what I wanted him to for the first time in this conversation and didn't ask anything else about the message Xavier sent me. Instead, he questioned, "So what do you do for a living?"
"I write," I replied simply, shrugging my shoulders. There was no reason for him to know that I was the mind behind the best-selling novels Kodiak, Project Number Thirteen, Perfect and the Triple Crown trilogy, especially if he didn't ask about it.
"Oh," Jake said, and perked up considerably. Obviously he thought he had found something he could talk to me about that would keep our conversation going. "What genre?"
"Fiction. Sci-fi, specifically," I responded, meeting Jake's gaze confidently and almost confrontationally. As long as I could keep us talking about writing, I could, for the most part, prevent Jake from hitting on me any more and burn the five minutes until Xavier got here with relative ease.
"That's cool," he replied, with the first non-fake and non-devious smile I had seen cross his face so far. It then occurred to me that this obviously wealthy and well-educated man might actually be a sci-fi nerd, and I couldn't stop a hint of a grin from darting across my lips at the thought. Jake fortunately didn't seem to notice and asked, "Have you gotten any novels published so far?"
"Oh, a few," I responded vaguely, waving my hand dismissively as my heart began to pound with fear. I hadn't want to get into this territory at all, because it would undoubtedly result in my identity coming out, but I didn't see any way I could get out of it now; I guess I just had to drag the conversation out as long as possible and hope that Xavier would show up in time to save me, like he had done countless times before.
"Any that I would know?" Jake met my gaze inquisitively, and again I was repulsed by the desire in his eyes.
Quickly looking away for a moment as my hands locked on the bottom lip of the bar in front of me, to help resist the urge to scoot away from him, I then forced myself to look back up at him and reply, "Well, it depends on if you read sci-fi or not."
"Well, let's say I do read sci-fi," Jake began, and I knew that my suspicion that he was a secret sci-fi nerd was correct. "Anything I would know then?"
"Well, the first one that I got published is called Kodiak, and I sold a few copies," I said, feeling kind of good when Jake's jaw almost hit the ground in shock. "Then I wrote Project Number Thirteen, and a few people bought it too, and then I released Lightning, the first book in the Triple Crown series, and people seemed to like that one pretty well, so I released the rest of the series, Sparks and Checkmate, a little bit later, and I just wrote and got my newest novel Perfect published two months ago."
"So you're Selena Marshall, the best-selling child prodigy novelist who got her first big hit with Kodiak at the age of fourteen?" Jake asked me, his expression completely awestruck, and my smirk got a little bit bigger as I nodded my head yes.
However, the grin evaporated off of my face incredibly quickly when I saw the heightened interest in Jake's eyes, and I groaned in my head. Great, I grumbled to myself. Now that he knows you're rich and famous, he's not going to leave you alone for the world!
"That's amazing," Jake exclaimed, shaking his head. He then looked back up at me to tell me, "You know, I've been reading your books ever since they first came out, and I'm a huge fan. I just can't believe I'm actually getting to meet you."
If it were any other person saying that to me, I would be grinning and trying to be humble - like I had done with every other person who had said that to me - but with Jake saying it, I just became more wary of him and more anxious for Xavier to show up and rescue me from this conversation.
A few moments went by in silence, during which time I kept my gaze firmly locked on the TV screen above me with after catching Jake staring at me very intently out of the corner of my eye, until I felt a hand on my arm and looked over in surprise to find Jake gazing at me with so much desire in his eyes that I felt an urge to throw up and slap him simultaneously.
"You know, Serena, I've been incredibly attracted to you from the moment I first laid eyes on you," he murmured, and then, without warning, leaned forward to kiss me on the lips.
The first thing that I tasted was plastic - like the rest of him. Grimacing and almost snarling as he got even more confident and tried to French-kiss me, I reached my hands up, placed them on his chest, and shoved him backward as hard as I could, thanking God for all of the time I spent at the gym and the fact that I had always had a relatively strong upper body.
"Stay away from me," I snarled at him, my eyes locked on his fiercely as I backed up and turned to find myself staring into someone's neck, which was above a very familiar Arizona State T-shirt.
"Xavier," I cried, and tried to throw my arms around him in relief and happiness, but didn't get a chance to because he immediately brushed past me, his glittering golden eyes locked on Jake.
"Xavier, don't!" I called out to him, knowing exactly where this was going, but I was too late, and found myself watching Xavier punch Jake square in the jaw.

"Well, it looks like the charges of sexual harassment and assault would balance each other out, so, if you don't want to press charges, we can just call it a day and you can leave," the police officer told Xavier and I as we stood in the police station. Jake was standing on the other side of the room, with an ice pack to his face to reduce the swelling on his jaw that Xavier caused, and occasionally shot both of us looks of pure loathing. Neither one of us really cared though, because we had each other now.
Xavier had wrapped his arm around my shoulder as soon as the police officers released him from questioning and hadn't removed it since, and I was perfectly fine with that, as I liked being in close proximity to Xavier's warm, tall and muscular body.
"Do you want to just do that?" I asked Xavier as I turned to look up at him, and, like I knew he would, he immediately nodded his head and replied, "Sure," like he had been doing for me for fifteen years now.
Xavier and I had been best friends since third grade, and he had always done whatever I suggested, no matter how bad of an idea it was, because he was just that devoted to me. He had also always been there for me when I needed him; a few times he had even set aside his own life to help me. He had held my hand and bought me a teddy bear and lots of ice cream when I got dumped in ninth grade, and then helped me reject the guy that first dumped me when I released Kodiak, became famous in a matter of weeks, and the guy wanted me back. He had always come to all of my soccer games and cheered for me, with his own handwritten poster that had a picture of me and said, "Go Serena, #16," no matter how bad I sucked or how bad we lost. Xavier also helped me edit and publish all of my novels, and ran my personal fanclub and my and all of my novels' Facebook pages, as well as helping me manage all of the money I had by deciding with me what charities to donate to. Through all of the turnovers of other boys in my life - break- and make-ups with boys, my mom having a new boyfriend almost every month - Xavier had been the one that stayed, and I respected and loved him for that.
And it was obvious he loved me too, in more than a friend way, so much so that I had been waiting for him to ask me out since sophomore year of high school. In fact, I had thought that tonight might finally be the night that he was going to ask me out, considering we met at my favorite restaurant Red Robin and he had already told me beforehand that he was going to be paying - he himself was very successful, as he was the starting running back for the Denver Broncos, after putting up huge numbers and shattering many school and NCAA records at ASU; I happened to go to all of his games now - but all possibility of that happened had been derailed by the fiasco with Jake.
Sighing slightly, I had turned away and was just about to leave, expecting him to follow me, when Xavier told me, his tone oddly strained and excited, "Serena, there's something I want to do before we leave."
Immediately I whipped back around to look at him closely, trying and failing to read him, and finally giving up and asking, "What's that?"
My heart began to race as Xavier got down on one knee, and my mind went numb when he pulled a small velvet box out of his left jean pocket. Is he honestly doing what I think he's doing?...
"Serena, you and I have been best friend since third grade, for almost fifteen years now, and during that time we've become inseparable," he began, his eyes locked on mine. "We're still inseparable now even, as we don't go more than a day without seeing each other generally. Because our relationship has already been tested and made strong over those fifteen years, I didn't see a reason to wait any longer to do this." Xavier paused there, to open the box in his hand and reveal a beautiful golden ring, with one large, gleaming amethyst, my birthstone, favorite stone and the color he always said my eyes were, nestled brilliantly among the metal. "Serena Nicole Williams," he started, his gaze glued on mine, "will do you me the honor, the privilege, the incredible favor, of being my wife?"
I stared at him and the ring uncomprehendingly for a few moments, my body completely numb and my mind, which was normally so quick, completely frozen. Finally what he said to me cracked through the layer of shock covering my mental faculties and kicked my mind into full gear, at which point I realized what he had asked and a huge smile spread across my face.
"Well, after all these years of you saying yes to me, I guess it's finally time I said yes to you," I told him, and then waited for him slip the ring onto my right ring finger before standing on tiptoe to kiss him the best I could and end up being literally swept off of my feet, the whole time thinking that it took too long to finally say yes to him as the applause of the police station filled my ears.

[Richard Parker]

Just another story I wrote on request this morning; I hope you find it decent! :)

I walk by him every day and, even though we don't talk - we probably never will talk, at the rate things are going - I always try to get him to notice me. I dress up nice just for him, in colors I know he likes, I let him cut in front of me in line, I even stop right in front of him, just to see if he will react, all to no avail, as he never does notice me. Sometimes I think the only way I'll get him to notice me is if I get a huge parade following me, but even that might not work, giving his apparent lack of awareness of his surroundings.
"Boys are the most idiotic creatures on the planet," I mutter under my breath, shooting all of the boys around me vicious glares that scare the ones who happen to be looking in my direction. But if they're so stupid, then why do I love one?
Sighing deeply, I turn away from all of the minor gods and demigods in the rowdy cafeteria - I always hope the children of Aphrodite will get hit in the routine food fights, because they're always so mean to me, but everyone seems too scared or too enchanted by them to even think about throwing food when they're around - to find myself dumping tomato soup down someone else's front. I recognize the scarily familiar white robe and tan-and-green mantle and my shock and horror are only amplified, as well as joined by mortification, when I realize it's him.
I just stand there, frozen by my surprise and fear, for a long moment before it occurs to me that I should be doing something to help him and turn around to grab a cloth napkin off of the table behind me - Aphrodite's children won't accept anything less than the finest cloth for their 'delicate complexions' - and hand it to him silently, the whole time wishing that my dad was an invisible man instead of a vampire so I could just disappear.
"I... I... I'm... I'm sorry," I finally manage to say in a whisper, my eyes on the floor as I feel myself begin to blush furiously, heat filling my cheeks and undoubtedly turning me beet-red.
"It's quite alright," he replied in a low, soothing voice, and I look up at him to be dazzled by the downright gorgeous face in front of me.
He's relatively pale, with skin the color of aspen bark, and dancing green eyes reminiscent of a forest of laughing trees. A wreath of branches sits atop his noble head, and I can't help but gawk slightly at how amazingly handsome he is up close.
He looks down at his now-stained white robe with a bemused smile on his face and murmurs, "Oh well. It can always be washed." He glances back up at me to give me a warm smile, and, at that moment, every part of my heart and soul that doesn't already love him is committed to him by the fierce persuasion power of his smile.
"L-l-let me wash it for you," I find myself saying before I realize what I'm doing, and he looks down at me in surprise.
"That would be too much trouble for you though, my dear," he answers, and my heart melts yet again. "I can do it myself."
"But I am the one who spilled soup on you to begin with," I begin, my voice getting bolder and my confidence building with every word I say, "so I insist."
"I will come to your residence tonight to drop it off then," he agrees with a smile, and is in the process of turning away when I recover from my shock enough to realize that we might not have to wait till tonight.
"I have this last hour off, if you have it off too and would like to come over now," I call out to him, and he turns around to study for a millisecond before what I said registers and he responds, his smile returning, "I will come over now then. In fact, if you'd like, I can give us a ride there right now."
Immediately I nod my head vehemently and reply, the first smile I've allowed myself stretching slowly across my face, "That sounds great."
He then offers his arm out to me, like a true gentleman, and, after I turn around to grab my backpack and try to control the sheer elation running through me, I accept his arm and walk out with him, leaving a silent and stunned cafeteria behind.

Just as he is about to take his mantle and then his robe off, I realize there is one serious problem in this plan. "Do you have anything you can wear while your robe is being washed? I don't think any of my clothes would fit you." I size him up by looking him up and down, and I can already tell that nothing I have is going to fit him, considering that I wear a small and he probably wears an extra-large because of his broad shoulders and height.
"I don't have anything with me, no," he says, shaking his head, to then add, giving me a smile as he does so, "I don't mind not having a robe on for a few hours though. I don't get cold that easily."
I force a smile onto my face - I wasn't worried about his reaction to him going shirtless for a while; I was worried about mine, because it was only by the grace of God that he didn't hate me for being a complete idiot already - to agree through gritted teeth, "Well, I guess I can just put your robe in the washer then."
I then turn away from him to give him some privacy to change, and I hear the muffled thump of his mantle as it hits the laundry room floor.
He murmurs, "Here," and I reach out, not daring to turn around, to grab his robe, which is surprisingly light considering it's soaked with tomato soup, put it in the washer and press the button to start the clean cycle.
I stay turned away from him for a few more moments, not sure what to do, until he finally asks, "What's the matter? I'm not that hard to look at, am I?"
You're exactly the opposite, I think to myself before taking a deep breath to brace myself for what I am about to see and finally turning back around to be met by a very glorious but also incredibly distracting sight.
He has an eight-pack at least, and the muscles in his arms and shoulders ripple every time he moves his arm ever so slightly. All of this is just accentuated by his pale skin, and I find myself having a hard time breathing as I stare at him in awe.
However, I am somehow able to tell myself that I can't get distracted now, and I force myself to meet his gaze and ask him, "So what do you want to do now?"
"Well, there is one thing I would like to do," he begins, to take a step towards me and cause my eyes to shoot open in surprise. Is he really doing what I think he's doing...?
Gently he cups my chin in his hand - his hands are cool but pleasantly so, like the depths of a forest on a summer day - and tilts my head up so that I have no choice but to look him in the eye, and tells me, "I have been watching you in the hallways at school for quite a while now, and, while I do not know who you are, I know that you are incredibly beautiful and incredibly intelligent and that you certainly do not deserve the hatred and humiliation you receive at school every day."
"But I'm weird, an outcast, and I don't fit in with all of the children of the more popular gods, so therefore I must be bullied," I but in, feeling very uncomfortable with where this conversation is going, even though I have been dreaming about having this conversation with him for quite a while now.
"What are you talking about? No one deserves that, and the children of the more popular gods are wrong for doing that to you!" he says quietly but emphatically, and I am stunned into silence long enough for him to add with a bitter smile, "Many gods and demigods think we are holier than the humans, that we are so much better than them in our nature and share none of their vices. What those gods and demigods fail to realize is that we are exactly like the humans, because we are a direct reflection of their nature. In other words, we are not holier than anyone, and we certainly aren't as holy as we think we are."
I don't know what to reply to this, but, during the whole time he had been talking, my confidence had been building, so much so that, after a moment of silence, I ask, "So what was it that you wanted to do?"
"This," he murmurs, and then leans in to kiss me gently on the lips. As his arms lock around me and my arms lock around him, his fresh evergreen scent filling my nostrils, I realize, with a smile, that I am the moon to his forest and he is the forest to my moon.

[Richard Parker]

This was written off of a request and finished about five minutes ago; I finally found the motivation to write another short story, so I hope you like it! :)

"We're dead, aren't we?" I asked Doom Heart softly, as I looked over at him in the low light. Even though I couldn't see him very well, I couldn't help but think how handsome he looked, with his armor that used to be gleaming, his hair sticking up in clumps from the sweat dripping down his face and his bloody sword. Well, perhaps 'handsome' wasn't quite the right word; 'murderous' or 'warring' or 'dangerous' was probably a better descriptor of him, but I still thought he was very attractive.
"I'm afraid so, Rose Petal," he replied, as he looked down at his sword and then wiped it in the grass to help get some of the blood off of it.
"Ironic, isn't it, that we're going to die in the name of God at the hands of people who think they're killing us in the name of God," I murmured, and he nodded his head in agreement. The cross around my neck suddenly seemed to become much heavier, as if it had heard my blasphemous words and was now determined to make my last moments a little bit more uncomfortable as a punishment.
"Ironic, isn't it, that people are getting killed in the name of God at all," he added on, and now it was my turn to nod my head in agreement as we sat there, awaiting our deaths by Muslim swords.
"Doom Heart, this isn't God," I said after a few moments of silence, and looked up to meet his gaze. "This is Urban II's politics, this is human greediness at its finest, but this definitely is not God." After pausing for a half-second, I questioned him almost desperately, "Why in the hell did we ever get ourselves involved in this in the first place?"
"Because we thought it was God, and that the Muslims were pagans who should be destroyed," he answered, completely truthfully for both of us. "My God, how wrong we were! To think that we thought war was God and Muslims didn't know who God was, when really they worship the same God as us, just by a different name! I guess that means that this war is mass ignorance at its finest too."
"Doom Heart, I don't want another war like this to happen and sweep away hundred of thousands of people under a false cause," I told him. "So do you think people will ever stop being ignorant, or stop being greedy, or stop being political and selfish?"
"Because humans are human and therefore inherently imperfect," Doom Heat began, "no. There will always be wars like this one, as long as humans exist, because humans will always be imperfect and war is a product of human imperfection."
"What do you mean?" I asked him, puzzled by his comment.
"Well, war is caused by greediness and ignorance and politics, and all of those things are humans' imperfections personified, so if humans were perfect, greediness and ignorance and politics wouldn't exist and therefore war wouldn't either," Doom Heart explained, and I nodded my head slowly as I mulled it all over in my head.
After a few moments of silence, I finally replied, "You know, I don't think I would want to live in a world of perfect humans though, because that world would be so boring and there would be nothing to do and nothing to fight for or believe in. There wouldn't be any purpose to life, I don't think."
"Well, we're about to go to a perfect world," he said in response, but, as soon as he realized that we actually might not, considering that we killed people in nothing but the name of human imperfection, he quickly amended, "That is, if God decides to overlook our ignorance and let us in anyways."
"And if not?" I couldn't help but ask, as I stared over at Doom Heart and noticed how majestic he looked, bathed in the moonlight like he was. He looked like a saint, Paul or Peter perhaps, except for the armor and sword.
'Well, hell can't be that much worse than here, right?" He met my gaze, and I found myself nodding my head in confirmation, because he was right; there wasn't any way hell could be that much worse than where we already were.
Suddenly the sounds of a scuffle and a cry in Arabic came from not two hundred yards away from the boulder we were hiding behind, and Doom Heart looked over at me and I looked over at him for what was probably going to be the last time.
"Goodbye, Doom Heart," I murmured quietly, my eyes locked on his, and then, before either one of us knew what we were doing, I felt his lips on mine and his arms wrapped around me, holding me to him.
After a few moments of heaven - most likely the only heaven I would ever know - he pulled back, and he stared down at me for a long second before finally telling me, "Goodbye, Rose Petal," and then getting to his feet, leaving his sword on the ground and not bothering to try to be stealthy or quiet.
When he was completely standing up, he offered his hand out to me and pulled me to my feet when I accepted it, and, my hand still in his, I looked over at him and asked him, "Together?"
"Together," he confirmed, and then bent down over me to give me one last gentle kiss before pulling back and starting to walk out from behind the boulder, making me walk with him.
As we went out into the open and saw the Muslim soldiers running towards us and waited patiently for our deaths, I couldn't help but think that everything that had just passed between us - our realization that we were going to die, our enlightenment about God and war and humanity, and even the kiss (especially the kiss) - were all from God, even if everything else we had known and done before that was not from God at all.

Just as historical background, this story is set during the First Crusade, with Rose Petal being a follower of the Christians who got sucked up into battle and Doom Heart being a European Christian soldier, and Urban II is the Catholic pope who called for the First Crusade.

[Richard Parker]

I actually wrote this story on request about a month and a half ago, but I haven't been on here in a month, so I haven't had a chance to post it. Anyways, I hope you like it! :)

"Hello, Ness," comes a hiss from behind as I stand at my kitchen table, looking for a book in my bookbag, and I jump about three feet in the air in surprise.
Whipping around quickly, I find Skai standing there with a smirk on his face and the spirit assigned to guard him whirling around him and snickering too, and I hit him playfully on the arm as I exclaim in mock-annoyance, "Stop doing that, Skai! You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days!"
"Then I'd have a great excuse to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation," he tells me, his smile fading off of his face as his blue eyes become intense, so intense that I am compelled to look away before I get holes burned through me.
"You'd only be able to do that if I drowned or choked, not if my heart stopped," I say quietly, as I fumble around in my bookbag to waste time and get past this awkward moment. Skai has been hitting on me ever since we had met, when we were both ten, but, even though I do like him like that, I just don't want to ruin our friendship that has worked so well for so long because I love him so much that I don't want to risk losing him if being romantically involved doesn't work out for us. Besides, I almost feel bad that he loves me, because he could do so much better if he would just look away from me and notice all of the village girls drooling over him.
"I'd still do it anyways, Ness, just so that, if I couldn't save you, I at least got to kiss you before you left me," Skai whispers in my ear, and I swallow deeply as I continue to search my bag clumsily for the book on Dracula, Skai's grandfather, that I have been reading out of curiosity.
"Why do you keep rejecting me, Ness?" Skai asks me almost angrily, and I whip around, utterly shocked by his tone. Skai has never been snippy with me before, and I've basically rejected him many times before anyways. "I know you love me, although perhaps not quite as strongly as I love you, and I can give you everything you want, so why do you keep pushing me away? Is there someone else that you love more? Or am I just delusional in thinking that you love me?"
I find it hard to think with Skai's piercing blue eyes locked on mine and demanding answers, but I'm able to reply, "Skai, I love you too much to go down that road."
"What do you mean?" he immediately questions, his almost dazzlingly handsome face screwing up into a confused and worried grimace.
"I don't want us to date and then realize that we shouldn't be dating or get into some big fight or something like that and ruin our relationship forever. I don't want to lose you, Skai," I end in a murmur, my gaze glued to his, and, after a moment of us just staring at one another, he turns away, his expression becoming confused and hurt again.
A second more goes by in silence, with me watching Skai worriedly and Skai staring at the ground as he thinks, before Skai looks back up at me to take my hands in his and tell me gently, "Ness, I don't want to be just your friend anymore. I don't think I can be just your friend anymore. In fact, I came here today to do something that would most definitely put me out of the friend zone." Here Skai slips a hand into one of the pockets in his coat, and my heart skips a beat as I see the velvet box sitting in his hand when it pulls it back out.
Skai then removes his hat from his head, gets down on one knee, and opens the velvet box to reveal a beautiful silver ring with a singular sapphire - my favorite stone, the one that Skai always said my eyes looked like - which he offers up to me almost reverently. "Ness, I have known you for twelve long years, and I have loved you for every single second of all of those twelve long years, ever since I first laid eyes on you. So you will you finally, like I have been hoping and praying for and dreaming about for all those twelve long years, be mine?"
I stare at him in shock for a few moments, his proposal having coating my mind in fast-drying concrete. Finally I come to my senses enough to ask him, "But what about the decree that you can only marry another part-immortal, because you're expected to carry on the immortal bloodline?"
"Ness," Skai begins, a smile stretching across his face as he rises to his feet to stare down at me, his blue eyes twinkling and perfectly complimenting his wild black hair, "you are a part-immortal. My grandfather, when looking through the genealogy of the oldest families around here, found out that your mother is actually the moon goddess, and that you were just raised as a normal human because that is what your mother wanted and thought would be best for you."
"I'm..." Now my tongue is on even grounds with my mind, as it doesn't seem to be working either. "I'm... I'm a demigod?" I finally manage to spit out in pure shock and amazement, and Skai nods his head, a smirk crossing his face at my surprise.
"I can help you figure out what powers you have and how you can use them later, if you'd like," Skai tells me, and his eyes flit down to the velvet box containing the ring that's still in his hand.
Oh, right, he was kind of in the middle of pouring his heart out to me and asking me to marry him when I attempted to shoot down his proposal with that question, wasn't he?
"So, what do you say, Ness?" Skai asks me quietly, as he meets my gaze again. "Will you be my wife?"
As I stare up at him and think about all of the things that could go wrong if I said yes, I can't help but remember all of the things that have gone right between us in the last twelve years. Not once have we had a fight over anything larger than Skai wanting to take me out to dinner and me refusing to let him pay for it, and, even though our relationship wasn't romantic back then, I realize that its solidness and validity won't be negatively affected if it does become romantic, because we've done and been through so much together and know each other so well that we would be able to save it, if somehow it was put in jeopardy. Besides, it's time I was finally brave enough to actually try something new and stop clinging to the familiar, and it's time I finally was selfless enough to risk letting go of Skai in order to bring him closer.
I look up at Skai, filled with a new determination and happiness and excitement, and, like I've wanted to for twelve years but have never been brave enough or selfless enough to, I tell him, "Yes."

[Richard Parker]

Another one written off request a while ago that I just haven't gotten around to posting until now.

"We've got to get out of here!" I yell over my shoulder at Dove to find her right next to me, panting an extremely small amount for the distance we've already ran.
However, I don't get a chance to think about that fact very long, as she shoves me forward and tells me urgently as she begins to run again, "He's not too far behind! We've got to keep moving!"
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, I hear the crashing through the undergrowth that could only be him - a part of my mind, the part not completely occupied with staying alive, wonders if he would shoot us like he did the rest of them or strangle us out of anger if he caught us - and I start to run again too, eager to put a million miles between me and him.

"I think we've lost him for now," Dove manages to gasp as she bends over, with her hands on her knees, in an attempt to catch her breath. We had just been running for around two hours straight, if my watch is correct, so we probably put at least five miles of distance between us and him. It's not nearly as much as I would want - being on the moon and him on Earth wouldn't be a large enough distance between us and him - but it will have to do for now, because it's now dark and because I don't think I could run another minute.
Glancing over at Dove, I find, with almost jealousy, that she's almost completely caught her breath now, as she's standing up and isn't breathing nearly as heavily as I am.
"How did... you catch... your breath... that quickly?" I ask her between ragged breaths, and her eyes lock on mine in the darkness for a moment, an unpleasant emotion - distaste, maybe even loathing - flashing through them before she replies.
"I'm a cross country runner. What we just ran is maybe a little more strenuous than our daily workouts," she responds, and I hear in her voice what I saw in her eyes - distaste, maybe even bordering on loathing. She really doesn't like me, does she?
Unfortunately for her, I'm the only life form in probably a ten-mile radius that doesn't want to rape her or kill her and eat her - as we're surrounded by wild animals and him, the scariest animal of all - so I guess she's stuck with me for the time being, unless she would like to be suicidal and go out in the forest by herself and walk into his open arms.
I actually don't mind being out in the woods with her at all; in fact, out of all of the girls that we originally kidnapped by him, along with me - it's incredible to think that, after twelve hours, Dove and I are the only ones still alive of that party of ten - she's probably the one I would want to be stranded in a forest with after running from a serial killer. Dove is far more resourceful and practical and brave and level-headed than any of the other girls, and she, in my opinion, is nicer to look at than any of the other girls too.
The crunching sound of forest matter being crushed under someone's feet catches my attention, and I look up in surprise to find Dove walking off into the forest, away from the small clearing of trees we had stopped in.
"Where are you going?" I call after her, slightly alarmed that she didn't even bother to tell me when she was going to leave.
"To go get firewood," she answers shortly, and I nod my head in understanding.
"Do you need help with that?" I ask her, and she shakes her head as she responds, in a cynical and annoyed tone, "No. Just stay put and don't get yourself killed, alright?"
She looks over her shoulder to meet my gaze once more, to make sure that I understand, and I nod my head again and watch her turn back around and walk farther out into the forest as I realize that she sees me as nothing more than a burden, just something to slow her down and make it harder for her to survive. And maybe she's right; so far, I really only have been a burden. Multiple times, she had to stop and wait for a few seconds for me when we were running, and had to pull me up after I tripped over a low-lying branch more times than I can count, and I have a feeling that she wasn't running as fast as she were if she were alone so that she wouldn't lose me. In fact, she would probably be a good two or three miles away from here if it weren't for me slowing her down when we were running.
However, I don't want to be a burden, and I don't want her to not like me because she sees me as just a burden, so, determined to show to her that I'm useful, I find two logs nearby that would be good to sit on and drag them to about the middle of the small clearing, with some space in between, so that way we can light a fire in the middle of the logs and stay warm while sitting.
Just as I've finished arranging the logs, I hear Dove coming back from collecting firewood, and look up to find her struggling to carry the pile of wood in her hands.
Immediately I run to her, tell her, "I've got it," and take the wood, which proves to not weigh that much at all, from her, our hands brushing at the transfer of the last piece. Our eyes meet for a moment, and she looks away quickly, but not so quickly that I can't see the expression in them: one of grudging respect, and I can't help but smile to myself as I walk back over to the two logs for sitting on and deposit the wood in between them.
It looks like Dove is starting to think that I'm not such a burden after all.

"Where did you find these?" Dove asks me, gesturing to the blueberries in the palm of her hand.
"There's a small pond I almost fell in not too far from here, and there was a bush right there," I reply, shrugging my shoulders nonchalantly and hoping that the satisfaction I'm feeling at finally proving to be useful doesn't show.
"Well, that was a pretty good find," Dove tells me, and something that partially resembles a smile flits across her face.
"What's so funny?" I question, my eyes locking on hers in the darkness to find, unfortunately, an almost savage pleasure in her eyes that lets me know that what she's thinking is about me and isn't very nice at all.
"The thought of you, smooth Charlie Jameson, falling into a pond," she responds, and I see all of the distaste she originally had for me still present in her gaze.
Although I'm disheartened by that, it just makes my desire for her to like me or at least not so openly dislike me even stronger, and I ask her quietly after a few moments of silence, "All of the other girls begged for their lives, when he was about to shoot them." He got distracted and Dove and I were able to break out just as he was about to shoot her - it's incredible how easy it is to talk about the events, when my mind is too shell-shocked to really register everything; it's like I'm talking about complete strangers when I detail all of the horrors we went through. "Why didn't you?" I look her in the eye seriously here, and she regards me almost warily for a second before answering.
"Because begging for my life wasn't actually going to save it, and, because I was going to die either way, I wanted to die on my own terms, silent and rebellious to the end. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he'd broken me." She shrugs here, and looks away after a moment to stare into the fire contemplatively, her eyes reflecting the flames.
That means that Dove is far braver as well as far tougher and more resilient than the rest of us kidnapped by him; in other words, she's just an all-around better human being than us nine who either begged for our lives - in the case of the eight girls who are dead now - or were going to beg for our lives - in the case of me.
Suddenly I remembered something, about how there were no sounds when he took her back to his room - there had been screaming from the other eight girls - and I couldn't help but question, "What happened when he took you back to his room? Did you just stay quiet for that too?"
"No," she responds, surprising me greatly, "because he didn't do anything to me. He took my shirt off, said that I wasn't pretty enough, let me put my shirt back on, and then we just sat there in silence for the allotted time, so as to make you think that he was doing something to me." She adds, with a bitter smile on her face, after a small pause, "Just one of the benefits of being completely forgettable, I suppose."
"Oh," I say quietly, incredibly surprised, and find myself saying, before I really know what I'm doing, "I don't know how he thought you weren't pretty enough, and I don't know how you think that you're forgettable. If anything, you were the prettiest girl out of the bunch, and definitely not a girl anyone would forget anytime soon."
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I expect her to rise from her seat on her log facing me and punch me, even though what I said is true - she most definitely is the prettiest girl out of the group, and very unforgettable too, with her long hair pulled carelessly but attractively into a ponytail and her sharp blue eyes that stared out of her intelligent and exotic-looking face - but instead she just scans me carefully for a long moment before finally telling me, "Thanks, I guess."
"No problem," I say, watching her carefully myself for a second before noticing that she's shivering violently. I hadn't noticed the cold at all really, but I guess that Dove, being so much smaller, is much more affected by it than I am.
Almost instinctively, I rise to my feet and find myself walking over to her, sitting down next to her and wrapping my arms around her to keep her warm. When she doesn't react and doesn't even seem that stiff and unwilling, I bend over her, put my lips next to her ear, so that I'm not touching her skin but am very close to, and murmur, "You know, you're supposed to huddle together to share body heat and stay warm." I then find myself having a difficult time pulling my head away, with the knowledge that her neck is right there and that it would be so easy, so easy, to just lean it and kiss it, but eventually I'm able to.
After a long moment of silence and Dove looking away, she finally murmurs, "I know," not bothering to even turn and look back at me, and here I get annoyed and pull away from her so that way I can look her straight in the eye.
"Dove, why do you dislike me so? I've done basically everything I could over the last few hours to make it so that I'm not a burden to you, and that I'm actually useful, and still you don't like me! So what is it? Why don't you like me?" I ask her commandingly, the will in my voice almost forcing her to keep looking me in the eye.
"Because you're a player, and you only ever date girls for their bodies, that's why," she replies sharply. "It's always the same pattern with you: you find some pretty girl, date her, undoubtedly sleep with her, and then dump her when you get tired of her, and that, that using of girls, doesn't sit well with me. It doesn't sit well with me at all."
"First off, I never slept with any of my girlfriends. I made out with them, sure, but I never slept with them," I tell her, feeling that I need to defend myself on that issue, "And I only dated all of those girls because, the whole time, I was hung up on this one girl but knew that she wouldn't want me, and so I dated other girls to try to fill the hole in my heart that loving her had given me."
"Who's the girl?" Dove asks me quietly, but I can tell by the expression in her eyes that she already knows and is just looking for confirmation.
"You," I tell her in response, my gaze glued to hers, and she swallows with difficulty but doesn't really look surprised at all, which confirms my suspicions.
After a moment of silence, during which time Dove stares into the fire and I stare over at her, trying to read her, she looks back up at me, looks me in the eye again, and begins quietly, a strange, longing expression on her face, "You know, I've never even kissed a guy before..."
That's all she's able to say, as that's all the invitation I need to lean forward, take her head in my hands, and kiss her. Her lips are soft and warm against mine, and, after a second, her hands - shaking and tentative as they are - make their way up and lock around my neck, holding me against her. Unfortunately, we both run out of breath soon after, but all of my disappointment at not being able to kiss her any longer is completely gotten rid of when she gives me a small smile, her eyes on mine, and tells me, "I think I kind of like you now, Charlie."
She then huddles up against me, which prompts me to wrap my arms around her, and falls asleep a second later, her chest rising and falling reassuringly. I watch her for a few moments, struck by how beautiful she is, before realizing exactly how tired I am, giving her a kiss on the forehead, and then falling asleep myself.

"You weren't very smart for keeping that fire burning through the night, were you?" he asks me, a wicked grin on his face and his black eyes boring into mine as he holds a gun, a small pistol, to be exact, against my forehead. I know that I'm about to die - Dove, in her hypocrisy and apparently in order to break my heart before I'm killed, ran off into the woods as soon as she heard him approaching - but I've decided to follow Dove's words, and die quietly and with my dignity. Like she said, I won't give him the satisfaction of breaking me.
"Scream for the girl to come save you. Go on, do it; that way she can watch you die," he bids me, as he walks to my left and holds the gun against my temple, and I shake my head wordlessly in denial of his request.
"Go on, do it!" he commands, more urgently and annoyed this time, and gives me a shove for good measure.
However, I merely shake my head again and say, "No," as I stare straight in front of me and wish that he would just go ahead and kill me already, so that way there's less of a chance Dove actually will see me die. After all, even though I don't respect her for running away when I needed her, I don't want her to be permanently scarred by seeing me die, and I also hope that she'll be able to get out of this alive, even though I obviously won't.
"Fine. Have it your way," he tells me, and, as I hear him cock the pistol next to my head, I realize that this is it, that I'm about to see whatever follows death. Hopefully it's heaven, or at least a nothingness of sorts, because I don't really want to spend any more time in hell, after experiencing it here on earth.
His finger tenses on the trigger and I close my eyes, waiting for my brains to get blown out, to hear a gunshot not from right next to my ear and open my eyes in shock to see him lying on the ground next to me, with a bullet wound in his heart. I then look up to find Dove standing there about fifty feet away with a rifle in her hands and a look of pure loathing on her face as she stares at his body.
"Dove!" I cry in surprise and happiness, running towards her to embrace her in a hug. When I pull back, I look down at her worriedly to make sure that she's ok, and, when she appears to be so, I ask her, "Why did you come back? And how did you get a gun?"
"My father and I used to hunt in these woods, and, when he died, one of his rifles got left out here because no one knew where it was but me. I made the fire last night as a trap, because I knew he would see it and come to it, and then, when I heard him approaching, I ran out, got the gun, and came back to kill him, because I wasn't going to leave you, Charlie. I wouldn't even have left you early last night, when I still didn't like you," she tells me, and gives me a smile here.
I have leaned in and am about to kiss her, completely overcome with happiness, when all of a sudden an SUV bursts into the clearing to stop ten feet in front of us, and a woman that I recognize from parent-teacher conferences as Dove's mother jumps out.
When I turn my gaze onto Dove questioningly, she says, "There was also a cell phone hidden with the rifle, so that way my dad and I could call someone if we got lost."
"Oh," I exclaim quietly, and am about to say more when Dove's mom embraces us both in a huge, almost rib-cracking hug.
When she pulls back, she tells Dove, "I was so worried when you didn't come home from school yesterday that I called the police, and then when I got that call from your dad's old phone, I didn't know what to think. It's a good thing I picked it up and drove out here as quickly as I could!"
She then turns to me and says, "Your parents are frantic looking for you too, and apparently eight other girls went missing with you. Do you know what happened to them?"
Dove and I look at each other for a moment, and my gaze flickers onto his dead body laying off to the side. "Yeah, we do," I reply slowly, "but I think we should save our story for the police."
"Oh," Dove's mother murmurs, and here she notices the body lying on the ground behind us. "Oh!" she exclaims again, but in a much more surprised and frightened tone this time. "Well, I should probably get you two out of here and to the police station, so that way you can tell them what happened and they can come out here and deal with... that." She gestures to the body, and we nod our heads in agreement with her plan as she ushers us into the car. She then gets in herself, and, as she backs up and begins to drive away, my hand finds Dove's and I give her a tired and small but sincere smile.
Despite all that we had seen and done, the memories would fade some, the nightmares would come and go, and we would get past this tragedy... together.

[Richard Parker]

A story that I wrote about 2 weeks ago off a muse.

The doorbell rang, its tinny sounds cutting through the noise of the cafe, and I froze, stuck where I was. Not because the doorbell rang, but because, for the first time in my life, I could actually feel someone's presence before I could see them.
The cafe fell quiet as other people felt the visitor's entrance and turned to see them, and I took a moment to steel myself before coming out from from my hiding spot behind the front desk and turning to face the newcomer.

My attempts at steeling myself with mental reprimands did nothing at all to stop my jaw from opening wide and my mind from going completely blank at the person standing before me. He was tall and slim but undeniably muscular, as the few inches of bare chest that were revealed by his tailored white shirt that was open at the top proved, and he had darker skin that hinted at Latin or Greek heritage. His face was stunning, his cheekbones bold, his nose perfectly sized and centered on his face, his lips full but not feminine, his dark brown hair incredibly thick despite being close-cropped and perfectly quaffed. His eyes, those two brilliantly red balls of fire that burned into me like two miniature stars, just put the icing on the cake.
As I looked him over, numb with amazement at his physical perfection, it occurred to me that he literally glowed, that there was a soft but definite aura of light around him that just sealed the idea that he was a heavenly being, an angel, perhaps. No, not an angel. A star.
"I would like a latte, please." His voice was low and melodious, with some sort of accent that hinted at Latin - not Spanish; it was too old and majestic for Spanish - and Greek and perhaps even Arabic, and would have easily burned its way through the noise around it with its incredibly powerful energy if there was any noise to burn through, and I nodded my head mechanically, trying my best to focus on the simple task of writing his order down. Unfortunately, my hands weren't working very well, so the task took twice as long as it should have.
The man said nothing, however, and just watched me patiently. When I finally managed to write down the last letter and ask him for the money he owed - two dollars and eleven cents - he paid with a respectful silence. Our hands touched once during the process, a mere coincidental brush of the skin that sent shivers of feeling running my arms, but he didn't seem to notice. No, he was too observant to not have noticed, so he must just have not cared. Somehow, that thought almost made me feel worse.
He turned away, (hopefully) oblivious to the internal struggle going on within me about his lack of reaction to our interaction, obviously meaning to go stand by the door and wait for his order like the other customers, when I remembered that I needed his name and called out to him, "Sir, I need your name."
He turned back around at that, his red gaze locking onto mine and making it nearly impossible to continue. But, for the sake of making it look like I wasn't a complete idiot and was able to resist the temptation of him, I prevailed to add, although my voice sounded weak and most definitely distracted and/or intimidated, "So I can call you back up here when your coffee is ready."
"Of course," he answered smoothly, making up for my lack of grace a million times over with the grace that just exuded from his every pore. "My name is Celaeno."
His name was just as beautiful and mysterious and exotic as he was, and it just intensified the realization of what I already knew, of what I had known from the first moment I had laid eyes on him: that I wanted him desperately but that he didn't even belong in the same universe with me.
Avoiding these thoughts the best I could, I dropped my gaze again and wrote his name underneath his order slowly, finding no need to ask for spelling despite the fact that I had never been a particularly good speller of names. It was as if I had known his name long before I had actually known him, although he was actually starting to look familiar now, for some reason. I knew I hadn't ever seen him like this before - I would never have forgotten if I had seen him like this before - but I had the strange feeling that I had seen him before, when he had a much different appearance and maybe was even in a different form entirely.
Shaking my head slightly to clear my head of all such thoughts - of course I hadn't seen him before; what on earth was going through my deranged mind? - I stared over at Celaeno for one last moment before tearing my gaze away and turning to the next customer.

As soon as I received my coffee from the other woman behind the counter - who shot me an incredibly interested look that I didn't care about - I retreated to a table in the corner, sat down and just watched her over my coffee. She was beautiful, so beautiful; all of those nights I had spent gazing down on her had done her true radiance no justice. She caught me staring at her a few times, which caused me to look away for a few moments to make it seem like I had not been staring at her, but I had the feeling that she was oblivious to my observation of her and merely had looked over at me because she couldn't keep her eyes off of me.
That was the problem with going around as a human: I attracted far too much attention from the actual humans. I could feel a half a dozen gazes on me at any given time while I was in the cafe, and in crowds it was just worse. People literally would form a circle around me and just stare, their manners completely thrown out the window by their surprise at my appearance. She was not as bad as those people, as she at least tried to hide her attraction to me, but I knew that she wanted me, and that only made me want her even more desperately.
After about an hour of watching her, during which time my coffee had completely cooled off and I had drawn an audience of giggling teenage girls, I decided that the most beautiful thing about her was her eyes, those pinpricks of blue-green brilliance that lit up the day rather like I lit up the night, when I was in my original form. It took me another hour to decide that the second most beautiful thing about her was her hesitant, innocent nature, despite the fact that it my heart ache keenly because I knew that I was going to partially ruin that soon. After three hours, I had settled upon her lips as her third most striking characteristic, because they were full but not overly puffy and just begging for another pair of lips to be matched up against them. As I thought about that, I couldn't help but raise a hand to my own lips and trace them lightly, wondering what it would be like to touch them to hers. Incredible, obviously.
Sighing deeply, I pulled my hand away from my face and reached up to run my fingers through my air, causing the gaggle of teenage girls sitting on the other side of the room from me and very conspicuously watching me to all make noises of interest and longing. Fortunately, as the hours passed by slowly but in a blissful haze of amazement observation, the girls left, one by one, until finally, at six fifty-nine PM, a minute before the store officially closed and long after all of the other customers and even the other employees had left, I found myself alone with her.
She was wiping the front counter down with a damp rag, oblivious to the fact that there was someone else in the room. I got to my feet gracefully and silently, even managing to push my chair in noiselessly, and crossed the room to stand in front of her. It took only a millisecond for her to realize my presence, and she jumped a good three feet in the air when she did so.
"Celaeno!" she exclaimed in surprise as she stared up at me, her eyes longing and almost fearful, and I felt a small burst of pleasure rush through me at the fact that she had remembered my name. "What are you doing here still? You bought your coffee almost six hours ago!"
"I wasn't able to leave you, I'm afraid," I told her quietly, my gaze glued to hers, and it was then that I was seized by such a desire to kiss her that I had to ball my fists to restrain myself. Far away, she was beautiful, but she was absolutely and almost dangerously irresistible up close.
"What do you mean, you couldn't leave me?" she asked me, her expression torn between morbid curiosity, apprehensive hope and definite fear.
"Maia," I began, inhaling deeply with pleasure at the way her name rolled off of my tongue, "there are many things I need to tell you. Will you come on a walk with me?"
She nodded her head slowly in confirmation, and happiness welled up inside of me. "There are many things I want to ask you too, so yeah, a walk sounds great," she answered. her eyes never leaving mine, and then walked out from behind the counter to head towards the door.
I was a step in front of her, and reached the door just in time to open it for her, in an act of chivalry that she deserved a million times over.
She murmured quietly, "Thank you," as she stepped through the door frame, her gaze on me the whole time, and I told her sincerely in reply, with a small nod of my head, "It is my pleasure."
I then stepped out of the cafe myself, and turned to Maia to ask her, before she could say anything, "Do you know a good place to watch the stars from?"
She seemed taken aback by my question and by the fact that she didn't get a chance to talk, but recovered quickly to respond, "Yeah. Follow me." After a moment of internal debating, she took my hand in hers, sending incredibly pleasant and incredibly intense electric shocks up my skin, and began to guide me down the street towards the place where we could gaze up at the real forms of my family and me.

"So, why exactly did you have me take us here again?" I asked Celaeno as I stared over at him. His red eyes, thoughtful as he stared at the night sky, seemed to burn brighter in the dark, and his glowing aura was more obvious too. In other words, if he was gorgeous in daylight, he was absolutely stunning at night.
Celaeno turned to me and gazed down at me, just as thoughtfully as he had been while looking at the sky, for a long moment before finally replying, "Because I wanted you to see my family and I for what we really are." He gestured to the stars above us, and immediately I understood what he was talking about, because I had suspected it all along.
"You're a star," I breathed quietly, my eyes locked on his, and, after a moment longer, he nodded his head in confirmation, his eyes becoming almost sad and most definitely a little fearful.
The first thing out of me was, "But... how? Stars are big balls of burning gas. They can't take on a human form and come down to earth!"
"And there it is: the distinctly human belief that, just because you know the appearance of something, you know everything about it," Celaeno said, with a hint of a bitter smirk on his face, and immediately I wished that I hadn't said what I did. However, Celaeno didn't give me much time to regret my decision, as he continued, "Stars are incredibly powerful, Maia, as this whole planet's existence proves, and so, if such less powerful beings as you humans can exist with a consciousness, why cannot stars?"
"So every star is actually a conscious, living being?" I blurted out in surprise, before I could realize what I was saying, and Celaeno nodded.
"Not all stars actually use their consciousness very often though; in fact, some never use it all, and solely live and die in the form you humans know them as: great big balls of burning gas," Celaeno responded, and I couldn't help but think idly for a moment on how terrible a life that must be, just doing nothing but existing for all eternity. I didn't understand why anyone would ever choose that; I guess I wouldn't have made a very good star.
"It is quite a boring and pointless existence; trust me, Maia," he added quietly, and I looked over at him in surprise when I recognized, for the first time, that he was using my name without me giving it to him.
"How do you know my name?" I questioned him in a whisper, my eyes locked on his as I compelled him to answer with all of my will, although I had a feeling that, if he really didn't want to answer, he wouldn't, and there was nothing I could do about it.
"Through the same way that I know you are twenty-one years, seven months and eleven days old, and that your favorite color is fiery red, and that the name of your first grade teacher is Mrs. Marshall: you told me, Maia." His eyes bored holes into mine, but I didn't back down, mostly because I was clinging to his every word and probably would have fallen down if I tried to look away. "On nights like these, when you had a secret to tell but no one you could trust it with, you came outside and spoke to the stars, and I listened eagerly. On nights like these, you poured your heart out to me, Maia, and I accepted it with open arms."
I stared at him, my mind and body completely blank and empty with shock, for a long moment of silence before finally asking, "Why are you here on earth, visiting me, of all people?"
"Because, when you unknowingly poured your heart out to me, I couldn't help but give you my heart in return." His eyes never left mine, and their enchanting, burning pull made it even harder for me to understand what he was saying.
However, I finally caught on, and murmured in complete amazement, "You love me?"
"With all of my heart and soul, if I have such things," Celaeno confirmed, and then, like I had been hoping he would do from the moment we had met, he leaned forward and kissed me gently.
His lips were warm and soft on mine, and the arms that curled around me were incredibly strong. He just radiated power and heat - I could feel the former all around him and the latter by touching him - and I couldn't help but think dazedly, as he held me against him, that it definitely was the best kiss I had experienced so far.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and he pulled back after a few moments of bliss to just stare down at me, his long, dark lashes framing his fiery eyes as a small, contented smile played on his lips.
Finally my mind unfroze, and I found myself asking, "So what do we do from here, about you and I and our relationship?"
A shadow crossed Celaeno's face, and immediately I knew I had hit upon a tough topic. "That is the issue, Maia: you and I cannot have a relationship. In fact, it probably would have been better for both of us if I had not come down here today like I had, but I just couldn't bear to stay away."
"So that's it? You just came down here to reveal yourself to me, kiss me once and then leave, not even bothering to think about how this encounter might affect me?" I was - very surprisingly - incredibly angry at Celaeno, even though anger wasn't an emotion I felt very often and certainly hadn't imagined feeling towards him, and I pushed away from him, not wanting to touch him when he was so close and so apparently attainable but actually forever out of my reach.
"What do you mean, how this encounter might affect you?" Celaeno questioned, choosing to ignore my anger and question in favor of asking me a question himself.
"I..." I began, pausing as I debated whether or not I should tell him and reveal to the world - and to myself - the truth I had been hiding. It wasn't much of a debate, though, as I almost immediately chose to reveal myself, like he had to me, and continued, "I love you, Celaeno, and I have loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you, and now the thought of living without you seems unbearable."
"Oh," he exclaimed quietly, staring down at me with his eyes wide with amazement.
After a few moments of silence, I asked him, "So will you stay with me now, now that you know that I love you like you love me?"
"If I choose to stay on this planet in this form for more than twelve hours, my heavenly form will cease to exist and I will never be able to return to the stars and to my family," Celaeno said, his eyes locked on mine thoughtfully. "But I think you might be worth it," he added, a small and loving smile curving his lips as stared down at me.
I couldn't help but smile myself at that, and he and I just stood there, gazing at each other, for a while before an idiotic question that I couldn't help but ask popped into my mind.
"Will you... will you still glow, if you choose to stay?" I blurted out before I really had a chance to think about what I was saying, to immediately wish I hadn't spoken at all when I realized what I said.
"Yes," Celaeno answered, his smile becoming slightly amused, and we stood in silence for a few seconds longer before I and my impatient curiosity finally couldn't take it any longer.
"So will you stay with me?" I asked, my eyes locked on his, and, for an incredibly long moment, he just regarded me, a million emotions running through his blazing red eyes.
"Yes," he finally responded again, and, as he bent down over me to kiss me, I knew that a star had gone out in the sky as one entered my life.

[Richard Parker]

A story that I wrote yesterday about 2 characters from a novel I'm working on.

The doorbell rang, startling me, and I found myself simultaneously shutting closed the book I was reading - Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, one of my favorites of the twentieth century - and leaping to my feet. I looked down at myself for a moment to wonder if I should have worn something fancier - after all, a red tank top and cutoff jean shorts weren't exactly very elegant - before dismissing the thought with the knowledge that he wouldn't care what I was wearing, because he would be too focused on the rest of me.
Crossing over to the front door and opening it, a smile spread across my face as I saw Tejuyo standing there with a rose in his hand. His slitted yellow eyes locked onto mine, and he was about to vocalize a greeting when I closed the gap between us and kissed him slowly and deliberately on the lips, smiling as I heard his heartbeat speed up with my incredibly sensitive hearing.
"Hey," I greeted when I pulled back, grinning at the amazed look on his face. "It's nice to see you, Tejuyo."
"It's very nice to see you too, Cassandra," he replied slowly, in his melt-your-heart Spanish accent, and, as I saw him watching me carefully, I realized that he was trying to read me, which meant that he thought something was wrong that had spurred my odd behavior. There wasn't anything wrong, though, unless you count the fact that he was completely and utterly oblivious to my attempts to seduce him and that he was still convinced that he was the only one with an emotional attachment in our relationship.
However, I decided to ignore those issues for now - hopefully I would find a way to deal with them later on in the night - and instead asked him, with amusement and incredulity, as I gestured to his suit, "Is that honestly what you're wearing to the club?"
"Well... yes," he replied, glancing down at himself momentarily before looking back up at me. "It's been my look ever since suits and fedoras were invented, although I can change it if you'd like."
"Oh no, I don't want you to change your look," I told him, as I reached out and tweaked his tie ever so slightly so that it was even. I then looked back up at him and gave him a smirk as I added, "Besides, you can't get much sexier than a Spanish guy in a suit."
After grabbing my keys and wallet and phone off of the small counter right next to the door, I turned back to Tejuyo and asked him, "Are we going now?"
"Yes, of course," he responded, and opened the front door for me to walk through. "After you, my love," he said with a small, respectful bow of his head accompanied with a smile that lit up his snake eyes, which were the only part of his appearance that hinted at how non-human we both were.
Fortunately, with the advent of the colored contact lens, hiding them wasn't really a problem for him anymore; in fact, the most they ever drew was a few comments about how cool they looked, and never suspicion, which was a very good thing for us and the humans. The humans seemed to live by the motto 'ignorance is bliss' and it worked out pretty well for them, considering that they might have been far more distressed if they knew that there really were monsters under their beds.

"Well, this is it," I announced, as I looked from the vibrantly-lit dance club in front of us to Tejuyo, who was staring at the building with more than a bit of apprehension in his expression.
Tearing his gaze away from the club, he turned to me to ask worriedly, "Are you sure this is going to be alright? Are you sure no one is going to be suspicious of us?"
"Tejuyo, it will be fine. The humans are a lot more ignorant than you might think, with them generally possessing two working eyes," I assured him, placing a hand on his arm. However, his expression didn't change as he continued to look at the club almost fearfully, so, with a small sigh of exasperation, I began, drawing his attention back onto me, "Tejuyo, I'm going to let you in on a little secret." I then reached over and grabbed his tie, pulling him to me and putting his ear right next to my mouth, and murmured in his ear, "Stress is bad for your health." After a tiny pause, I added, trying to make the words roll off of my tongue as seductively as possible and ending up doing a pretty good purr, if I do say so myself, "Just relax, sweetheart. Everything's going to be fine."
I let go of his tie at that, and pulled away from him and took a step towards the building to look back over my shoulder at him. "Now come on," I bid him, as I gave him a smile and took his hand, "or we're going to miss all the fun."
I then began to walk towards the entrance again, giving Tejuyo no choice but to be dragged along behind me.

"Finally, a song I can actually dance to," I murmured, and turned back to Cassandra to find her standing there with a smile on her face. She, in her red tank top and cutoff jean shorts - an outfit that I particularly enjoyed, considering that it showed a good deal of her skin - and vibrant attitude, blended in perfectly in the club, but I, in my suit and fedora and lack of ability to dance modernly, stuck out like a sore thumb, so I was happy to finally hear a slow song that I could dance like I knew how to. After all, being with Cassandra and trying to be so current and modern made all of the smoothness I usually had disappear, because I had no idea what I was doing, so I jumped at any opportunity I got to regain some of my lost confidence.
I stepped forward, carefully placed a hand on her waist and gently took her hand in my free one, and, when she put her hand on my shoulder, we began to twirl slowly in a small circle. As I looked down at her, I caught her ice-blue gaze, which prompted her to give me another smile and step closer to me, so that our bodies were very nearly touching.
Her scent, an intoxicating one of perfume and the vodka she had just drank and the underlying animal musk, washed over me as she did so, and I was so caught up in trying not to get distracted by her scent that I almost didn't notice when she pulled her hand out of mine, removed her other hand from my shoulder, and leaned up to kiss me.
Her taste was even more intoxicating than her scent, so much so that I lost the willpower to fight back against my attraction to her after only a moment of kissing her. In fact, it wasn't until I pulled back, breathing a little heavily, that I realized I had been the one prolonging the kiss for those last few seconds.
I felt her fingers on my undershirt collar and looked down to find her loosening my tie with an expert hand that spoke of much practice, and I then felt her slip her hands into my shirt, running her fingers over my shoulders and neck and upper chest. She withdrew them after a moment, and I was confused until I saw her undoing the top button of my undershirt.
"You know, there are alcoves with curtains in the back," she told me quietly as she looked back up at me, her blue eyes, dark in the dim lighting of the club, on mine. After leaning up to kiss me one more time while slipping her hands into my shirt again, she added, "We should go to one."
It took every ounce of willpower in my body to gently push her away and tell her, "No. Not here, Cassandra."
"When we get back to my place?" she questioned, her pleading eyes doing their best to erode my willpower.
Fortunately, I was able to stop myself from completely giving into her, and I found myself responding, "Maybe," as I hoped to God that I would be far less distracted when we got back to her place.
She smiled at that - obviously she thought my maybe was going to become a yes; however much I hated to admit it, she was probably right - and let me rebutton my shirt and retighten my tie before slipping her hand back into mine and placing her other hand back on my shoulder. I placed my hand on her waist again, and we continued to dance slowly, her eyes on my face the whole time but me pointedly looking away to avoid revealing to her how much I really wanted to go to one of the alcoves in the back.
However, she seemed to tire of our dancing after a few moments, and removed her hands from me again to step forward, place her hands on my chest and rest her head on my shoulder.
Almost instinctively, I wrapped my arms around her, and I could sense her smile as her fingers traced designs on my shirt. For a moment, I was worried that she was going to try to unbutton my shirt again, but all of that worry disappeared when she dropped her hands from my chest, took a step back and looked up at me to say with a smile, "I'm going to go get another drink. Do you want anything?"
"No, I'm alright, but thank you for the offer," I replied, as I returned her smile.
"Are you sure?" she questioned, her grin becoming a smirk. "You look like you could use some tequila." She stepped towards me again and reached up, obviously intending to loosen my tie or unbutton my shirt, but I caught her wrists and slipped her hands into mine before she could do either.
"I'm fine, Cassandra," I told her gently but emphatically, and let go of her hands.
With an exaggerated eye-roll and sigh, she exclaimed, "Oh, you're no fun," and turned away from me to slip into the crowd, leaving me standing alone and wondering what the hell I was doing.

"My God, I haven't had that much fun in almost two thousand years!" Cassandra exclaimed with a huge smile on her face as she threw her keys onto the table next to her front door and shut the front door behind us. "And even in Rome, it wasn't really that fun, because someone inevitably died at any party you went to!"
"You're drunk," I murmured, as the full effects of her alcohol-scented breath hit me and I realized exactly how intoxicated she really was. She had been drinking most of the night, but just a glass or shot here and there, so I hadn't really noticed exactly how much she had had to drink until now.
"I was wondering when you would notice that," she replied, her eyes locking on mine. Then, without any warning whatsoever, she leaned up and kissed me while untucking my undershirt and sliding her hands up it to run them over my stomach, each touch making my blood hum with energy even more.
"No, Cassandra, no," I breathed against her lips, and she pulled back to drop her hands out of my shirt and stare up at me in astonishment and almost betrayal.
"But you said when we got back to my place," she said, and I shook my head.
"No, I said maybe when we got back to your place," I corrected her gently, my eyes glued to hers.
"Are you honestly saying you don't want me?" she questioned incredulously, looking up at me like I had spoken some alien language.
"I want you so badly that it almost hurts to breathe," I began, which prompted her to interrupt with, "Then take me!"
I, however, merely ignored her comment and continued, "but it wouldn't feel right, considering you're drunk and aren't completely in control of yourself. It would feel like I was taking advantage of you, and that's the last thing I want to do."
"My God, you are too damn good for your own good sometimes," Cassandra muttered, shaking her head. After a moment of silence, Cassandra took my hands, placed them on her waist and asked me as she met my gaze, in an incredibly seductive voice that was like the finest silk in its smoothness, "Are you sure you don't want me?"
"Yes, I'm sure," I told her firmly, staring her in the eye evenly while hoping to God that my sheer physical attraction to her wasn't showing as badly as it was rampaging around my body.
"I don't believe you," she said, "but, for the sake of keeping your virtue intact, I won't push the issue anymore." She gave me a smirk at that, and leaned up to kiss me lightly one last time before pulling away from me. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a shower to hopefully clear my head and take up most of the half an hour it will take my metabolism to burn through all of that alcohol. You're always welcome to get in with me if you want." Her smirk then became suggestive, but, when I didn't return it and dismissed her suggestion with a kind but stubborn smile, she gave me a normal grin again and made her way down to the bathroom.
It was only when I could hear the shower running and therefore knew Cassandra couldn't hear me that I let out the huge sigh of relief I had been holding back for the last few minutes. I had done the impossible: I had survived my fifth date with Cassandra without making her hate me or sleeping with her.
"My God, I should get some sort of medal for that," I murmured, thinking aloud, and, after retucking in my shirt, I crossed over to the couch in Cassandra's living room to collapse on it, feeling uncharacteristically weary. I guess restraining both Cassandra and myself was more draining than I had realized. With a shake of my head, I removed my fedora, set it on the coffee table in front of the couch, and waited, hoping that I could actually deal with a sober Cassandra.

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