A piece of flash fiction, as lightly adapted from an inter-author character interaction with Tirzah Duncan.
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III
T: The questions won’t keep forever.
She decides to let one out, and searches for the rightest one.
She began to ask, why me?
But then she felt she knew enough of the answer, somehow.
D: I expect she knows as much of the answer to that as he does.
T: One question after another seems wrong for the moment, so—
“Ask me something?
I feel like something should be asked, and preferably answered,
But I can’t find it,” she explains.
D: He blinks. “Are you comfortable?”
T: “I think so,” she answers.
“There’s a tension of sorts, but it’s a comfortable one.”
D: “Are you content?” he asks next.
“For us to be what we are –
Whatever we are –
Indefinitely, and perhaps forever?
Or do you feel the need for more?”
T: “I… don’t know,” she says honestly.
“I’m content in it now. I can’t speak for indefinitely.”
D: He nods. “I am content for now, too.”
T: Her mind brushes on the boy she left behind,
And she wonders what, if anything, ought to be told to him.
It seems that something should, but she’s no concept what.
D: “What do you suppose he’d like to know?” he asks.
T: She opens her mouth, closes it again.
“I don’t know.”
She looks up at him. “You might actually know better.”
D: “He’d want to know of any good feelings.
He’d want to know you don’t feel alone, lonely, broken, bereft.
He thinks he wants to know everything, but that’s less than true.
He doesn’t want there to be unhappy things to know.”
T: Her lips twitch, skew sideways. “Yeah.”
D: “So any good you can tell him, you should.
As for the rest… Well, you have me for that, now.”
T: She watches his face,
Feeling over what he said more than thinking over it.
“Is this— what is it, to you?
‘Cause damned if I know what it is.
It’s not simple, is it?”
D: “Possibly simple. Certainly not straightforward.
It may not have a name. Not in this day and age.
One saw such things more, in times gone by.
There were more ways of bonding.”
T: “Well.” She muses. “I guess you’re my… exception.
My exception to good sense.”
She grins. “You were that from the time you were my idea.
Every sensible person needs one of those, aye?”
D: A smile glints in his eyes.
“We keep the sensible from stagnating.”
Epilogue
D: “All right. Hungry now. Ready for dinner. Will you join me at table?”
T: “Sure. Let me finish my class, first? We’ve been out of time.”
As in outside of it.
D: He nods. “I’ll wait.”
T: “Thanks. Should just be half an hour.”
She kisses his cheek, that feeling right,
And slips back into time and reality.
Her head swims at the sudden scene change,
But it’s no worse than standing up too fast.
A deep, slow breath,
And she’s taking notes again.
Funny, how quickly her brain can snap back to practical.
*Confusion* *Feelings*
*Questions* *Relationship stuff*
Oh math okay
Ever On Word 