The Departure of the Shining One
(Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial‘s FFF50 prompt: Mouth to Mouth. Set in one of my previous universes, which has been gathering dust, Black Cat of Hearts. Enjoy!)
You watch her, knowing that she’ll never love you back.
You bring her clothes and you tell her that her sister is waiting in the forest at moonrise, and you don’t know what that means. You don’t know but you have seen the clothes and you can guess where this is going. You can guess that she is going.
She smiles at you and tells you that she’ll be down in a minute once she changes. She removes the mask and you think that her voice suits her. Her face suits her, all darkened skin and beautiful twisting braids framing it and her lipstick is smudged a little bit from where her mouth touched the champagne glass.
You want to kiss her even as you know that the cost of doing so will be a bittersweet reminder that you’ll have to carry in your heart long after she’s gone. She doesn’t love you, not the way you love her. She’ll never even notice you even though she’s been the one person in this entire kingdom that you look up to with respect and admiration rather than grudging acknowledgment. She’s the one person who you would give your heart to, if she ever asked it. She will never ask.
You smooth out your own dress and head downstairs to distract anyone who might be looking for her. It’s the least you can do for her, though you know that she is far more skilled at distracting and misdirection than you. It’s one of the reasons that you admire her. The rest of the ladies of the court require fancy jewellery and elaborate dresses to show off their status. She could walk in with nothing but a rice sack and still be the most elegant and impressive.
She never talks about herself. She smiles at you and you don’t know how but suddenly you’re spilling your life story to her and you never realise till later that she’s not said a single thing about herself. You don’t actually know anything about her. You’ve seen her around, once or twice walking next to another girl who greatly resembles a slightly younger version of her. You think she’s her sister, except her sister’s hair is always a mess and there are stains on her fingers. Their eyes are the same, both shining gold in the dark, and they have the same high cheekbones. You wonder how many siblings she has.
You’ve known that you’re in love with her for a long time.
You know that it’ll never happen but you want her to get poisoned. You want her to get into some form of danger and pain and have her heart stop or something, something that would make her require your help for something. You know it’s selfish and a terrible horrible thought and you don’t want to think it at all, but you want her to be in danger and in pain and you want to her to need your exclusive help.
On an objective level, you know it’ll never happen. You know that there are whispers in court that her sister is a scientist and her older sibling is a doctor and you wouldn’t even be the first person she calls upon if you need help. Also, if she’s survived in court for this long, she probably can identify poison on her own and has her own defences against it.
You respect that, even as you wish your help was needed. You lie in bed sometimes and think about convoluted scenarios where she urgently needs help and you’re the only one who can give it. You think that you’ll straighten your arms, lock your elbows and pump her heart. You’ll draw the poison from her, press your mouth to hers and take it away from her.
She’s wearing the clothes you brought for her and she inclines her head towards you as she sweeps past you on the dance floor. The expensive wooden tiling gleams under the light, a show of extravagance, as you wonder where her previous clothing has gone. But this is her. If anyone was capable of strange and wonderful things, it would be her.
You’re the last person to see her, and she winks at you from the doorway. Her lips curve into a mouthed ‘thank you’ and she blows you a kiss, before swirling off into the night. You don’t know and you of all people know that that’s not how it works, but you imagine catching the kiss and pressing it to yourself in a soft embrace. You imagine that the kiss blown to you is the soft smile of her lips against yours.
You pretend not to know what’s happened to her or her family a week later when the court finally realises that Iridesca Carrow has left.
















