#dphq:start

amidst the summer-haze, in the very back of beyond, cecilia had basked in vaguely interesting self-punishment. the peculiarly pleasant numbness came with boredom, the tingle of youth’s restlessness fizzing in fine bones as though hebe herself were calling her away from the imperious shadow of tallis house: go somewhere, cecilia! do something. be someone! and of course, being bid to — as is usually the way in life — inspires resistance, because it is not so easy to do so until you know there is something to push against. 

once you know, however, the urge to defy surges. to confront, to be sharp as a knife-blade, do nothing unless it is the most satisfying exercise of your will, what better thrill could there be ? 

and yet still, that required far more effort than cecilia was willing to undertake, so she languished in her closed-off room piled high with unfinished stories and cigarette-smoke, knowing that she could not for much longer tolerate the uncertainty about the progression of her own. that the restlessness was not a temporary feeling that would pass — that her time leaning on the pockets of her father and migraine-addled mother was soon to be up.

a hidden truth found, the door to adulthood a treasure trove of tastes and experiences unlocked by the shattering of the old. the old, in this case, was a vase belonging to their uncle clem. pulled — roughly, in spite of the fact that love is so wholly tender and fragile, especially that which was young and new — pieces broke away, perhaps like innocence does. perhaps it peeled away in layers with every second robbie turner’s blue eyes lingered on her water-sodden frame after she surfaced from the fountain-water with a gasp like being born again. perhaps it continued with every word she read, the strange anatomic nature of his wrong-lettered affection ? and perhaps it was irreversible, when his hands slipped onto the bare skin of her back in the library ( lifted her, exalted, like some kind of angel ! ) and they became beings of desperation, for a time. was she still a being of desperation ?

had she had time to stop being so since dinner, when flush still coloured her cheeks and even happy-go-lucky leon had spotted the innocence vanishing from her eyes ? could you be innocent once you knew of love, or was the inevitability of loss what so scared her younger sister in moments she did not as yet know about ?