lizzie sits beneath a tree. her legs crossed at the ankles. cigarette suspended between two fingers. she ashes it on a silver tray, a gesture so delicate it could only be the product of painstaking rehearsal. playacting at refinement; it's a patina she's never felt she's worn convincingly. comfortably. even in her own yard. if @linament sees it, makes no indication, and for that she's grateful.
I forget how blue the sky can be outside the city.
she follows raĆŗl's voice, this tiny concession guised as small talk, out of her own tangle of thoughts and into a new one. it was perhaps the kindest he'd ever had to offer what she'd dubiously claimed as home ā this one of the few dissensions in what otherwise bound them together as outsiders. a camaraderie forged in the shared sense of the othered.
lizzie exhales skyward, watching the thin stream of smoke. he's right. but all she sees is a firmament of green ā molten light poured across a vaulted canopy. "was that a compliment?" she laughs.
