TM: Topic 127: Describe a chance encounter that changed your life.
prompt: 127
word count: 313
Describe a chance encounter that changed your life.
Picture her, world-weary and yet innocent enough to be secretly proud of her newfound cynicism; clad in rosy pink, with enough lace to suggest that she is new to wealth, she flaunts her association with the world as though she is a fresh little streetwalker, and the grittier side of life is her first client.
This girl, with her proud flush that rosy cheeks match her dress, strides down streets with her shoulders back and her chin up. Her eyes will look down for no one. For all her naivete, she is beautiful in her ridiculous pride.
She walks down the street as though she owns it, as though all of Paris is hers to have and hold. She passes a window in a hat shop and pauses, briefly, to admire a particularly sweet bonnet for sale within (and, coincidentally, her own reflection, sweeter even than the bonnet). This city is hers. She could not be happier.
...and then picture the silent, staring gutter rat who lies in the shop doorway; her tattered "clothes," so filthy that it becomes difficult to tell where they leave off and the bricks she lies against begin; her gaping mouth and empty eyes, the bones that poke against her skin like brittle autumn twigs...
The rose-gowned, rose-cheeked girl almost trips on the gamine, who draws her stick-thin legs underneath her with unspeaking instinct.
Picture this moment- pink-cheeked health, pink silk wealth, and her stammered apologies (she has not had either long enough to walk on) - and the other's small headshake, the best she can manage on the edge of starvation.
The girl in pink hurries on down the street, the blush in her cheeks deeper now from guilt and shame than her own vanity. She has forgotten what she once thought she could never escape. She won't easily forget again.
word count: 313
Describe a chance encounter that changed your life.
Picture her, world-weary and yet innocent enough to be secretly proud of her newfound cynicism; clad in rosy pink, with enough lace to suggest that she is new to wealth, she flaunts her association with the world as though she is a fresh little streetwalker, and the grittier side of life is her first client.
This girl, with her proud flush that rosy cheeks match her dress, strides down streets with her shoulders back and her chin up. Her eyes will look down for no one. For all her naivete, she is beautiful in her ridiculous pride.
She walks down the street as though she owns it, as though all of Paris is hers to have and hold. She passes a window in a hat shop and pauses, briefly, to admire a particularly sweet bonnet for sale within (and, coincidentally, her own reflection, sweeter even than the bonnet). This city is hers. She could not be happier.
...and then picture the silent, staring gutter rat who lies in the shop doorway; her tattered "clothes," so filthy that it becomes difficult to tell where they leave off and the bricks she lies against begin; her gaping mouth and empty eyes, the bones that poke against her skin like brittle autumn twigs...
The rose-gowned, rose-cheeked girl almost trips on the gamine, who draws her stick-thin legs underneath her with unspeaking instinct.
Picture this moment- pink-cheeked health, pink silk wealth, and her stammered apologies (she has not had either long enough to walk on) - and the other's small headshake, the best she can manage on the edge of starvation.
The girl in pink hurries on down the street, the blush in her cheeks deeper now from guilt and shame than her own vanity. She has forgotten what she once thought she could never escape. She won't easily forget again.