x fic: she left her life on monday (karen)
So then, me being the idiot that I am, I wrote this all before realizing Nataku was dead. ;_; Sorry about this. *slaps AU label on*
Written for and cross-posted to 31_days.
SHE LEFT HER LIFE ON MONDAY.
X copyright CLAMP.
She bought him a picture book filled with professional photographs, and the next day he came back to her with a camera in his hands.
She sat patiently for him on a wooden stool while he clumsily photographed her. He liked to take pictures, as if by accident, of her bared feet, or of her warm and gentle hands, the hem of her flowing skirt, and, often, the edges of her red hair as it glowed like sunset in the city. Any photograph taken was a photograph somehow blurred by the rush of his awkward fingers pressing over buttons and the closing of a shutter eye.
But there were never any photographs of her face, and in the off-chance that he would somehow take one, he warned her before they began:
"Don't ever smile."
Her laughter rang out in the air delightfully before subsiding. As a corollary, she never took him very seriously. But she still was curious and asked him the meaning of this.
"Is it not true that these instruments capture the souls of people?" was his reply. He gazed at her with such an immediately pressing stare that she could not help but smile very gently once more.
"Why, yes, they do."
"And so if such an instrument steals your soul when you are smiling--would it not also steal your happiness?" he asked. "The happiness found in your soul?"
Silence swallowed them up whole, but yes, she thought, of course, he was right.
END.
Written for and cross-posted to 31_days.
SHE LEFT HER LIFE ON MONDAY.
X copyright CLAMP.
She bought him a picture book filled with professional photographs, and the next day he came back to her with a camera in his hands.
She sat patiently for him on a wooden stool while he clumsily photographed her. He liked to take pictures, as if by accident, of her bared feet, or of her warm and gentle hands, the hem of her flowing skirt, and, often, the edges of her red hair as it glowed like sunset in the city. Any photograph taken was a photograph somehow blurred by the rush of his awkward fingers pressing over buttons and the closing of a shutter eye.
But there were never any photographs of her face, and in the off-chance that he would somehow take one, he warned her before they began:
"Don't ever smile."
Her laughter rang out in the air delightfully before subsiding. As a corollary, she never took him very seriously. But she still was curious and asked him the meaning of this.
"Is it not true that these instruments capture the souls of people?" was his reply. He gazed at her with such an immediately pressing stare that she could not help but smile very gently once more.
"Why, yes, they do."
"And so if such an instrument steals your soul when you are smiling--would it not also steal your happiness?" he asked. "The happiness found in your soul?"
Silence swallowed them up whole, but yes, she thought, of course, he was right.
END.