Prologue
She didn't know exactly what her thoughts were right at that
moment.
Horror? Agony? Confusion?
She glanced at the papers again, reading it for the nth time
in the past few minutes, hoping to find something different written on them
this time around.
She didn't.
The tears kept flowing and she looked at the man who stood
with his back to her, not even looking her in the eye as he gave her his final sermon.
Her voice shook as she asked him what was going around in her mind in circles.
"Why?"
The single word brought him out of the vortex of despair he
could feel himself drowning in. He turned around and injected as much malice
into his words as possible, looking at her mockingly. "Why don't you ask
Ashok?"
He scoffed at the look she got on her face. Rehearsed, he
thought, emotions of innocence and confusion. He had been prey to the same sort
of emotional blackmailing before, and wasn't so stupid as to fall for it again.
"Sign it, will ya?" He used a bored tone and refused to come
under the influence of the crocodile tears of one of the few people he detested
on the face of the earth.
She looked at him for a few seconds as though trying to
grasp the meaning behind his words and the mist around her eyes - of love, of
misperceptions, of innocence - faded.
"I don't mean anything to you, do I?" she asked, her voice
once again gaining a little power.
He had preferred not to answer the question and just stared
at her with a look of so much loathing, that she had to force herself not to
turn her head away. Instead, she had wiped the tears off her face and pressed
her hands into her eyes. As though getting an unknown strength from somewhere,
she picked up the pen and signed her name where it had asked.
Signed away a lifetime of dreams and hopes she had built her
life on. Signed away another opportunity to be happy.
She got up from her position on the couch and moved to the
wardrobe, but turned back and looked at him.
He didn't know what that look meant exactly, he had never
seen it in her eyes before, but there was no accusation in that look. As though
capturing that image of him in her eyes forever, she closed her eyes and took a
deep breath before going to pack up her things.
"I'll be out by midnight." Those were the only words she
spoke as she went out of the room.
And that was the last he had seen of her outside of court.
"She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she
did."
Markus
Zusak, The
Book Thief
There's that! Leave behind your thoughts and whether I should continue :)
NeNe
Edited by SurrealFantasy - 9 years ago
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