An Echo in the Silence (Kylian)

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Once again, Julienne found herself at a loss for words. It was a feeling that she knew all too well and not nearly enough. This speechless was not the kind that made her heart want to escape her chest. It was not the kind that turned her lungs to concrete or her feet to stone. This kind of speechless was one that she had never known before. Her heart felt as a butterfly would in the beginning of spring, warmth entering each flutter of its wings. Her lungs were breathless and her feet elevated from the ground. In this moment she felt as though she may be able to fly, and that was all that she’d ever asked for.

For one second, not two or three, but one second, she turned attention the the owls that surrounded the two figures in the room. This was their home, and yet Julienne had forgotten that they were here. She wanted to walk up to one of the creatures, preferably but not necessarily Echo, and she wanted to ask them if this was the way that they felt every moment of their lives. Or was flight something routine for the owls? Perhaps the sensation of weightlessness was something to which they had grown accustomed. Deep down, she hoped that this was not the case. How tragic it would be to feel as subliminal as this for a single moment and then lose it in the next.

Bringing her focus back into this confrontation, Julienne focused on his face as he witnessed her hair’s metamorphosis. She’d expected outrage from the boy who stood before her; her mind had assured her that he would experience her worst quality and turn away in disgust. She would not have blamed if if he run away, but he he hadn’t. He remained exactly where he’d been this entire time.

And he smiled.

Confusion spread through her bones. In all of her years not a single person had referred to her, or to the ability with which she’d been cursed, as anything other than repulsive or frightening. She’d never been told that the inconsistencies in her appearance were cool. Or that they were beautiful. Or that she was beautiful.

For a reason unknown, this brought Julienne’s mind back to the day that her parents had decided to separate from one-another. She remembered every detail of this day as though it were a painting forever stained into the corners of her mind. She could see the raspberry curtains of the parlour room; could feel the velvet of her favourite couch. She could smell the cinnamon perfume that her mother had once worn before she’d decided that the world was unworthy of her efforts to smell as desirable as a freshly baked pastry. She remembered everything, but above all she remembered her eyes.

Since birth, her eyes had been the one object of her physicality that she’d been able to keep in tact. Her hair would turn from brown to red, her skin from pale to tanned. But her eyes would remain a shade of hazel, because she knew that her parents would never be able to love her if they could not recognise the girl whom they were supposed to love.

She remembered the sound that the door made when her mother swung it open, yelling to the world that she could not live like this anymore. Julienne remembered asking herself what had been meant by this. Their lives were comfortable. They were not of high wealth, but they lived well. She then heard the words, “I cannot live with the uncertainty of not knowing who my daughter is.” The words had thrown Julienne’s soul against the wall, urging her to crumble into nothingness within the floorboards.

Her father mumbled something about their daughter being the same girl whom she had always been, despite the quirk that she’d been born with. He explained that it did not change who she was. But the woman did not listen. Instead, she threw her hands into her hair as if she was going to burst through the ceiling and she needed something to hold onto. “I know that,” she said softly. “But I am afraid that that may not be enough.”

Hearing this, Julienne’s eyes shifted from green to blue.

That night, her mother left for Paris. It was not until a few years afterwards that she’d gathered up the strength to take custody of her daughter for half of the summer. But even then, she could still hardly look her daughter in the eyes.

Julienne was pulled out of her memories when the boy pulled her close to him, wrapping his arms around her into the most genuine form of contact that she’d ever received. Despite his being a stranger whom she had met under an hour ago, she found safety within his arms. He smelt subtly of bark, which seemed to compliment the rose perfume she’d chosen perfectly. She’d decided that she was a flower, trying to blossom but too afraid to do so. And he was the base of her evolution, holding her steady within his roots as she began to find comfort in what had haunted her for the entirety of her life. He was safety.

As he released her from his arms, Julienne looked into the eyes that were still unattached to a name. How could she know so much about someone yet still know so little? Was it the same for him?

The boy looked back into her eyes as well, the kaleidoscope mystifying her once more.

For the second time, he asked her what was wrong. I am, she wanted to say, but she was unsure if he would allow that to be her response. Currently, she was unsure if she would allow that to be her response.

Instead, she simply said, “Family,” as if he would know exactly what the word meant in this regard. She was sure that he wouldn’t, as there was no way that he could understand the feeling of having to raise yourself alone despite a parent always being in the next room over. She was sure that he had never felt what it was like to be so lonely in a world full of so many people.

She wanted to cry in his arms and demand that he hold her again, because that was the only thing she could think of that would avoid her explanation of everything that had gone wrong in her life. But she did not cry and she did not ask for him to take her back into his safety.

The girl smiled softly and whispered, “My name is Julienne.”

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The one word answer told him everything in that moment, more than a hundred words could have. Family was a dangerous word. There were many of them, of course -- love, hate, trust, and the list went on -- but family was, to him, possibly the most dangerous one of them all.

See, family was meant to be a place of safety, of refuge. The place someone ran to when they were in trouble or in need. A place free of judgement, where one could receive love and care. Family should have been a safe word, one that brought comfort. But that wasn't always the case.

Family, Kylian knew, could be messed up. He was lucky; he had his mother. If he hadn't been lucky, he would've ended up with his dad. Oh, sure, Kylian had come to terms with all that happened and it didn't bother him majority of the time, but there had been a few times...

The first was when he'd his friend Mark, back in Italy, for the first time. They had been working on homework when said friend's father had walked into the room with a tub of ice cream for the pair to share, and Mark had jokingly complained about something. His dad had picked up the eleven year old and jokingly threatened to throw him into the pool. Kylian, for the first time, felt a stab of jealousy.

From then onwards, Kylian started looking out for what he realised was supposed to be normal 'dad' behaviour and soon discovered he had a father, but not a dad. And, every so often, when he saw a particularly good dad, he would get that pang of jealousy and wish, for just a moment, that he knew what it was like.

After all, it had been his mum who taught him to shave, and his mum who helped explain what crushes were when he came home confused because he had seen a classmate and found himself suddenly incapable of proper speech (he'd gotten over it in a week when he discovered she talked about others behind their backs), and his mother (ironically) who showed him how to be a man.

It was from her that Kylian received all his morals, and if he was less of a man for having been taught it by a woman, it certainly never showed.

The divorce had come and gone. There had been no real difference in Kylian's mind; the relationships had stayed the same, with his mum being his role model (and dad), and his father being... Well, his father. He'd moved to the UK with his mother, of course, which was probably the only significant thing.

And then his father remarried and Blaze entered his life. His younger sister got the dad he'd always wanted, and (while he never admitted to it) it had hurt more than anything else. What did Blaze have that he didn't? Why did his father care more for his step-daughter than he did his own flesh and blood? He didn't have answers for those questions and so he never asked them again -- didn't allow himself to -- and pushed it all down, locking it away.

But the single word spoken by the girl before him unlocked it all, and Kylian understood in that moment more than he could say. So, instead, he smiled at her -- a sad, gentle smile that said he could relate -- and softly asked, "Wanna talk about it? We can sit down somewhere..."

The name felt familiar. It wasn't that he knew another Julienne -- he didn't -- nor was it because he'd heard the name before -- he hadn't. A name, he knew, was interwoven with identity; a William from Italy and a William from here held two different meanings in his head, even if the spelling and name itself were the same.

Julienne -- the one standing before him -- felt familiar, like he knew her. It was almost like those dreams one had, where you know the person you were talking to, even if, once awake, you realise it was a stranger. And Julienne, techincally, was just that; they'd never met before this. So why did Kylian feel like he'd met her before? Like he knew her, and knew her intimately and deeply, like he knew his best friend?

"I'm Kylian," he said, in return, still trying to process the feeling. "We..." He started, then shook his head in amusement. It was a stupid question, but even as he told himself he wouldn't ask it, something deep inside him insisted he finish. So, taking a breath, he continued. "We've never met, right?" He paused for a second, searching her eyes. "Because I keep thinking like we know each other. Like you're someone I've met before." It sounded stupid, aloud, and yet so right, and it only confused him further.

[[OOC: You may GM them walking/sitting if you want Smile

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The next words that the boy in front of her painted with his silver tongue were somehow the most beautiful and yet the most devastating that she’d ever heard. Julienne had never been asked such a question before; a string of words that had been delivered with such care, asking her firsthand for a story that she’d never thought she’d be asked to tell. There was something beautiful about this inquiry that danced in serenity throughout her senses. A part of her wanted to take him up on his offer, to sit beside him and pour every emotion that she’d felt in the past fourteen years out from her heart and into the safety of his presence. A part of her wanted him to know her, despite the fact that she barely knew herself.

But another part of her wanted to retreat, to freeze him out and pretend that she’d never known what it was like to feel such safety in a single moment. She wanted to save him from the pain that came with knowing her. She wanted to warn him that if she began to tell him her story, to unravel parts of herself that had gone untouched for so long, she may never be able to piece herself back together. She felt as though her world was Pandora’s box, and opening it would unleash something that could benefit no-one.

These parts of her consciousness could not agree on which course of action they wanted to take, causing the Hufflepuff girl’s heartbeat to return to what it had been prior to her meeting this stranger who seemed to care so much more than any stranger should. The beating of her most vital organ pressed against her chest in a sensation much similar to what she imagined it would feel like to have a being within oneself that was yearning to escape. Her heart was telling her that it wanted to break itself out from the bonds of her mind and into novels that she would write with the movement of her lips. It wanted her to smile and breathe lightly. It wanted her to know that she had someone in the world on whom she could depend.

But her mind brought a gun into the knife fight that the heart had created. Her anxiety became a basilisk who turned her yearnings to stone, leaving no thoughts except for the negatives. She knew this knight in shining armour would run as far away as possible as soon as he realised that the monster meant to be slain in order to rescue the damsel was not simply a monster, but that it was the damsel herself. Why would he want to save someone who could hardly save herself?

The boy informed her that his name was Kylian. She allowed the letters to infiltrate her thought patterns, processing the uniqueness of such a name. She’d never met someone named Kylian before. The name belonged to only him. It felt familiar to her, but not in a way that most things were familiar. It did not spark the portion of her memory that held the recipe for crepes or the number of ceiling tiles in her bedroom (She’d counted this once out of curiosity. And then once again just to be sure that her first estimation had been accurate).

It was ignited the part of her mind that held together her senses. It was the feeling of walking by a patch of roses and immediately knowing how long they had been in bloom. The sensation of being able to taste rosemary in a dish that was crowded with other substances. It was the kind of familiarity that could exist in something that she’d never heard before, such as Kylian.

He asked her if they’d met prior to now, and Julienne realised that he’d had the same thought. She wanted to explain her theory to him, to tell him that they hadn’t met before and yet they somehow had. But the words could not navigate the sea of frustration that her lack of communication was causing her.

The girl readied herself to shake her head, to tell him that she needed to leave. She was prepared to push away from the spark that had just been created. But her heart and her head had decided on a compromise at the last minute.

She smiled softly, gently making an attempt to press her hand into his, and she lead the boy out of the owlery. From the corner of her eye, Julienne could see Echo winking. She wanted to remember to return here at a later date in order to fill the owl in on what happened next, even though she herself was unsure of where this would lead.

Julienne focused on the pattering of her feet against the castle floor whilst she navigated through crowds of laughter and conversation. She’d turned avoidance into a skill, becoming so careful in her movements that not a single student realised that someone had even walked by. Her eyes focused forward as to not crash land into a nearby wall, the Hufflepuff wondered if the stranger was still behind her. Her hand remained warm as though he had yet to let go, but a pit grew in her stomach with each worry that he may have grown bored of this prolonged encounter.

Eventually, Julienne could feel the fresh air surround her as they reached their destination: the Quidditch pitch. It was not quite day, yet it was still too early to begin to label the time as evening. The sky was beginning to shift from a powder blue to a deep sapphire, the tiny glow of the stars wanting to show themselves but unable to overpower the light of the remaining sun. She heard birds flying overhead, singing their songs to one another in a perfect conversation that no human could understand. It was the purest form of incomprehension. She breathed in the world around her, allowing nature to take over her being. Julienne sat atop the grass, her eyes gazing towards Kylian as though to urge him to do the same.

“T-the world behind me doesn’t matter,” she said soft enough that anyone who was not focusing solely on her words would have missed it. She was taken aback by the sentence, as it was the most coherent thing she’d been able to say to any person in a very long time. But it did not make her nervous as she had thought that it might.

“This world is who I am,” She said, motioning towards the birds and the sky and the air and to him. And then she smiled.

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Silence stretched into seconds that filled his mind not with uncertainty but with a sense of comfort and growing anticipation. There was something vastly important about what was taking place. Kylian knew this instinctively, the inner part of him that he'd never realised could be this loud all but screaming at him, telling him not to move, not to speak -- not to mess this up. What was going on in the inner working of the girl before him, Kylian did not even try to hazard a guess; females, he knew, were all the same: extremely complicated if you didn't know them. A jigsaw, his mother had once told him, before completion. If one didn't know the picture or the frame in which to put it, everything was a mess and you'd only end up frustrated if you tried.

Spend long enough with someone, though -- deliberately, genuinely, honestly -- and you eventually learn what the picture is, and then the pieces fit much, much easier.

His mind kept going back to the butterfly analogy he had stumbled upon earlier. Right now, it seemed, she was emerging -- coming out of her cacoon -- and that could never be rushed. He'd seen it, once or twice before, in his garden. It had taken hours, and he sat, rather impatiently, watching the first crack in the green cylinder turn into a butterfly that crawled out and sat for long minutes before unfolding its wings and taking off.

It was, to him, the most beautiful thing he'd seen: life created.

And now, before his very eyes, that experience was taking second place. Julienne was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and much like the butterfly he was witnessing, he somehow knew, something not very many people got to. He was witnessing life, of the girl, and it was as new and as fresh as dew on a mountainside.

The minutes passed, slowly, and he continued to wait and watch. He had never been a patient person; he'd never enjoyed waiting for things to happen. But for some reason, Kylian found himself not minding (and, to some extent, enjoying) the wait. It seemed to be the good kind, like when he waited for his mother to come home so they could watch a show together, or when it was almost his turn at a roller coaster. Sure, the wait in itself was tedious and boring, but the goal, the end results, were more than worth it.

Julienne, he decided, was more than worth it.

And then he felt her hand in his and he felt that unfamiliar part deep inside him leap with joy, although outwardly he kept his expression neutral. Her hand was warm, but not uncomfortably so; in fact, a part of him held the absurd notion that her hand had been made to fit perfectly into his, and his into hers. It was a ridiculous thought, and he tried to shake it off, but the more he tried the more solid it became until he finally just gave in and accepted that the fit was too perfect to be a coincidence.

He let her lead him, not saying anything, not even attemping to speak although he desperately wanted to know if she felt the same and where she was taking him.

They made their way through the halls, Kylian focused on her and her alone. She was no less beautiful from the back, her hair swaying gently as they walked. He never wanted to let go, and subconsciously, he tightened his grip by a little. What was she doing to him? What was this feeling? There was a bubbling inside him, like efferversance in a glass of coke, rising from the bottom to the top in streams. He wanted to laugh, to pull Julienne towards him and hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay, to sit beside her for hours not saying anything and just enjoying the company.

He wanted her, although he did not yet fully realise this.

Eventually, after what could have been minutes or could have been an hour (he did not know; time had become meaningless, so long as her hand was still in his) they reached the quidditch pitch. Her hand slipped out of his and he resisted the urge to reach out and take it back. To hold onto it once more and never let go. It was impractical, and ridiculous, and instead he watched her, took in her breathing, the way she watched the sky, the way the breeze played with the tips of her hair...

He watched her sit, and noted nothing else of the world around him except for the beauty that was Julienne. Her eyes found his, and he nodded once, understanding, somehow, what she was asking; he sat beside her. As he did, he barely caught her words, but heard them he did and he mulled over them once.

But before he had a chance to reply, she was speaking again, and he following her gesture, glancing around momentarily before bringing his eyes back to her and her alone. Her smile was radiant. It did the impossible; it made her even more beautiful. Kylian found himself speaking before he could fathom what he wanted to say. "I like who you are." He paused, wondering how he could phrase it, and then gave up and let instinct guide him. "I like you as you are. This world. That world. Any world."

Guest

Julienne felt her throat tighten at the words that this boy was saying. Every word he spoke felt like satin against her ears but at the same time they were satin that was rapping its way around her neck and slowing suffocating her senses with false promises of kindness and love. love. Was he promising love? How could she be one to know? Had she ever felt something resembling a sense that could be labeled as such? Mother’s kisses, father’s laughter, family Christmases and birthday parties. Late night “I love you’s.” Those were love. She’d never known love. So how could she expect herself to separate it from obligation?

And yet, the words Kylian spoke felt familiar to her memories. They escaped his lips like the words of a storybook hero who had been introduced to a damsel for the first time. It reminded her of a story that she’d read once; a mythology novel based around an Egyptian demigoddess who’d fallen for someone from another world only to find that he’d lived beside her for an eternity. It was funny, how something could seem so an improbability and yet it had been with you the entire time.

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you,” she recited, unaware that her memories had escaped through her mind and into the air and into Kylian’s ears.

“I-I,” Julienne blushed, her breathing growing heavier. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant to say that aloud. That she’d gone from impossibly serene to impossibly embarrassed in a matter of seconds. She froze.

“It’s from a book,” was all that she’d found herself able to say. Even those words, such simple explanatory syllables, had made barely a whisper. She wanted to appologise again, but she knew that he would find a way to tell her not to. Julienne could not help but feel as though she didn’t deserve the comfort that he’d given her. Perhaps she deserved to suffer in silence.

And who was she to think that his words had been anything more than an obligatory statement to try and mend a broken thing. Not a broken person. Not a broken life. A broken thing. So many people could walk by a broken seashell and see it as nothing but a broken seashell. They’d walk by it and pay no mind to the matter that had escaped the shell. They would know it was broken, but they would not care.

A smaller group of people would admire the shell for what it was; something that was broken physically but not visually. They would know that the shell was a natural work of art that had not been destroyed, but simply reimagined by mother nature. They would know that beauty was not defined by appearance.

An even smaller, miniscule cluster of human beings would stop and stare at the shell. They would see the shell in the same way as the other two groups, something broken and something beautiful. They would know that the broken form was enough for most people, but it would never be enough for them. They were the fixers; the people who found something worth fixing and dedicated their time to mending the broken pieces back to life.

Once it was repaired, however; the fixer would leave on their journey to another project.

Was Kylian a fixer? Was she his project? Would he leave her once she was no longer broken?

She held her hand to his once again.

‘Don’t leave,’ she wanted to say. But instead she simply sat there, unable to verbalise the words in her mind.

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This time round, he didn't need to wait as long as before for her to speak, and he tuned himself to her words at once. He'd read it before, somewhere. It was most likely on Facebook, one of those stupid quotes shared by a friend hopelessly addicted to the idea of romance. At the point of time he read it, Kylian recalled rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath about how ridiculous it was.

How could someone choose the same person over and over? Even if alternate realities and reincarnation and all that existed, how was it possible to locate one person among so many and still want them? The idea was flawed and foolish, and Kylian had written it off as Romance Bullshit that sounded nice but held no actual meaning. They were merely words, after all, and he doubted it could be carried out in real life.

But now, hearing the words come from Julienne, they no longer sounded foolish. Instead, they took on a whole new meaning, and for just a moment, Kylian understood. He understood what it meant, he understood what it implied, and he understood, most importantly, that it was true and it was possible. How else could he have known Julienne? How else could he have felt so naturally drawn to her, as though they've met before? No, there was no other explanation.

But the moment soon ended, and he quickly wrote off the idea. It simply couldn't be. There were no other lives. There were no other realities. Still it lingered at the back of his mind, quietly sitting and waiting, and he knew that nothing would be the same again -- not since he met her. (Or is it re-met? he wondered, and then again tried to push it out completely. The thought skirted back somewhere he couldn't access, but still it remained, and he knew it was hopeless; from the moment she recited the quote, it was going to be a thought that haunted him.)

Her explanation brought a smile and a shrug from him. "That's the interesting thing about books," he said, speaking again without thinking, guided by something he didn't know he had and a desire to know her. "They're written about fictional people, but real ones can relate to the words." He left it at that, wanting but unable to explain that he thought she was right, that they'd met before, that, just maybe, they'd been lovers in a previous life. Those didn't exist, after all. Right?

It was a beautiful evening, and normally Kylian would be looking around and taking in the sights -- but sat there, beside Julienne, he had eyes only for her, and he took her in as though he would never see her again, memorising each detail of her face. And her eyes! Oh, her eyes. There was a saying that claimed them to be the window to the soul. Whoever first said it were wrong; they weren't just a window. They captured everything he needed to know about her, told him more than he could have ever dared hope: that she was stunningly beautiful and, more importantly, she could teach him to love.

He was watching her, so he didn't miss her movements. Without thinking -- without even hesitating -- he closed the minute gap and gently took her hand in his, holding it tight enough that there was no mistaking that this was what he wanted, but not so tightly that she couldn't remove it should she choose to. He brought his eyes down to look at what he was doing as it registered, and then he smiled, fully, wholly, happily, and looked back up at her.

"Julienne," he said, simply. There was more he wanted to say, but that was the most important, and he fell silent for a while. Then, after many moments had passed, he said, "I'm glad we met." It wasn't enough, and barely covered what he really meant, but he hoped she would understand.

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Julienne listened intently to Kylian's perspective. Though she knew that most would find no sense in her thinking, she disagreed with what he'd said about the characters being fictional.

While she was aware that the people she read about were made up, it did not mean that they were not real. In fact, she felt as though the best books were the ones in which one felt like they could reach out and touch each character; as if they were living every moment alongside them in real time.

Being someone who wanted to be no-one, Julienne had often found that hiding in a book was the best way to be invisible. Because of this, her mind was a library. Every character she had ever met lived inside of her, only a thought required to reconnect as though they were long lost, friends. Their worlds were hers, even if she could never physically interact with them. But they were real.

It was the same way with the words of each story. She did not relate to each word; she became each word. Every paragraph she read was an invisible tattoo, stained into her skin and into her brain. She breathed in quotes as she breathed out air.

She wanted to write like that, one day. She wondered if her words would ever reach into someone and come out with their soul, molding two worlds into an infinity of livelihoods. But she doubted that she'd ever reach someone like that. Her words were small and dull and heard by none. They didn't matter.

None of these thoughts were molded into a reply. She nodded and said something along the lines of "I know what you mean." She wasn't nervous around this boy, but these words were too far into her soul to want to emerge. Even if this might be the only person she'd ever want them to emerge for.

She allowed the silence to once again creep in between her and the boy. Julienne was not afraid of silence; it was something that often saved her from confrontations and unnerving situations. Most people could not survive in silence for too long, but this girl had lived her life inside of it.

She wondered if Kylian minded silence; if he found it rude that she'd run out of things to say almost as quickly as she'd come up with things to say. Would he take it as a sign that she did not want to be there? She wanted to be there. She wanted to be there. She was there. And she'd never been more present.

She heard a cricket in the distance, calling out for someone it seemed. Was he lost? She hoped someone would find him. Maybe he was looking for someone else who was lost? She still hoped the same thing.

And then the silence broke. Kylian told her that he was glad that they'd met. They were words that often began a goodbye, but from his lips, it sounded like a hello. She wondered which it would be.

"Me too," she told him. She wanted to say more; to elongate the conversation. But her lips locked once again and she ran out of words.

'He'll never want to befriend a mute,' her mind chuckled.

'I know,' she responded.

Guest

For a moment, he wondered if he'd said something -- done something -- wrong. Had he offended her somehow with either words or action that she wouldn't grant him a reply? It was normally something he minded, but somehow not around her. No, around this strange female who was both a stranger and an old friend, a beautiful mystery, a paradoxical enigma to him that he somehow managed to understand entirely, silence was comfortable. He couldn't explain it; he couldn't understand it. He just knew that was the truth.

And yet, Kylian couldn't help but wonder in that instance if somehow he'd offended her. But she hadn't moved her hand, and the warmth beneath his palm comforted him. He'd never done that before. His mum had instilled gentlemanly traits into him, teaching him not to do anything physical to or with a female unless there was explicit permission; it was not right. As chill as she was about everything else, Kylian had become somewhat of a feminist. It was a symptom of growing up with only your mother guiding you.

Still, the hand felt so right and Kylian relaxed, moving his eyes momentarily towards the direction of the lake and then back to her. It was most beautiful at sunset, when the colours refracted off the surface, surrounding the entire place with a soft golden glow, and it was all he could think about -- not because he wanted to see it, but because, for whatever reason, Julienne reminded him of that beauty. He himself was not usually concerned with things like that; he'd only watched it to take a picture for his mum.

Now, sat watching Julienne, he found himself unable to help comparing her to it. It wasn't her looks, however, that reminded him of that sunset; it was her herself. There was something... radiant to her. Something that came not from what she looked like but inside, as though the rays of the sun had found a home inside her.

"Hogsmeade," he said, catching himself by surprise. It wasn't that he didn't know what he meant to say; it was that he hadn't expected... well, this. He ignored the part of him that said he was crazy. "We're allowed out next week, aren't we?" It was posed as a question, but he knew the answer -- yes. He'd planned to use it to buy a new sketchbook and pens, as well as pick up some sweets for his step-sister to send with her letter. But that was long forgotten as a new plan rose in his mind. He saw nothing wrong with it; it felt like second nature to say what he wanted to, and he didn't hold back for a moment, not now that he'd started.

"There's a cafe there, run out of a house. It's newly opened and small, but I know the owner. I met him by chance and... That's not important right now." He paused, asking himself mentally if he was sure about this; the answer was a resounding 'yes'. "The food is really good and I... Well, I'd love it if you'd come with me. For lunch." He paused for a split second, then added, "My treat."

Guest

Julienne allowed the silence between his words to fill every crevice of her being before the inevitability of the noises and syllables that would work their way back into the interaction. She found it funny, how easy it was to say so many things in something as small as a glance or a smile. She knew how to say "Hello" and "Goodbye" with nothing but her eyes. It was like a secret she had with the universe, no-one but them two aware that words often did nothing but get in the way.

Words were like moths, in a way. They could be just as beautiful to look at as a butterfly, usually. But unlike a butterfly, the moths tended to crowd in a single space, filling it entirely before one could understand the other. Before anyone could know it, there would be too many moths to even see the basis of their meeting.

She loved words. She loved poetry and music. But there was a time and a place for every word. Was this the time for words? Her mind was unsure.

Before she could think any further on this topic, Kylian's voice had once again begun to fill her ears. He was asking her something. No, not asking. He was requesting something of her. Not in a pushy or aggressive way, but in a way that told her how much it would mean for her to respond.

She looked to him. Her heart began to race and her mind began to race for the finish line of any conclusion that may explain what she'd gotten herself into. Was this what if felt like to be asked on a date? Was this a date? Or was she reading too much into the suggestion? It was more than likely a bite to eat between friends; a way to enjoy the occasional trip to Hogsmeade. But did she want it to be a date?

Julienne did not usually attend the Hogsmeade outings. She'd been once, simply to justify the effort that it had taken to get either of her parents to sign a piece of paper. She'd spent the entire time in a bookshop, flittering through different titles and covers.

She remembered this one book that she'd found on the far shelf of the Muggle section. It'd been a science fiction, she believed. About a girl whose skin was lethal to the touch of those around her. A girl who was so closed off from the world that her only connection to nature was through her dreams. She remembered one quote in particular.

"There will be a bird. It will be white with streaks of gold, like a crown atop its head. It will fly."

Perhaps Kylian was her bird; her sign that the future would be brighter than the present. Perhaps they would fly off together into something neither of them had seen before. Or perhaps they wouldn't.

"I'd love to," she responded, smiling softly and saying nothing else. Moments ago, she would have feared to leave him in silence for too long, but she wondered if perhaps silence was something that he craved as well.

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