I'll Show You Mine if You... BLOGFEST!

BLOGFEST! I almost forgot, but better late than never. :)

January 3rd: post 500 words of your Nano novel.

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Setting: Central Park

The sun went down in a splash of color that freckled the horizon. Normally, it would have been romantic, but I wasn’t feeling it tonight, even with Travis’ hand clasped around my own. It felt strangely delicious, being close to them this way—the dust of the Earth once made the brightest stars. People didn’t see themselves that way, but that was just because they couldn’t. They didn’t see what I saw when I closed my eyes. They didn’t see what my third eye revealed: the truth of their origins.

“What are you thinking about?” Travis asked me, brushing the blunt cut bangs from my face, a futile gesture, but a romantic one.

“I’m thinking about you,” I lied. But it wasn’t a lie, really. I was thinking about him. His kind.

His big, country boy hand squeezed mine, and a wholesome, toothy grin made his aura swell a brilliant royal blue. “It’s incredible,” he said. “How do your eyes change so quickly? It’s almost like you’re from another planet.”

I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even chuckle. I cried. I know—wuss, right? I’m a total wuss. But if you’d said goodbye as many times as I had in the past three hundred years, you’d know the salty taste of tears by heart. I’d have loved to taste that salt just once, but tears weren’t part of my makeup. The Earth and I were only passing friends. And Travis…

“Oh, Travis.” I looked at our hands with so much longing, my heart chakra threatened to explode.

“What’s wrong? You haven’t been yourself since Carnegie Hall. Are you really so put off by fame and fortune?”

I smiled at his nervous chuckle, grateful for once that I couldn’t produce tears. “You know I have no use for those things.”

“Well…” he squeezed my hand again and wrapped a burly arm around me. Stronger and bigger than most of my chosen ones, he was the softest of them all on the inside. That’s what made this so hard. “Every girl likes to have nice things, right?”

“Not this girl,” I told him, letting my face go slack. “This girl wants peace and quiet and retirement.” And there it was—the first whole truth I had ever told him.

“Why push us so hard, then? Why push me?” For the first time since the purple pink hues of the horizon faded to white, Travis frowned. “You don’t want fame, but you want me to be famous. What do you really want, Azalea?”

Right then, I wished I could zap out—reveal my nature in my escape—a clean break. At least for me. “I want to say goodbye,” I whispered, finally looking him full in the face. “And I want you to understand that it’s not because of anything you did.”

The look of shock—the tense open jaw, the round, lovely eyes—yanked at my soul. I’m sure my eyes turned navy blue, like his aura.

He couldn’t speak. He never could when it came to goodbyes.