Fare in Twilight

Chilly wind blew through the window that day. Laid beside the windowsill, aged, yellowed pages flipped rapidly, revealing poems. Their modest applause for verses was silent as wind halted in a sudden. The wind stopped, by that elaborately-designed, consisting of cornflower and geranium bookmark. Because of it, even papers seemed to be sending out faint scent of flowers.

"By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flowers."

To be honest, Gilbert preferred novels to poems. Poetry contained far too much flourish and trance so that the emotion became unreal and hard to catch. He said.

Then Elizabeth would chuckled softly, as always. "How come. Novels never comes up with the delicacy of poems." Maybe they would quarrel over this. Before the frying pan made its noise, let's say it's impossible to put these fights into an end.

Therefore, Gilbert never wrote poems. He nearly hated that pretentious expression of affection.

"Well, don't you get anyone to write poems for?" Elizabeth's casual voice came from behind. It almost made him jump. He would never dare to turn his head and meet her eyes. Those eyes were green and deep as lakes.

How to response? Direct words would made him embarrassed, uncomfortable. He might not have the nerve to do things out of his style. But he was never in the mood of lying to her, denying she's impossible to be that "someone".

So, as for always, silence fell in the blanks. Both were used to this tacit communication already.

Those unspoken emotion were admiration for Elizabeth. Slipped, then it would be sacrilegious.

"Du bist meine heiliger."

Gilbert only poured his bitterness in diary.

He didn't know when, but he found that traces of ink had been portraying every single things with Elizabeth for a long time.

Attachment he had for Elizabeth increased every day, genuine, soft as cotton candy. They could easily dissolved into featherlike sweetness, tasting just like the name reverberating in his brain – Elizabeth.

He put down his fountain pen, closed the journal. Gilbert looked up at the dimmed celling. He felt a knot of depression in his stomach. Maybe it was because he hadn't smell that faint scent of geranium from the girl for ages.

He couldn't take his eyes off her honey-brown hair or her green grass skirt lining. Before realizing it, he had been aching to touch those blazing lips badly.

Yearning and thinking were impossible to stop.

He watched the ink dry up in silence, stroked the lines with incredible gentleness, muttering. Exploding emotions mixed together, whirling around, becoming poems throughout the book. However, he did not dare to admit those were confession written by himself.

Too expose, too clear to be true. That's what Gilbert thought.

Elizabeth had gotten used to this moulding of emotion, hadn't she? He didn't dare to guess. Once these "out – of – his – style" words were slipped, he would be laugh at for sure

Just buried them deep in the books, then.

The most precious words—

"Ich liebe dich."

Gilbert didn't want Elizabeth to clean his room. Elizabeth felt indignant for that.

"I've read books that even you stinky men find weird! Let me clean your dirty room, Gilbert!" Elizabeth's frying pan rattled the battered door. To this, Gilbert clutched his precious diary and Gilbird helplessly in the corner, ready to jump out of the window at any moment, calling for help.

Elizabeth never succeeded for once. But the more Gilbert resisted, the more curious she grew.

She didn't like the fact that there are secrets between them. Not even one.

Maybe it was because "I'm your buddy we should share everything." Yet something had change. She had changed before accepting it.

"…Idiot." She silently turned away from the door which had survived her fifty-sixth attack, put on her jacket, and stormed out of the house in twilight.

Elizabeth received an invitation from Ludwig that day. He asked whether Elizabeth would join him and his brother at dinner. Instantly, her eyes sparkled. She gave Ludwig a refusal right away, cheerfully.

Ludwig might feel frustrated, wondering why she turned him down with relish. But Elizabeth couldn't care less. She dressed up, heading, not for the house of Ludwig, but the opposite way-the place of Gilbert.

After arriving at the place, with delight, she saw, that there was no light peering through the curtains. Their owner must be out. She walked up the stairs with caution, pulling the key out of the shoes cabinet like it was her own place.

She entered the house, and checked that nobody else was there, then walked directly into Gilbert's study room (also his bedroom).

"Well, let me see what kind shady things you have hidden here. "She said with greeting teeth. She pulled up her sleeve, ready to clean this not so untidy room.

Suddenly, she spotted a red covered volume buried in papers. She picked it up gently, finding, that which was not a book, but a diary instead.

" You keep this hobby still?" She chuckled softly, flipping through the pages. After taking some carefully examination, she found that the diary record a vast of things. Still, every day, thick inks lingered cautiously at the divine and saintliness, the name of a girl. Like the most valuable precious holding in palms, kept as treasure, taken with care, yet, with tremble, never to touch. A drop of tear ran across her cheek. Elizabeth was stunned.

The girl's name was – Elizabeth Hedervary.

Elizabeth only restrained herself after years. She closed the diary, breathing hard. Such great surge of emotion overflowed her, making her not calm down.

Why had she never realized before? That awkward man's every reaction of behavior were expressing his emphatically insisting yearning.

She should have known earlier that she could never escape from that deep, fiery gaze.

"…..That idiot." She sat numb next to the bookshelf. In twilight, her shadow stretched longer and longer, until the stars came with blackness. Her shivering shadow melt into the darkness, embellished as Vincent's Starry Night beside the window.

And she never saw Gilbert after that.

After years, years and years. The Berlin Wall fell down. It was the same day that he collided to the ground and he never got up.

Blood and sin soaked him all into one. Gilbert thought that was enough, enough.

That day would come, sooner or later.

Dying.

Strength seemed to be suck out of his body, one drop at a time. In the orange dying sun, everything was so peaceful yet rattled with uneasiness.

Elizabeth kept crying beside him.

"… let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves." Suddenly, he murmured. His vague sounds mixed with slight accent, making him sounded awkward.

"…what are you talking about. Don't you hate the affectionate of English poets? " After being speechless for a moment, Elizabeth smiled banterly. Still, she trembled so viciously that she had difficulty making out the words.

"Do not linger to gather flowers to keep them, but walk on, for flowers will keep themselves blooming all your way…" Gilbert kept reciting verses from Stray Birds of Tagore. His rambling was weak, like pouring some exposed secret. But Elizabeth had known them long time ago.

"Enough, Gil…enough…enough already." Elizabeth tightened her greet but couldn't hold back her sobbing and moaning. She gripped tightly to his hands. Their arrogant owner once held them to invite her into the dance floor. Now, he didn't seem to have the strength to hold her back. She didn't care the tears rolling down her cheeks, nor how they soaked her clothes. Her voice quivered imploringly, calling Gilbert's name over and over again in that broken, tearful way.

She had understood when she saw his writing, carving her name storks after stroks. Not to say hearing those precious rhythm came delicately from his mouth.

The deeper Gilbert's longing engraved on her heart, the harder it is not to tremble or to fear. But only through this complex emotion could Elizabeth realize that she loved him deeply.

"—The awesome me don't like to see you crying…" Gilbert smiled boldly. He struggled to draw his right hand, trying to wipe her tears. She didn't loosen her grasp.

"… Idiot! I don't like to cry for you , either!" Sorrowfully and angrily, she wiped her eyes. The tears wouldn't stop. Elizabeth felt more furious. She gripped his hands like he would vanish- no, he was going to vanish indeed.

Twilight cast from the West shimmering on the face of that over gaunt man. It was like the echoing fright after the Doomsday .Too quiet to be safe.

"Nah… Gil…" Elizabeth called his name over and over again with that over sobbing harsh voice. Like he had written her name many times in his diary, she was calling, thinking his name in a peercing-hearted soft tone.

" In my solitude of heart I feel the sigh of this widowed evening veiled with mist and rain." Elizabeth didn't know whether her shattered voice had reached his mind, or his ears through her light kisses. The only thing she was sure was that the fading warmth was the tragedy going on in her mind.

The dust of the dead words clings to thee.

Wash thy soul with silence.

Might you hear my words of farewell?

Szeretlek.

Do you like it?

It's actually a fanfic translated from Chinese to English! It was originally posted by sasuke80813 on pixnet and "暮靄後道別". I've asked the author for permission, but she didn't answer me :(

Hope you enjoy it, and PLEASE REVIEW!

Thanks!

22/7/2016: I get the author's permission!