Sometimes she wonders now what it would have been like to live in a world of black and white. The greys have muddled together so well, so effortlessly, that it never seems possible to discern which is which. There once was happiness and sorrow, love and hate, passion and boredom. Now they do not exist. They are dead, "somewhere in France".

She once always knew her own mind, but now she is caught up in the grey.

He once walked with her without talking, something she had wanted from another Blythe boy, and not him. She didn't mind. She had had dreams, and had been content. And he had had secrets-and didn't tell them.

&O&O&

Now they are all grown up. The new "Golden" world is being made, and the dearness of the old one is dead in muddy trenches. Love died too, along with lives. Hers certainly did. Hopes died too, along with love. Hers certainly did as well.

They say it is grief, but it not grief. It is emptiness.

He wishes she were no longer empty. He wants to make her whole, but doesn't know how. He wishes to know what her eyes look like when they smile, but can't figure out how to induce it. It is like rewinding a film, something possible yet not done. Something exhilarating, yet uninviting. He wants to fill up the glass of her love which Walter left half-empty.

Putting emotions into words like putting pegs into square wholes.

&O&O&

He came back. It has been a long time. He gives her navy eyes dilated with tears and shoe black hair a sentimental look. He was the same kindred sprit she remembers, a little quieter even, a youthful look gone from his eye.

Just like you.

&O&O&

He feels as if he is tangled in a mesh of fine spider silk.

There is the physicality of feelings beating on him, things that are not in any dictionary. There are invisible scars on his cerebral cortex, entrapping him as if someone had put him on the rack.

Pain is something familiar now. Something he had seen from the sky so many times that it became just another ticking of moments. A ticking of moments that destroyed lives as he watched from his plane. She is just another ticking. Tick (don't think of her), tock (stop it), tick (NOW), tock (she loved Walter, not you).

The clock keeps ticking.

&O&O&

Some things fit together. Lilies and spring. Doors in frames. Trees in the ground. Garret and wind. Pieces of a broken thing. Emotions do not have a synonym. They do not fit nicely into place.

They do not fit nicely into place. He with his brown-ness, and her with her exothermia of moonlight. He is quiet but in a different way. He absorbs it, she spreads it. While he is ignored, she is carefully treated. He tries to speak, but she tries to listen.

They should fit like a sword into its sheath, but they don't.

So many things don't.

&O&O&

"Una, will you marry me?" Soft. (What light!) She cannot look at him.

"Shirley, you know….I…" Almost trembling. She still stares at a moss eaten stone.

"Una, I know you don't love me. Not like that. I just want you to be happy. I think I can make you happy. Please, will you let me try?" There is something in his voice that makes her want to look up, but she can't.

"You would do that for me?" The moss still absorbs her attention like the water.

"You know I would. Una, I swear I will try. Please, will you give me that chance?" His voice is so soft!

"Shirley.." Her gaze looks over to the color in the sun, the possibilities. "I will." She looks him in the eye. "I will."

&O&O&

Sadness is a part of life, she says to herself. It is something we all must go through, she thinks. But, she wonders, is her life supposed to be full of such sadness as to block everything else out? The grey is so all consuming that she never before saw the purples and the crimsons. There are new days now, there is a quiet beauty about them. She has reasons now. She has a family now.

She has him now.

Maybe he gives her hope. Maybe he gives her a reason to get up every morning. Maybe he convinces her that there can be dawn.

A beautiful burst of light in a solid grey world.

&O&O&

She cannot move away, he cannot go. They are together now, bonded. Some kind of delicate lime holding them together like English stones. This balance, this fragile world, a permutation of low probability. It is her spider web. She is caught.

Somehow, they are caught together.

And, together is such a better word than apart.

&O&O&

A/N Please don't throw up from the horribleness, and leave a review.

Have a great day!

marzoog