A/N: This may not have worked to the effect I was looking for, I know, but I had to write it. I had to have a go at capturing it. The idea, like the moment described, was kind of quick, and it would have eluded me for the rest of my existence if I didn't try. R&R?

It was fleeting.

Somewhere during the transition between seconds.

It was the shortest amount of time in the universe – too short to be named – but she knew it had been there and made difference enough to transform her secluded little world entirely.

Like a cocoon bursting open to release a new butterfly at long last; like the first plant of spring sprouting out from the cold, gravelly earth; like a child mysteriously becoming the adult he or she would be forevermore; like all the phenomenons in nature whose abrupt appearances into the timeline of ongoing history could not be explained, she realized that it had finally taken place for her, too:

It was something in the way his eyes flickered with animation from a joke he'd told to his best friend, the way his head of thick charcoal locks jerked casually back when he heard someone call his name. The way she'd glanced over at him unwillingly as she was passing by with her own best friend, who was impatiently running them over to another girl who was waiting at the end of the corridor.

It could have been anything, anything at all that may have triggered the transient flash that it took for everything to change, but it didn't particularly matter what exactly it was.

For, in that moment – in that single speck of time – she had finally fallen in love with him.

She hadn't asked for it, she hadn't planned for it, and she certainly wasn't thrilled with it, but the damage was done – she had gone through her metamorphosis, all in the one moment that promptly slipped through her searching fingers, and it was undeniable.

She had finally fallen in love with him, and she could no longer do anything about it.