Ruby String
—you are the love of my life.

"[They say] an invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet,

regardless of time, place, or circumstance.

The thread may tangle or stretch,

but it will never break."

.

Meg was born on a cloudy Valentine's day. It was perhaps the only indication in her life that she was made for something remarkable, considering that the rest of her days were as normal as could be.

She smiled like all the girls her age, played in the shade of the sagging tree in her front yard in the summer, and breathed in the sunshine. She pressed her face against the clear plastic of the washing machine and watched, transfixed, as the wet clothes swirled around and around.

She screamed when she threw tantrums, cried when she was angry, and hammered her tiny fists against her father's leg in her bouts of rage. She wailed when her brother pulled on her pigtails, stumbled around in her mother's black work pumps to play pretend, and wept when her father went off to war.

And wept when he never came back.

For all of the ruckus that was her life, it was still decidedly ordinary. There were a million and one girls without fathers, a billion who played in the sunshine, and still more who cried and smiled in the same day.

But Meg was born on a cloudy Valentine's day. And for that, she was made for magic.

.

The first time Meg saw the ocean, the water was murky and blue-gray and filled to the brim with contaminants, but there was something about the sheer vastness that made her feel endless. Something in the way the tide kept coming back time after time that made her fall in love.

Holding tight to her mother's hand, she stumbled her way through the beach, giggling at the clouds she left behind her from the sand she'd kicked up.

She cackled loudly, eyes shifting to her mother, who was watching her carefully, something indistinguishable and quietly affectionate painted on her face. And by some unspoken agreement, Meg loosened her fingers from her mom's, and with a victory screech, sprinted with all her might the rest of the distance into the ocean.

The water splashed around her, crisp and cold and so incredibly alive. Knee deep in ocean water, she stared out, silent for once, hands clasped behind her back. The sand slid around her toes, and if she wiggled them enough, she could feel herself sinking further.

The water moved her, slowly but surely, and Meg was entranced by the way she could feel herself shifting without any help on her part. The earth moved, and she moved with it.

And it was then that she felt something being slipped into her hand. She looked up abruptly, turning only in time to catch the head of a boy dive underneath the surface, far beyond her reach.

Slowly, she unfurled her own fingers to find a glistening conch shell, wet and sandy. She looked up again, but the boy was long gone.

Pressing the shell against her ear, she exhaled and listened.

.

Meg stood with her hands on her nonexistent hips in the middle of the store. Honestly, she was much too old for this to happen to her, but the apprehension crept up on her anyways.

She'd gotten lost.

The clothing racks were too tall for her to see beyond them and suddenly the women's department had become a maze that she couldn't break free of. The pantyhose in packages was daunting and the checkout counter was much too close for comfort.

And her mother's chignon was nowhere in sight.

For goodness sake's, she was ten years old. This kind of thing should not be happening anymore. And yet, somehow, it was. Scampering underneath the dresses, she somehow wound up in the men's section without warning, having bypassed the undergarments a few minutes prior.

The creeping fears of never being found slid like cold fingers up her neck, and without warning, her eyes began to spring tears. She wanted her mom.

"Hi," a voice came from behind her and she spun around, highly reactive and on edge.

The tears chose then to brim over and her face tipped upwards, eyes puffy and hands coming out in front of her in defense. "…h-hi," she managed, throat tight. Her vision was blurred, and the stress was making everything lock in place.

"…you're lost?" It was a question, but it clearly didn't need an answer. And this slightly older boy took her hand without warning, and the stiffness in her arm drained.

The hot tears spilled over quick and fast and her other arm jerked up, wiping them away quickly. "Immature," she muttered to herself, taking in breaths fast.

In, out.

In, out.

She didn't know where he'd gone, but she'd ended up at a clerk's desk and then in her mother's awaiting arms and all was forgotten. Her face was buried in her mom's perfumed neck, and lipstick kisses peppered her skin.

She could still feel his hand in hers, though, as she clutched at her mother's blouse. And somehow it was familiar.

.

A decidedly inhuman noise escaped her mouth when she clipped his arm with her elbow in line for the Ferris wheel at the yearly carnival. Shock left her mouth in an instant, and he stumbled backward a step, clutching his arm, rubbing the impact spot.

"I'm so sorry!" she exhaled in a rush, hands up in the universal gesture of innocence. "Are you okay?" the words left her mouth automatically, and she was too focused on the hand that sparked something familiar in her.

"I…yeah," the man-boy replied back, staring at her face in almost disbelief. The blood rushed in his ears, and it was like the ocean was rocking his heart.

She was so familiar.

"Can I get you anything? I didn't mean—"

"It's okay," he said automatically, even though he was entirely sure that a bruise would form there by morning, purple and angry.

Her hands flitted over his arm pushing his fingers out of the way softly, patting awkwardly at a loss of what to do. "I'm…" she was so distressed, and her friends behind her were grinning, whispering amongst themselves. "I really apologize."

"It's fine," he replied easily, still intent on the nudging in his mind. The late night twinkly lights from the booths and the wheel shone on her face.

"I…okay. Have a lovely night, then," she finished awkwardly.

"You, too." She turned away, scurrying back to her friends circle. She clasped her hands behind her back, and he opened his mouth, calling out "What's your name?" belatedly, over the dull roar of conversation everywhere.

But she didn't hear him. She chattered onward, and her fingers wrung themselves together behind her.

He stood for a moment, just watching.

And turned and walked away.

.

The city was windy on her birthday. It always was, but as she neared the train that would take her to the heart of downtown, the draft and open spaces made for particularly strong gusts. With her padded resume folder in hand and her brother's blessing on her back, she stepped onto the train platform, waiting for the 9:35 train to 14th Street.

It was without warning that a piece of paper sailed into her face, and her eyes squeezed shut reflexively. Too concerned for the papers in her own hands, she made no move to pry it away. Losing her credentials was not part of the plan.

So she waited, presumably until the sheet would fall down and away without concern.

But that moment was preemptively taken away from her. As was the sheet of paper, as fingers that weren't hers pried it away with concern, and her eyes opened one at a time, hesitant as ever.

Her eyes glanced up at the paper first, where her lips were printed on the borders of a professional looking table. Mildly amused at the situation, she laughed, and glanced up at the face attached to the hands, finally.

The train was quickly approaching behind the man, and she gave him a hesitant smile. There was something about the curve of his jaw that shouldn't place, and her eyes lingered on the way he smiled. He was laughing now, and there was this rush of something indiscernible, for a reason she couldn't place, she could feel the smooth, hard shell of the conch pressed against her ear, and the sound of the ocean in her veins.

But the train was here, and somehow, she gained the feet to walk away. She boarded quickly, and sat down heavily, sinking into the chair.

Her heart beat too fast, and she didn't know why.

The train left the station, and she glanced back only once.

.

It was Valentine's Day, and the sun had peeked out from behind the clouds a little past noon. Meg's life had been largely ordinary, but there was something more that day when the paper returned to her in folded-plane form, and something compelled her to follow after it.

It was in the air, and she didn't know what it was, but as the plane skittered around her in a frenzy, she knew what she had to do.

With her caution to the wind, she stumbled along the city, following after the feeling of magic.

Past the buildings and the firm she'd just interviewed at, around the news stand, and all the way to the train station she began at until she was safely seated in the same place as hours prior. The plane rested in her hands, then, and she examined it more closely, so bewildered as the train smoothly slid along, headed back to the station she came from.

A fifteen minute ride, and the train came to a sliding stop into the platform she began from.

The sunlight dappled on her skin through the window, and the boy from the fair long ago came to mind. Her heart thudded in her chest, and something foreign made her move forward, one foot in front of the other until she was on the edge of the platform.

Staring intently at the plane in her hands, she tried to get it to fly of its own accord, when in a rush hundreds of paper planes came into her vision. She blinked, and her lips pulled up into a grin, eyes wet for a reason she couldn't understand.

She looked up, and he was there.

As he'd always been.

She took a step forward, pushing her hair behind her ears anxiously, and smiled at the decidedly windblown and disgruntled man.

It was Valentine's day.

.

.

.

notes: based on the disney/pixar short that played at the beginning of wreck-it ralph. paperman, the small love story-the six minutes of beauty that I'm obsessed with more than should be healthy.

yes, they have names. yes, hers is meg, and his is george. go read the wikipedia page if you need proof.

happy love day. for everyone, really, but especially for you. review?