AN: Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted anything on here! I guess it's been a while since I've really written anything... Anyways, enjoy the 2nd shortest story I've ever written, standing just under my Creative Writing teacher's limit of 500 words!
The doors of the train rumble shut behind me, and I hear the high-pitched wail of metal-on-metal as it takes off. There aren’t many people riding this early in the morning. I light on one of the many empty seats, the faux leather cold and cracked beneath me.
At the next stop, a woman scrambles through the doors. She sits in the seat next to mine, her breath hard and heavy. She exhales slowly through pursed lips. The light streams in broken shafts through the scratched windows, turning her tufty blonde hair a gleaming white. Her eyes are swirls of blue and muted grey. Tears are brimming in them, threatening to flood her heated cheeks.
I wonder what the matter is. I wonder where she’s going. I wonder what to call the colour of her eyes. But I keep completely still.
We stop again and a man steps through the sliding doors. His skin is fine and dark, his features kind. He sits across from the woman and leans back, hands folded in his lap, feet still, eyes watching. Beneath his scrub of a beard is a peaceful smile.
The woman is fumbling through her purse, pulling out an old-fashioned looking lipstick. She stares at it for a moment and then the tears finally begin to fall. She can’t stop. Her fingers tremble and the lipstick falls to the floor. I wish I could pick it up for her, comfort her—but the man leans forward and takes the lipstick delicately between his fingers, holding it out to the woman without breaking his bright smile.
She takes it and puts it back in her purse. “Thank you,” she says.
“Such a little thing, to make you cry like that,” the man says.
“It was my…” she hesitates, bites her lip, closes her eyes. “Sorry. I don’t want to talk about it.”
The man nods and reclines. They don’t speak again. I wish I could pry on the man’s behalf, but I know I can’t. Another tear slips form the corner of the woman’s closed eye. A small, sick part of me wants to brush it away.
The man’s watching eyes stop on me, and he leans forward again to tap the woman on the knee. Her eyes open.
“What?”
He points to me. She looks. She seems unimpressed.
“A moth?” she asks.
The man laughs. “Wait a moment”, he says, and presses a finger into the blue material before me. If I could, I would roll my eyes as I crawl onto his finger. He pulls me slowly towards his lips and whispers “Open up.”
Yes! Of course!
I spread my wings and the woman gasps. I know why—beneath the greyscale of my outer wings lays a brilliant display of silver, blue and gold. No doubt it looks especially wondrous in the gleam of the broken morning light. My heart swells with pride. The woman cracks the smallest and purest of smiles.
“Wow,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”
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