—Moving Right Along

"What’s pointless?" His calm voice, much closer than her proximity defense radar should have allowed, suddenly pierced her sulking concentration, and she felt unexplainable anger fly up into her chest.

"Excuse me?" She demanded harshly, her eyes foggy with startled embarassment. He was standing just a few paces from her, on the other side of one of the damp quarry pools, his right hand thrust lazily in his pocket, his left hooked on his belt loop. He had large curious eyes, she now noticed, which seemed to somehow contradict the sharply carved shape of his face. The thick overgrowth of his hair bent down slightly to mingle in his eyebrows, and she found that beyond the first glance she was unable to look directly at him. The shock had mixed with an acute attraction, and she quickly discovered that she could sooner permit herself to look straight into the sun than towards the boy. So instead, she dodged his face for the time being, locking her eyes on a completely random piece of grass in his general direction.

"Sorry," the boy began, the frightening calmness momentarily wiped from his disposition. "I just heard you say that…it’s pointless. That something was pointless, I mean." He shifted his weight onto his other foot, and the hand that had been in his pocket suddenly found nowhere to go, jumping out and hovering awkwardly around his waist. His face also began to flush slightly, which came as a surprise to her. That eerie fearlessness in him, that reminded her so much of her father, had been pushed aside by the simple tone of her voice, and the empowerment that this small gesture brought allowed her to put her attraction on hold, replacing it instead with a small touch of empathy and intrigue. With the anger fading from her voice and chest, she spoke again.

"I was talking to myself. Not you."