• The wind spoke, whispering sweet nothings to my heart, but I heard his voice alone, gentle and harsh at once, and deep, like waves crashing against a cliff. He laughs, rolling, filling peals of laughter, thunder in the distance. He smiles, full, flush lips pulled back easily to reveal white teeth, perfectly mis-aligned. He reaches out and wraps his arms around the waist of the most ungrateful woman in the universe.

    She has straight, brown hair with blonde streaks running through it and a blue section of pitifully fried hair framing each side of her face. She places her too-large hands over his; they're the same size. Comparatively, although they are both fair in complexion, he is deathly pale. He leans down a bit and kisses the side of her head gently as he wraps his arms around her even tighter.

    She blinks slowly, nonchalantly, her large, brown, doe-eyes closing and opening like a butterfly closing and opening its wings. She readjusts a broken doll with visible flaws nestled in the crook of her arm, as he tenderly, as if for a child, brushes her hair out of her face.

    Her eyes glazed over as the spirits on the wind pushed his tantalizing scent towards me, a scent of devotion and passion held back. I couldn't place my finger on what he smelled like, exactly, but it comforted.

    She turned her head, longing consumed her gaze. A man with blood on his hands, scars on his face, guilt and a lack of remorse on his conscience, stood waiting. As she watched, she saw pain, his wounds, his blood, his tears. As I watched, I saw a knife pierce her heart, which he held in his hand.

    Still clutching the doll with one hand, she mover her other hand off the arms around her to reach innocently for the stranger as a small child might try to catch a star in her hand. Transfixed, maybe, or hypnotized, she reached for the beckoning stranger, not noticing as she took first one small step forward, then another, and another...

    Feeling the Ungrateful woman-child free herself from their one-sided embrace, my green-eyed Angel looked up toward the stranger. My Angel also saw the pierced heart. In vain, he reached out for his ungrateful love, even as she had outstretched her arms for the stranger, blindly and without hesitation. The Ungrateful, feeling his concerned eyes on her heart, looked back at the Angel. She smiled weakly, brushed her hand across his face. Still smiling, she handed her doll to the Angel and turned again to the stranger.

    Kittenlike, she searched the stranger's aura. Naively, she'd found nothing wrong. She slowly put a hand out toward his stubbly face. He quickly caught her hand in his own and put it to his face. He roughly pulled her whole body towards his, wrapped his arms tightly around her waist. She could not have escaped even if she wished to, even if she could have looked away from those secretive, black eyes. She did not notice as he slyly fitted her with a belled collar, befitting of this traitorous kitten.

    The Angel noticed.

    He saw the heart, still in the stranger's hand, slowly bleed out. The metallic scent of nourishing, comforting blood, a sign of life, filled the air as the kitten-woman weakened. The Angel, acknowledging defeat, pulled the broken doll towards him, a poor substitute for what had been; nonetheless, he held it close to his heart as a silvery tear meandered down his face and rested on his chin a moment before falling, falling, desperately falling, to land on the doll's face and rest at the corner of its eye.

    I could not embrace him.