Saturday 23 July 2016

Are my ears on straight?

"You were so clever, Ambrant," she said sorrowfully.
"I still am!" sobbed Ambrant, clutching his waistcoat at the front as if it didn't have any buttons and he was forced to keep it closed by hand.
The ethereal woman with too much hair lit a purple crystal. Ambrant coughed. She raised it to her lips as if to smoke it and crossed one leg over the other at the knee.
"No," she said, blowing out electric green smoke. "You were."
"There's time! Still! I have my- my..." Ambrant flailed wildly, "...my singing!"
She said, "I'd rather hoped you'd come out of this. This..."
"This is nothi-"
"This phase," she raised her eyebrows, and he had to admit, they were divine. "This phase is like the end of things. It is like cold porridge."
Ambrant gasped. "The worst!"
"But," she smiled, "it is also a beginning."
Ambrant stopped. He clutched tighter. Her smile was not a symbol of hope as most were. It did not bring out any rays of warm sunshine or cause the heart to flutter.
"A beginning?" he sniffed, wide-eyed.
"Something to chew on. It requires courage and you have that fine tunic, waiting to be turned."
"My tunic!" Ambrant stifled another sob and clutched so hard he thought his fingernails would tear through the fabric and his fingers would surely cramp.
She blew out another puff of green smoke, to the side, not his face -she was not a rude woman- and watched him quiver. "What one can do with such needlework," she said calmly, almost too calm, as if she was in a trance.
"No, I refuse! It cannot ever be-" He took a step back.
"You refuse."
"Indeed!" Ambrant looked up at at her smooth, porcelain skin, shiny grey eyes and pink lips set under a mass of fluffy white hair. He took a shaky breath and said: "I made this myself. It took me hours! No, it took me days! Days of my time. Accumulated hours that turned into days, yes, that's how long! You are not to have it!"
She blinked. Shook her head slightly from side to side. Said: "I believe I can." And waved her hand that still held the crystal, casually elegant as if it were an afterthought and not some magical intent.
"No!"
The crystal flew out of her grasp. Ambrant watched it scream towards him while the woman turned away to look down her sitting stump. With sickening finality, it seared right through his chest, stabbing it's entrance at the front and shooting out behind with Ambrants heart as it's intended collection.
Ambrant fell, lifeless, and she smiled. "Such fine stitching."

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