Before they broke

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝟏: 𝖒𝖊𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖗𝖆𝖎𝖓

It was on a crisp October evening when she saw him for the first time. Despite that, it was not the first time they met. They had known each other for years, yet they knew nothing about one another. Who would have thought that a simple, meaningless thunderstorm would get their paths crossed?

She did not like to walk the streets alone. Especially not in the dark. She was grateful for her friends who had accompanied her that evening. But disappointed they left her afterward. And that is how she ended up alone on the streets, making her way home. The place that young women like herself should avoid.

Despite the loneliness, she liked to be alone every now and then. Being alone gave her tranquility and time to think. Being alone meant that she could be herself and recover from the time she spent with others.

Yet being alone wasn't always an option. That happened when you possessed the art of beauty. You had to spend your time with others. It was an obligation.

Many may have seen her beauty as a gift, but to her it was nothing but a curse. A curse that had been chasing her for years. Being beautiful had its advantages, she was aware of that. Yet a person's beauty seemed to determine who that person was. It determined where you stood in society. It determined who you should be, even if that was not who you wanted to be.

A thick raindrop fell from the cloud-covered sky above her and landed directly on her forehead. She looked up, her diamond blue eyes facing the clouds. That one drop was soon followed by a thousand other drops. It didn't take long for her to get soaked. Her hair glued to her face, her coat soaked and no longer able to keep her warm.

After gripping her bag tightly and pressing it against her chest, she began to run to look for shelter.

Black umbrellas unfolded around her, but she was forced to face the rain without any helping tools.

As she ran, her eye fell onto a house further up the street. An abandoned building, she knew. The boys in her class had once dared each other to enter the building. Stupid boldness, if you asked her. Everyone knew it was forbidden to enter the building. Rules were rules. They existed for a reason. Yet the boys saw it slightly different. 'Rules are there to be broken', was their opinion.

Without giving it another thought, she ran up to the building and entered forbidden territory. Outside, the night the sky screamed, accompanied with the bright lightning. The storm had arrived. It hung right over her head.

She started to climb the stairs to watch the storm from a higher point in the building.

~~

A young man was sitting in the window frame of He was sitting in the window frame of Thornshire, the abandoned building well known among the youth in the city. From his position, a large window at the front of the top floor of the house, he had a perfect view over a big part of the city. His favorite place to be. It was the place to go to if you wanted to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. The ideal place to hide from typical high school bullies. Where he could just sit, read a book, or write something. Especially that last thing was something he liked to do. The window meant a lot to him. That very particular window was 'his' spot.

Out of all evenings, that exact evening he had doubted whether he should pay a visit to the window. There was a party at one of his classmates' houses. Most people of his grade were going. The idea had occurred to him to take a chance and just go to the party. He would just mingled among the other attendees.

But it just didn't feel right to go. He knew that a party with people like his classmates was not his kind of place to be. In retrospect, he was glad that he had decided against his idea. If he hadn't, things could have turned out very differently that night.