Graphite Roses ✓

fourth

Some minutes of fevered scrawling later, Finneas finally looked up. There was a missing piece of information he suddenly felt in desperate need of. 

She was still in the same position; head against the glass, hair covering her face.

"What's your name, sketchbook girl?" His question shattered the crystalline silence.

A few quiet seconds sailed past. The thought that she wasn't going to reply had just crossed his mind when her mild voice finally broke through: 

"Skye." 

A name couldn't hurt, she thought, not turning his way. It was fair, after all.

"But what's your full name?"

Only then did she turn to meet his gaze. "My full name? What for?"

There appeared that curve on his lips again. "Ahh, but Skye— it's all about the little details. They make such a difference."

"Do they?"

"Oh yes. Not to every person— though it's a shame. But to a collector of stories. . ." he trailed off a while. . ." they're crucial."

Skye considered this, staring far down into his cryptic eyes. She perceived them in a new way now, having discovered the abysmal depth that their light hue concealed. They seemed deeper than the forest surrounding this railway.

"I still don't know who you are."

He sank his teeth into his pen, mercilessly. "Neither do I," he mumbled through the metal. "It's what I'm on this journey for. To discover it."

Skye didn't understand what it was about his words that made them so spellbinding. She felt completely drawn in— by a force way out of her control.

The train was slowing down to another of its many stops, following its monotonous consistency.

"Skylar Neve Froseth. My full name's Skylar Neve Froseth." She didn't remember ever being asked for it before, nor saying it aloud. The syllables tasted somewhat odd to her. 

The pen was instantly jerked back down, to reunite with the paper.

Her eyebrows furrowed. "What are you doing? Writing it down?"

"Yeah. It's a delightful name." 

"You really think?"

"I do." There was certain insecurity hidden behind her words, he could not have been mistaken. He sensed an uneasy twitch in his gut. A wrong feeling. He hated the thought of someone losing their confidence, of all things. 

This was wrong. People. . . they could just walk into your life and rob your confidence and leave. And it would be gone. Forever. 

But this girl— this girl had something incredibly powerful glowing inside her. Like a star that's buried deep inside the grounds of her heart. 

She deserved her confidence. She needed it back.

He looked up, giving her one of his dazzling looks — full of light and energy. But not even its strength was enough to lift her lips up to a smile. 

He noticed this as yet another sign of her coldness, and wondered what strings they were that her heart must be so knotted with.

"You're not from around here, are you," he half-asked, half-stated.

She tensed at first, but soon enough, her face yielded into a knowing, submissive look. "You can tell, huh? Too notable."

"Your accent." He had noticed the first time she uttered a phrase, but not because of it being too notable. "But no, it's not too notable. Not to someone who doesn't look for the details. Not to the normal people," he scoffed, as if the condition were a disease he were terrified of.