𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐓 ❅ (𝐠𝐱𝐠)

22| persuasion

"Prague?" The word softly leaped from Izara's mouth through an appeased air, to which in vain it fell onto the ears of an abstracted mind below.

From the warm breath that her voice transpired, the strange bitter chill of the air in return held a thin mist. Such a cold wasn't to be expected this time of year; one would think that mother nature would savour her harsh affections for when necessary. But on this day: as the time grew ever-closer to winter, the temperature she bestowed was within close reach of freezing.

Keeping herself perched with one hand stabled into the dirt bestrewn with dewed grass, she held a sheet of paper in the other between equally frigid and closely benumbed fingers, her eyes eagerly scanning over it with a lilt of intrigue.

"Which country is that in again?"

Stirring against the stark yew at which he reposed himself, Benjamin took a cigarette to his lips and enkindled the tip despite any blatant protests by the sharp breeze that attempted to hinder the ignition of the lighter's flame. Discarding a composition of smoke and his tangible breath out into the air that quickly swept it away, he awaited a response from the girl whose face was obscured behind the white sheet.

"Czech Republic, or Czechia I believe. Whichever one it is," the girl returned, and moved the sheet that was so close to kissing her complexion to brush away straying bothersome strands of dark hair that tickled the corner of her lips. Erupting into a small shiver from the cold caress that penetrated through her school clothing, she pulled her coat tighter around her body. "Are you gonna go?"

"Mhm, probably. I mean... we can't not go. I really don't want to miss if Mrs Crooks falls head first into another pond again. I don't think I stopped dying at the video for the whole month."

At that, Izara procured a snort just as conceited as the spoken woman herself. "Well I can't say that that wicked wench didn't deserve it. Poor thing tried so hard to get that video deleted off everyone's phones," she mocked, just as the light furrow of her brow and the wretched purse of her lips did so especially. Her expression particularly was spiteful, and through slight wreaths of smoke that lurched in eccentric movement, the boy's dark eyes visibly creased at the corners as his lips grew around the cigarette.

The deputy headteacher was certainly to countless, not a liked individual amongst her peers, nor both the students who forthright experienced her or either quite fortunately did not. She was no doubt a feared one, but never liked or admired to the recognition of any if not the governing body. She was the perfect antithesis of the current headmaster's warmth and kindness, hence the future souls that found themselves to an illusorily eternal wander of Hawthorne's fanciful corridors and sombre walls, were truly condemned.

"What about you babe? Are gonna come this year?" Benjamin's eyes fell to the girl's lap where a fascinating head of blonde sprawled its lengths across her thighs. With a pale hand resting upon her heart where she lay as though lifeless, the girl's head had become fallen to the side as her eyes gazed far; though never deep, as if to stare at nothing and everything all the while. It was an empty look. And her repose was as an oil painting of death's beauty — kindred to those painted of either innocence or importance who have never known such a sleep: the beautiful death of a fair maiden or a poet's tragedy.

"Lily..." He called her when she never gave indication to acknowledgment or response. It truly was a magnificently ghastly scene; one which would entail ones belief the girl was no longer living if it weren't for the scarcely visible breath that accumulated about her lip. And though she may rest much as a lovely fair maiden, and hold a beauty just as innocent, her tongue albeit contained a fire that spat far from like such.