Pinnacle (ONGOING)

Chapter Twelve

      "Sophie! Where did you go? I was so worried!" Shannon, inquired, thick brows drawn in concern as we met again amidst the throng.

     "I have just got to go home..." I replied trying to hide my panic.

     "But William! He has danced with that chucklehead Hunt woman 3 times!" Shannon said with exasperation.

     "So?" I replied bleakly, though it hurt to say.

     "So, if you're not willing to fight for what you want, then I will not help you at all." She countered, stubbornly, thinking this would get me out of this mood.

     I remembered Mr. Menzies' jabs and looked away to hide my tears, keeping my voice neutral.

     "I just feel a bit-- faint..." I replied. My stays were restricting my breathing and I put a hand to my chest. As if to kick me while I was down, I saw William dancing with Ms. Hunt, smiling at her as she laughed in turn at his horrible dancing.

     No one would even touch him if his past was known, let alone in his natural state, covered in hay and mud and smelling like a barn.

     I would. 

     But everything was changed, destroyed. I felt like I had been ripped apart and sewn back together.

     "Goodbye, Shannon." I managed, before making my way to the exit. Shannon was hot on my heels, but I was faster. Faster than anyone that ever was, a rage that shot through my skin and bone chugged my legs across the meadow and into the night sky like a whistling zephyr. 

     I had hiked my skirts up as I did so, and my ragged breathing was music to my ears as I ran.

     Free. I smiled.

     I was into the sky, a shadow among the stars, and by the time I'd made it to the clearing's center, I got down on my knees, so heady with adrenaline I could have laughed, but instead, I cried.

     It wasn't long before Shannon found me and held me as I sobbed.

--

     Few images and thoughts remain of those days where Shannon and I pieced ourselves back together following the ball. She was not to be deterred by my broken-ness, my ugly was as ugly as hers, and there would be nights that we stayed up and conversed until our throats grew raspy and tears had soaked our chemises. The dark of night shadowed our candle lit faces. Shannon's hurt had been deeper and older, but it had not healed properly with no one to talk to besides Mr. Heart. There was just no healing like taking a woman's issue to another woman, I found. And though Shannon had been through something no one should ever have to go through, her strength gave me strength. Hope for a future where I too would smile again. I found myself doing more and more in fact, after thinking I would never smile again. She healed me in a way I could have never done myself, and I saw that I healed at least a portion of her too. Much of her trauma was dealt by the women in her life that told her to grin and bear it, or that she was asking for it and was to deal with the consequences of her promiscuity. It made me sick to hear the things people had said to her over the years, but I was bound and determined to help her through. 

     The return to bliss was found in the colors of high spring bloomed and melted into greens and pinks and the daintiest of blues. The wind lifted the small curly hairs on my neck as I moved through the days with a lazy sort of progression to venture into the realm of completeness. My parents were worried, but I was not. I was going to heal on my own time, at my own pace, and in my own way. 

     Memories flicker through my brain of the time I spent healing. It was an exquisite sadness that a laugh was never too far behind. A time where I absorbed and cherished the little beauties of life; dresses of every color billowing around legs that strolled at ease, almost slow motion in my mind's eye. Memories of laughter and little bugs crawled with determination up stalks so so high compared to their diminutive stature. All of these things appeared as if painted with oil upon which each scene held the sweetest and faintest of lingering scents. A whiff of a Wisteria bush not too far away, the rose water upon my skin. I drunk the scents in with heavy breaths as if in attempt to store them in some sort of olfactory bank.