ᴀᴢᴀʟᴇᴀ ғᴀʏᴇ ɢʀɪғғɪɴ is Aubrey Griffin's younger sister. Expect she's not like her brothers, sister or dad who all play basketball. She totally different from that. She's quiet, gentle soul, keeps to herself, definitely antisocial, and 𝒹ℯ𝒶𝒻. Her b...
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Chapter One! real life.
Peace.
Peace, to her, was something she felt in the quiet vibrations of the world around her. In the stillness, the quietness, there was no noise pressing her thoughts, no sudden jolt of noise or sound to snap her away, back into reality. With time she had learned that the silence could be more than just absence; it could be a space that could hold everything she needed to feel whole. When she turned off her hearing aids, the world around her softened. It was as if time slowed down just for her.
She sensed and felt peace through the touch — the gentle brush of her hand turning the page of the book she read. The softness of the blanket draped over her. The sunlight filtering through the curtains, the steady rhythm of her own heartbeat. These were those moments where she didn't need sounds to know she was safe. The solitude of her apartment, the quietness of her mind, her eyes drifting from word to word of her book, fingers gently turning the page, the escape of reality and her own thoughts turned off.
For her, peace was knowing she could simply shut the world out by taking her hearing aids off and just closing her eyes and feeling that stillness around her. It was a stillness that was always louder than words. It was a warm, a calm that wrapped around her and whispered in ways words could never be enough to explain or describe. It was a language beyond hearing and speaking - no - this peace was her own. A quiet, a softness she wore like a second skin.
With each turn of pages, she found herself going farther and further into the world of words on a page. Into the dialogue of each character, each chapter. Into the reality that may never be hers but she relished in the moment as she imagined how each character looked, how each character felt at that very moment, how they spoke, how they hurt, how they loved. Maybe she'd never get that reality, get that sense of being seen in a way no one could ever understand and describe, but she could read it, imagine it from another person's words.
The light of her apartment flickering on and off is what brought her back into her reality. She already knew who it was because only one person had the key to her apartment. Her eyes reluctantly parted from her book and she looked over at Aubrey who was taking her shoes off and closing the door behind her. Azalea gave her an unamused look, wondering why Aubrey would ever make her stop her reading her beloved book.
"What are you doing here?" She signed to her older sister, gently marking her page with a bookmark and closing it, placing it on the coffee table in front of her.
"Is it so bad to visit my sister?" Aubrey signed back with a cheeky smile as she plopped down next to Azalea.
Azalea rolled her eyes playfully, leaning back into her couch and pulling the blanket closer to her. "I never said that, but you could've texted me."
