Intent

Chapter Four: The Date

I felt nervous being around her again.

It's like every time I think about her I recall that night. The blood, the herd, the look in her eyes. The look of...giving up. I didn't like seeing her that way. I never wanted to see her that way again.

I parallel parked, with difficulty, in front of a small antique shop. They were having a sale, and a big sign read 'GOING OUT OF BUSINESS'. "Shame" I jerked at the sudden sound of her voice right next to me. She looked at me and giggled. "Did I scare you?" She smiled. I smiled back "Not in the slightest." She looked back to the front of the store and stepped onto the curb. "Sure," she said, "and pigs fly." I smiled at her and took her hand in mine, walking into the shop with her close behind. "Everything is so old..it's like it all tells a story." she said as she wiped dust off a victorian globe. "That's because it does." I winked at her and she giggled again.

We strolled around the shop for a while before finding a small corner in the very back, hidden from the rest of the building. It had a small collection of old books, mostly poetry, and one large chair. "Dibs!" she said, before stealing the lone chair. I frowned as if she had hurt me. "Oh woes me.." I smiled and sat in front of her as I picked up a dusty book from the side table and flipped to a random page. "Well? What does it say?" she eagerly awaited my response. I cleared my throat and scanned the page "The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone- In the ranks of death you will find him." I looked up to her and smiled sadly "He died in the end. How very Shakespearean." She bent down and took the book from my hands, flipping through some of the pages. "Ha ha, you made a funny." I smiled and grabbed another one of the books. It was fiction, written by some author I had never heard about. "Odd," I said "What is this modern book doing here with all the 'oldies but goldies'?" She shrugged and sat the poetry book down, swinging her legs back and forth. "Thats funny" I said. "You're so short you can do that." I grabbed her ankles and knocked her shoes together gently. She pushed herself out of the chair and onto the floor in front of me. "No, it's just a rather large chair." I laughed at her and stood up. "Looks like a perfectly normal sized chair to me." She stood up and started walking to another section of the store. "Yeah yeah, whatever, lets keep looking."