Of Silence | completed

THE ACTRESS

 PARIS, FRANCE. 24 DECEMBER, 1942

Christmas Eve in Paris was, to Lena, like a dream.

It seemed almost magical to her. Even though she had grown up here, there was still something new every year, something lurking under Christmas trees and in the folds of clasped hands, that she thought she needed to find.

She stood on the Pont de la Concorde. This year she was alone, and it was a different feeling - free yet confining - and she reveled in it. She felt like a dancer, her toes light and pointed, wearing the daintiest of skirts and floating just high enough above the ground to fly and walk at the same time. Something in her core was buoying her up, holding her spine stick-straight and her feet inches off the ground.

Below her ran the river Seine. It was a monstrous and gentle thing, fluid and unencumbered, and on its surface rippled the reflections of a thousand points of candlelight. Boats passed below the bridge and out of her field of vision.

The sound of laughter trickled around her. Lena smiled; normally she would join in and spend Christmas with friends and family. But this year she wanted to be alone. Something inside her wanted the soundlessness of being an observer, of being present but not quite.

It was nearly midnight. 11:38, to be exact. Yet the city was completely alive. Lena could feel something thrumming in the air, vibrating on some other level - something she had never felt before. It was like an omen, she thought. Something good would happen.

She hadn't brought a coat. It was too cold for a coat, she'd decided. She needed to feel the chill inside her bones and the brush of snowflakes on her bare shoulders. All she had was a scarf - the brown, fading one her grand-mère had knitted when Lena was nine - and though it was cold she stopped herself from shivering. There were other kinds of warmth in the air that she would draw in instead.

She turned her back on the Seine to watch the people walk by. Lena felt invisible, but in a good way, the kind of invisible that made everything else more real. In the distance was the ringing of bells and choirs, the same sounds she heard every year, now familiar yet infinitesimally different.

Lena was rarely awake at this hour on other days. But she loved the night; loved walking through its heaviness and its richness and its scent. Everything seemed fuller and more alive in the crescent light of the moon.

She heard a slight shuffling of footsteps to her right and jerked her head up quickly to see who it was. Next to her stood a boy, dressed all in gray and with skin as pale as the snow that was drifting past her face. He looked weary and much older than he should, with delicate, handsome features and high cheekbones that cast the rest of his face into shadow.

'Hello,' he said, quietly.

'Hello,' said Lena.

He was silent then, and so was she. Lena turned back to look over the Seine, and she could feel him following her gaze. The lapse in conversation became awkward and thick, and Lena opened her mouth to say something to douse it when he turned back around to face her.

'I'm Charles,' he said. 'I'm sorry, I thought I'd come introduce myself...'

Lena smiled. 'It's alright,' she said, gently. 'Magdalena. But please, call me Lena.' She leaned her back against the railing and looked above at the sky, at the endless encompassing vastness of it - the stars seemed to whisper to her, and even though their words felt like they were for her ears only Charles must have felt something too. He regarded the heavens with the same kind of ravenous intensity.

'It's a very lovely night, don't you think?' Charles's voice was not deep but neither was it shallow; Lena thought it held the same warmly comforting timbre of a cello.