illuminate (paused)

1/.

Sanora watched the boy with the sad eyes. He was lying, although not intentionally, necessarily. She didn't know if there had to be intent behind the lie for it to count, but he wasn't actually telling the truth, either. He was stuck in this middle ground of these contradicting oppositions, just like he was stuck in the middle ground with the girl he was talking to.

See, this stranger wasn't lying with words, but with actions. His demeanour illustrated someone who was happy, but his eyes did not. That's where is bluff fell short. Sanora had seen this often enough, putting it down to a simple case of an unreciprocated crush. Which, though harrowing in its own right, was a simple fix.

It was sort of her job to make people happy. Something she was quite literally born to do. It was easy for her, sometimes monotonous, even. She'd often pondered the irony of being made to form this beautiful thing, this love, and being absolutely shit at finding it for herself.

The boy was leaning slightly towards a beautiful girl with dark skin and a yellow crop top. She was smiling at him, sure, but he was practically beaming at her with the weight and warmth of a thousand suns. It was almost as if his smile was so hot it was shrouding that whole street corner from the relentless downpour.

It wasn't even as if he was ugly, or that the girl was out of his league or anything. In fact, there was something about him, Sanora thought, that made him attractive. It could have just been that he seemed a little familiar, or that she was notorious for going for blondes, or maybe it was even the small amount of alcohol in her system. But yes, she had thought, if it were her being shot with an arrow that bound her to him forever, she wouldn't be downhearted at all. Not that it was possible for anyone to be after they were shot, but her notion still stood.

However, she did not interfere with the people she helped, for she was just a servant created to make others happy, instead of herself.

Sanora knew what she had to do. She stood obscured from view, behind the wall that overlooked the corner, so that if anyone happened to stumble out of the party, she wouldn't get caught trying to shoot randomers with some pantomime bow and arrow. She was used to training her mind to focus on the target instead of the overwhelming senses that surrounded her, so the splatter of rain and the thumps of noise from inside made no difference.

Closing one eye to aim at the tall blonde, Sanora retracted her arm as far as the bow would allow. She moved left a little, then right and back to left again, until finally she was in a good position. Inhaling the polluted air of New York, she relaxed her arm and watched the arrow fly through the air like an autumn leaf, faltering before it hit the floor a few meters away from her with a sharp clank. Which, she was relieved to discover, was muted by the music. It was so loud that it pierced her ears and made is seem as if the ground were actually shaking, all at the same time. As well, of course, as hiding the sound of failure that came from the first arrow that she'd missed since she'd started training. Sanora squinted, looking from the arrow to the boy in disbelief. Something was clearly amiss here, a faulty arrow or something, because if she had seriously just failed at her single purpose for existence, well, there wasn't really much hope for her at all, was there?

As a teenager, she had been a chronic perfectionist, and so to soften the blow of inevitable downfall when it came in forms of D grades and heartbreak, her mother had always told her the same thing. You had to fail in order to know when you've succeeded. So, with this in mind, Sanora pulled another arrow from her backpack, eyeing it meticulously for any dents.

Sanora leaned as close as she could to the couple without revealing her spot, as if this would help. She had this newfound need to prove herself, that it was just a broken arrow rather than her incompetence. Or the possibility of her misreading the situation altogether. She tried to sigh this thought away, because if she doubted her judgement of every couple she'd helped there would be a lot less love in a place that needed it most. Over-cautiousness could take away her job; the only sense of purpose she had.