A Whole New World

Chapter Two - The Fountain Pen

"The sky his soul, the land his heart

The cold wind blows, as his life falls apart

Hope the frozen lake, hopeless as the looming cloud

Crashed and battered like the landscape, once tall and proud"

She stared as the words appeared in neat, cursive writing on the lined pages. She thought his writing was beautiful. It was like his soul had taken control of his hands, and when he moved the fountain pen, his story was written. It was beautiful to see him let go, to surrender to the emotions that welled up inside him after too long. It was beautiful, and it was ugly too.

"In a land where there's no night nor day

A land where those with grief and misery lay"

Was this what his soul looked like? Was it frozen and lifeless? He didn't seem frozen and lifeless to her. He didn't seem crashed, or battered, or filled with grief, or misery, or any of the words that his pen wrote. His life wasn't falling apart.

"They wish to see the night time stars, the morning sun

To see children laugh and play and have their fun"

But then some things you just couldn't see. She had seen his heart, seen his mind, but no one couldn't see into someone's soul, just like how you couldn't see past a fog. Was there really grief and misery in his soul? She looked quickly to him when she realised that he was talking to her.

"What?" She asked him, her eyes probably blank with confusion. He laughed, and slid his paper under her fingers, tossing his pen into the air. She caught it.

"Finish it for me?" He said. She looked down at the words, reading them again, then again. Without looking up, she knew he was staring at her.

"Okay," she said, rubbing the tip of the pen lightly against her fingertips. It left behind a rich dark blue. There was nothing much that she could have added to his writing without spoiling it. It was perfect in its own dark way. What could she have written that could match up to his pain? To his emotion? What could she have written to him when he had just bore his soul to her?

"My own," she said aloud. Then she began to write...

"Then the sun came up and the ice broke through

And the ground turned green in the morning light"