Evanescent

5

"Who are you?" The question slipped out without a thought, something she'd been wondering since the moment she'd met his vision on the train. Audelia knew it was abrupt, the tension in the air thickening as it had many times before, yet she knew she couldn't trust him like she wanted to until he answered. She needed to know why she was feeling the most unusual sense of comfort when he stood in front of her, why she wanted him to take her away from to trials of her life. She needed to know why he made her heart thump against the cage that held her chained.

"Well I already told you, my name is Orion."

"I don't mean what's your name, I mean who are you," She clarified her previous nonsense, his eyes clouded with severe confusion,"Why are you talking to me? Why do you make me feel like this?"

Audelia watched his face fall, the lightness painted by shadows as he pondered the depth of her question. She stared as the face she memorized seemed to morph into someone she could hardly recognized. She was brought back to moments before when her previous question had put him in a similar state of numbness, the crease of his forehead and frown of his lips the same. Audelia wondered whether she was seeing the person behind the mask when he'd shut down in moments like these, fighting with himself over something she couldn't figure out.

As the silence she'd come to respect once again plagued her like a never ending hex she noticed the absence of white coats around them. No person stood leisurely upon the slabs of concrete, the lack of stares as relieving as it was alarming. Audelia was aware that she was expected at her cubicle moments ago, Orion's presence enough to distract her from the burdens of life. She could picture her empty desk, the greyness of the thin halls that always drove her insane, being watched by curious eyes as they wondered where she could possibly be. No one was ever late to work, all desks were filled, all heads empty. She'd thought of letting herself free of the numbing boredom that came with her job many times before, the rush of excitement that would come with it almost enough to face that fact that it was a sin. Audelia didn't know what could happen if she were ever to simply stay in bed, ignoring the constant pleas from her alarm clock to uphold her cities expectations. Nobody mentioned anything as scandalous as that during the long winding hours of daylight, the fear enough for them to stay quiet. Fear had followed in her wake from the moment she'd first started her turbulent childhood in the facility. She'd been taught right from wrong, good from bad, yet she'd never been able to decipher truth from deception. She truly had no clue what to believe in, whether it should be her government that had stolen so much from her, or the mystery of a man that stood in front of her. She was lost.