meraki.

Mortal Trait

Anna didn't want to go to that damn party. 

As she looked down at her outfit laid out for her on the bed, arms crossed, brows all scrunched, eyes narrowed, wrinkled nose, hair tied up in a messy ponytail to keep her curls away from her face, she couldn't help but curse herself from being so damn pliable to Dom's pleas and big cow eyes. 

She took a deep breath, thinking of various and fairly convincing stories that would've explained why she had been forced to remain home all of a sudden. She was almost done with a really intricate one, that involved dogs and flowers and bees, that was so absurd that everyone would've believed it, when her phone lit up on the nightstand, catching her attention. 

"Can't wait to see you tonight, babes! Lil reminder that it's at 8pm at the Ancient Theatre, alright?" 

Feeling incredibly guilty for even thinking about ditching on Dom when he had been so nice to make sure that she would've had a ticket (according to him, those were almost unobtainable). Actually, he had been so nice to even ask her in the first place, once she had saw the ticket fall out of his bag during one of their late afternoon/early evening photography strolls. 

Lately, everything Dom's photography classes had revolved around were different projects centered over a specific theme. Usually, Dom didn't like working on photoshoot projects with people looming around him, but as he had confessed to Anna, her presence was rather a calming and peaceful one, and she seemed to know exactly how to behave around a photographer while they were working and weren't openly asking for your help. She had said she had had years of experience regarding the matter, and before she could correct herself in someways, Dom had - thankfully - laughed it off as a funny joke. Bless his heart. 

Some days Dom had also tried to take pictures of her, but she had always refused to do so. She had never been a big fan of letting others take portraits or pictures of her, nor being the subject of interest for an artist or a photographer or whomever else. She figured it would've been better for herself and everyone else around her if no pictures of her would've been available or laying somewhere around the world just for someone to find them and potentially ruin one of her manifactured stories. Especially when it was time to make another one, and start over somewhere else. 

For as much as she knew, the only existing portrait of her had disappeared along an entire village during an earthquake. And she was okay with that. 

Dom had always been respectful of her decisions, even though he always swore that she would've been the only one seeing those pictures. Well, apart from him, of course. 

Maybe - just maybe - one day she would've let him take a picture of her, just because he seemed like he was so adamant to do so. Maybe. 

Her eyes naturally fell on the little box placed on top of her desk, the one she had received the previous day from Dom, with the small bracelet and the orange filled chocolate. She had ate the chocolate while toying with the bracelet's pendant, the small silver arrow. She had debated over throwing the box away, but then she had thought that it could've become a precious container for the little mementos of that life she was experiencing. So she had started stuffing it with the pictures she had taken at Harry's birthday party. 

Slowly, she took a few steps until she was hovering over the small box with the polaroid of the Artemis' statue in the park that Dom had surgically glued on top, her fingers ghosting over the blurry edges of the marble, before snapping out of it and taking the lid off to examine the pictures inside - something she had done for the past two weeks. 

Two pictures: one with both Dom and Harry; one with Harry alone. 

Seeing his face still made different emotions erupt in the pit of her stomach. For the first few days, those emotions had all been characterised by nasty adjectives, the types that would usually make someone see red. But as the days went on, the anger had gradually subsided. In its place, a deep sadness had settled into her heart, like a blanket of snow freezing all the strings she had spent so many months trying to keep warm and protected and safe from the outer world. The sadness had been the feeling that had lasted longer, and it always came back with a new and fresh snow blanket every time she saw him or heard him talk, tinting everything in a cold shade of blue. That had been the main reason she had done her best to keep her distance from him, and only talk to him when it was strictly necessary - meaning only during their lessons. She had thought about discontinuing their classes together, but she had decided against it, because she took them pretty seriously, and she would've never let him in the hands of someone else. They were far too deep for her to just decide to walk away from him and interrupt their lessons.