dead flowers are pretty in picture.

2. white wash

// I don't want to continue the story, I guess this will become a collection of short stories? The characters are the same, but the plot changes? Also, someone taught me to use a question mark after every sentence so I can't stop?//

Repugnance.

Illyria Soleil felt intense disgust towards River Thomas.

Illyria Soleil hated how ruined she was and how she made River Thomas piece by piece.

River Thomas was nothing like his creator. He was the shadow of all the scars she ever wore. The scars hidden in the crooks and crevices of her mind, scars deeper than what she felt for River.

She traded River's memory with one terrible memory of her own. When she was slapped by her father for having her heart shine brighter for a girl, she made River. A boy, the frivolous and frolic menace, but a heartthrob. He makes her feel, feel what the girl of her dreams did. She was River as well, ever-flowing, never perishing.

He made her feel the tingles down her spine when she peels the dried paint off her palette. His touch danced like the feathers of a dandelion floating in the vanilla wind. He wasn't unwanted, unlike the weed, unlike Illyria. He was loved, loved so much that only Illyria knew his skin colour. He would otherwise turn the pink at even the slightest gesture of affection. He was raspberries on a spring morning.

Illyria was a poet. Her words were too pretty, she was too shy to tell. River was embodied flamboyance. The pretty words drew pretty girls to his honey-coated voice with specks of rock salt here and there. Illyria wrote about a memory or a person. River wrote about his grandiose. Illyria was the autumn night that broke and healed. River was the spring day that only laughed like a gurgling waterfall.

Illyria had a diary. River had polaroids. She had pressed flyers and flowers and chocolate wrappers that were to exotic to throw away. Illyria didn't throw things away, she knew how it felt to be the wrapper, beautiful on the outside, yet holding no meaning on the inside. River didn't care. When his golden hair bounced against the sunlight, the sun would set across the horizon. Two stars can't be together outside, River made sure whose glory would make it outside.

Illyria played old French songs. River had songs written on him. He flowed, he is River, and he quenched the thirst you didn't even know existed. Illyria just floated, she skimmed like the foam that thickened at night under the light of the moon. Illyria was summer, no doubt about that. She wasn't the bright summer though. Summer had nights, short ones. She thrived on it. She is the broken glass left after the unkempt promises are shattered. The pomegranates and thunderstorms that accompany occasional rain. She cuts clothes from her melancholy and wears feigned detachment up her sleeves, she was dark and sulky summer.

River, on the other hand, was the summer we all knew about. The summer we anticipated. The sunlight hugging you, burning the places that it had never touched before. The overripe peaches and their juices rolling down your elbow. The mangoes leaving the sun-kissed taint on your lips. The freshly cut grass, the morning dew that you collect to brew the cup of tea. The stale bread being fed to cheerful pigs in the field. The barefoot trips to the beach. The freckles that shine brighter than the stars above.

Illyria had ideas. A lot of them. They were scribbles on the edge of a page. They were ideas she no longer could relate. They were the anger dangling down the jeans she cut off from the ankles. They were too bright to shine on their own, she crumpled the paper to make them constellations. River had stories. Stories Illyria could never weave. Stories she never conceived. Stories that would make you feel nostalgic about things that'll happen in future. Stories whose entire beauty cannot be captured in a recording. Stories that started with a conversation one late at night then ended up on his wrist as his signature perfume. Stories that belonged to Illyria but only River could make them relate to all.

Illyria was the empty merry-go-round. The ones that creak in at midnight. This is when you think that a ghost moved it. Illyria is the manifestation of your thoughts, she overthinks. She overthinks that she's not enough, that she isn't good at anything, that her touch leaves burns and bruises, that she deserves the pain, that her love is invalid, that her writings aren't soul-stirring, that her mind has to keep secrets to make a dagger out of them and kill her, that her demons love her more than her father. She trusts easily and she trusts no one. She trusts you thinking you're the one, but she won't trust the one because she thinks they aren't.

River is everything Illyria isn't. He is smart, he is brave, he is charming, he loves women (well, we have that in common), he is irresistible. He is a warm hugger. He speaks in glitter and gold. He is golden.

And Illyria hates him.

She hates him because he is so easy to create. She created him with soft music in the background and musing about the meaning of life. She created him when she came back home, drenched in rain and shoes full of sand, and spilt the ink on paper. She created him in between the notes she passed in her classes and made sure the teacher didn't see. She made him with the replies of the love letters that told her why she isn't it. It was way too easy to flesh a perfect human being with ink in his veins and yellow stale parchment for skin, why couldn't God create her like that with meat and bones?

Why did she feel hollow?

Why do you need to encrust her bones with gems that don't even belong to her to make her pretty?

She hates River Thomas because he is what she isn't.

He is the piles of books sitting in the corner of the room, tumbling down. He is the saltwater that the sea throws at you but he wouldn't hurt your wounds. He was the foam on the tea gone cold at his touch. He was the vinyl record that smelled the '80s. He was everyone's love at first sight.

He was gold and she was blood.

In the end, he was the whitewashed version of bruises that Illyria hid behind the linen.

In the end, he was the line on the paper, and she was crooked.

~~~
Word count: 1075

Inspired by jaszthewayyoulikeit's prompt and a heck load of Tumblr posts.

Thank you for reading this. Here's a cookie🍪