Pacifier

🌹Van🥀

The church was quiet. I stood behind the podium, looking down at my family, looking down at her.

There were words on my tongue, flowing freely, easily, rehearsed and rerehearsed and yet even if I had tried to listen to myself I wouldn't have known what i was saying.

Not when I was looking at her.

Issabelle.

Issabelle in black velvet, soft and silky as the night sky, her eyes dark, lashes thick and long batting slowly as she blinked back the dust which lingered in the air around her.

Issabelle so painfully far away from me. Small but not shy, one hand on Dylans lap, his hands clasped around her petite fingers. He looked like he was comforting her but i knew that wasn't the case.

Every now and then he would break his gaze, stop looking dead ahead, his expression carved like stone until he looked down at her. Unreadable, thin set lined lips, eyes opaque until he looked at her. Until he turned his head just slightly towards her and she graced him with a subtle glance, her eyes still youthful still hopeful, the only emotional person in the room. The only honest person in the room.

I longed for her to look at me that way, even once, so that I might do as dylan was doing now. Sip on that spark of hope, use it to keep me going just long enough to get out of that church unscathed.

Seeing her grace him with that privilege so easily, knowing that he was taking it for granted, was enough to stir a bitterness which alarmed me.
I spoke and with every word I found it harder to take my gaze from her. I knew that my staring would give me away if I wasn't careful and yet somehow I couldn't tear my eyes away.

Some self torture ritual, forcing myself to watch her, to watch her smiling softly in secret for someone else.

And then she looked up, her doe eyes dark and full of sadness looked up. Up at me.

They met my eyes and she froze, her eyes unable even to blink. Just looking at me.

Until that moment I'd been doing well to continue with my reading, letting the words flow from me as if I were on autopilot, as if I knew them off by heart, perhaps that's where they were coming from, though my voice wouldn't have portrayed heartfelt at that moment. Monotonous and cold as if often came across at times where a little heart was required.

But perhaps they were coming from the heart because it was the sight of her which interrupted my flow. Which corrupted my thought process and left me momentarily silent. Jaw slack.

It only lasted a moment, our eyes locked onto one another, hers wide, mine sort of blinking in a daze. But it was long enough. Long enough for my silence to be notable.

So I coughed, dragged my eyes away from hers and refused to look up for the rest of the service, refused to look at her or in fact anywhere near her where she may find away to slip into my view and catch me off guard again.

Her, her simple beauty, the tragically gorgeous way she wore her pain. Wore mine and every other lads for them.

In that moment she had been wearing Dylans. All his agony and heartache. He had been sitting beside her untouched by the dreary grey, the weight of death, he had looked tired but he hadn't looked pained.

It wasn't her fault, little Izzy, that she took that from him, she did it without noticing. Without knowing.

It was what made her so precious. It was why I had known from the very beginning, from the day she was born that she wasn't meant for our world. That she was too pure. Too kind.
She needed protecting at all costs and until very recently I had thought I'd been doing a decent job.