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archiveofarethusaVera had been introduced to three truths and a lie by her first acting instructor unremembered summers ago. A talented actress, he had said, was a talented liar. He had been impressed with her that day. Playing against Helene, Vera was beginning to suspect that perhaps his standards were too low. Vera had never met anyone like Helene, someone who could pull the truth from her as if she wore it plain and shining round her neck, and she was too transfixed with wine and starlight to care. Which wasn’t to say even that was necessary for her attention to wander; how dark was the crown of her hair, the shadows stitched upon her smile, and yet her smile was a slice of bright marrow white swallowed by red. She seemed half a faerie and half something undiscovered and wild. Vera didn’t know what to make of her, but she could hardly stay away from someone so strange.
“When I was six, I stared down the roof of my home and wondered what it would feel like to fall,” Helene said. It was a game, and a commonly played one at parties and in troupes, but it had become theirs. Vera still greedily hoarded her own truths, giving only small, worthless pieces of herself away, but Helene was confessional and earnest enough that Vera thought that one may have been a truth.
“I want you to know me whole and unadorned,” she had admitted the night before, through a smile that had made Vera’s face burn. It had been a truth. “I want to see your eyes looking at me with the full knowledge of what they’re looking at. I want to see what that does to you.”
“You’ve just given me six things to consider, in case you’ve forgotten numbers,” Vera said.
“No, I haven’t,” Helene said, red smile turning jaggedly into a smirk. “Just one.”
“I once unintentionally traumatized a suitor of my sister’s, and I feel no guilt at all for it,” Helene said, and Vera didn’t care whatever else came out of her mouth, that was the goddamned truth.
“I think Milosz Vang is an overrated blowhard who stumbled his way into something better than he was capable of properly understanding,” Helene said.
“I happen to know for a fact that you are embarrassingly fond of Vang,” Vera said. “I walked you home when you drank yourself under the table at Nik’s, and even after I put you safely to bed in your own home you didn’t once stop singing the entire second act of the Harridan. I’m not sure what happened to the first act.”
“Oh, it goes out of me around the same time as tact and pitch, sad to say,” Helene said. “Yes, my blustering about Vang is mostly to horrify the elitists. I could just live off of their dismay. Your turn, sweetheart.”
It was one of the last clement nights of autumn, and the moon was just a gash in the sky, and everything was coming together in ways Vera had thought her life too jagged to be capable of, and her heart was full with improbable happiness. She could have blamed what she said next on any one of those facts, but the truth was to be that the words tumbled out of her mouth and she didn’t know from whence they came.
“I feel like I leave something of myself with you when we part ways, and only when we meet again do I get it back,” Vera said. Helene smiled.
“When I was six, I stared down the roof of my home and wondered what it would feel like to fall,” Helene said. It was a game, and a commonly played one at parties and in troupes, but it had become theirs. Vera still greedily hoarded her own truths, giving only small, worthless pieces of herself away, but Helene was confessional and earnest enough that Vera thought that one may have been a truth.
“I want you to know me whole and unadorned,” she had admitted the night before, through a smile that had made Vera’s face burn. It had been a truth. “I want to see your eyes looking at me with the full knowledge of what they’re looking at. I want to see what that does to you.”
“You’ve just given me six things to consider, in case you’ve forgotten numbers,” Vera said.
“No, I haven’t,” Helene said, red smile turning jaggedly into a smirk. “Just one.”
“I once unintentionally traumatized a suitor of my sister’s, and I feel no guilt at all for it,” Helene said, and Vera didn’t care whatever else came out of her mouth, that was the goddamned truth.
“I think Milosz Vang is an overrated blowhard who stumbled his way into something better than he was capable of properly understanding,” Helene said.
“I happen to know for a fact that you are embarrassingly fond of Vang,” Vera said. “I walked you home when you drank yourself under the table at Nik’s, and even after I put you safely to bed in your own home you didn’t once stop singing the entire second act of the Harridan. I’m not sure what happened to the first act.”
“Oh, it goes out of me around the same time as tact and pitch, sad to say,” Helene said. “Yes, my blustering about Vang is mostly to horrify the elitists. I could just live off of their dismay. Your turn, sweetheart.”
It was one of the last clement nights of autumn, and the moon was just a gash in the sky, and everything was coming together in ways Vera had thought her life too jagged to be capable of, and her heart was full with improbable happiness. She could have blamed what she said next on any one of those facts, but the truth was to be that the words tumbled out of her mouth and she didn’t know from whence they came.
“I feel like I leave something of myself with you when we part ways, and only when we meet again do I get it back,” Vera said. Helene smiled.