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The Glance- a drabble
This drabble was written in response to a weekly prompt from the You+Me=RP Podcast.
The Glance: two people can't stop glancing at each other.
Enjoy!
It was close to the middle of the afternoon and Rue sat at a picnic bench at the local park. One that she frequently visited just to watch people. It was still amazing to see so many different people of different species interacting in one place. She wondered if her old home in Georgia had been like that. She hadn’t known she was a witch until much later in her life and hadn’t even called herself one until more recently. Her gift, however, had been there. The ability to manipulate Fate. She’d killed a guest of her adoptive parents Bed & Breakfast unknowingly. It had been a dream and the next morning she learned of his sudden demise. In her mind, she saw lines of what looked like string or threads, zig-zagging, and stretching across the ether. She could reach out and touch it, tug and pull on them, twist them, knot them...cut them. Her gift...or curse, depending on how you looked at it, was the very same as the Fates of Greek Mythology. When discussing it with Claire or others she meets, she described her ability like that of the three sisters from the Disney film Hercules, the ones that share the eye…with the exception that she was one person, with the role of all three and she was by far much more pretty than those three hags.
Feeling like she wanted to stir up some trouble, her eyes moved across the crowd, looking for a target. Ambrosia had been teaching her how to focus and control her energy which then benefitted the control of her abilities with lines. She wanted to make a scene but nothing too crazy. Once she spotted her target, she closed her eyes and her hands unconsciously began to weave the threads of the line she was creating. She concentrated hard on what she wanted to happen, how she wanted to manipulate her target but she couldn't help but feel a little giddy about it. With her eyes closed, she could see the threads of lifelines that crossed and intersected between the people in the park. It was a maze to the untrained eye, but she eventually settled on one and gave it a little tug, much like a puppeteer.
She felt confident that she had control enough to open her eyes. Slowly, she lifted her lids as the brightness of the day came back. She was able to spot her target. A young man on a skateboard. She smirked a little as she gave another tug to the string in her mind and watched as he stumbled off his skateboard. She giggled to herself but something made her look away from him to a park bench near the skateboarder. A set of eyes stared right at her completely breaking her concentration. She dropped her hands, releasing her hold on her magic and the skateboarder stumbled again before regaining control of himself. Rue’s eyes stared straight back at the figure that looked at her.
Those eyes belonged to a man. His skin seemed rather tanned and sun-kissed from here, at least from what she could see of his face and arms. He appeared to have long hair, tossed up into a messy man bun on top of his head. His facial-hair appeared trim, at least from this distance. Even though she couldn’t see the color of his eyes, she could still feel their intensity. It actually made her heart skip to see how intensely he was looking at her. She found herself unable to look away. It was as if he had been casting his own magic on her, but she couldn’t sense another source of magic other than her own. Her tongue stuck out to lick her lips and she was finally able to pull her gaze away from him and try to look somewhere else. It was almost as if he knew exactly what she was doing and had stared at her to make her stop. That was somewhat unnerving to her. Still, she felt flushed from that heated gaze and found herself looking back in his direction.
He was still staring, at least, when she looked back at him, he was looking at her again. She wasn’t sure if he had looked away too or if he was just going to make this creepy by constantly staring at her. Rue shifted to turn herself around, getting up to sit on the bench that was positioned on the other side of the table she’d been sitting at. Now her back was to him, which also seemed like a stupid move if he was indeed dangerous, but she wasn’t worried about an attack. She could easily kill someone without even touching them. Leaning back against the wooden bench, she let out a heavy sigh and tilted her head back into the sun, soaking in those warm early summer rays.
Curiosity got the best of her and she turned her head to look back at him. He was looking again, but this time, seemed to have shifted further down the bench than where he had originally been. She let out a groan, closing her eyes again. This was ruining her solitary time. When she turned to look back at him again, he had moved. Now, he was gone. Where the hell did he go? Looking forward again, she nearly jumped out of her skin as he was walking up to her. How the hell did he move so fast? Her eyes widened as he walked up to her, standing in front of her from where she sat on the bench.
“I saw what you were doing,” he told her. “I’m glad you stopped.” She could see now that his eyes were golden. Not like a golden brown but gold, like a wolf’s eyes. Of course, he was a f***ing werewolf. “It’s not nice to play with the lives of the innocent,” he added. Rue scoffed, “And playing the staring game with me isn’t any better?” Her remark caused a smirk to curve his lips. Damn, he had a nice mouth. One of those mouths that looked perfectly kissable. Now, who was staring? He shifted to reach his hand out to her, offering it for a handshake. “Connor Price, and you are?” She stared at his outstretched hand for a moment, contemplating if she wanted to make this particular acquaintance. Pressing her lips together in a hard line, she reached out and curled her fingers around his hand in a firm grasp, her eyes stared up at him, squinting a little in the light. “Rue Sadowski…” She just had a feeling that this man was going to be bad news for her.
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