Snippet #2401508

Meora Harrowgrove

When Daniel's first words oozed softly from his lips, Meora found herself yet again reminded that the boy before her was not a boy but a man, far more closely connected to the adult world than she could ever hope to be at the age of seventeen - and for a brief, fleeting moment it dragged her thoughts from the silver heart embedded in her throat, where she suddenly found her real heart hammering away. The doll kept looking at her! She swore that it could see right through her, to the naked lie that she was beneath her clothing. Stay calm, she urged her roaring pulse, knowing that whatever she did, 'calm' would never be something she could achieve around a - another - doll.

As the man gently brushed a kiss onto her hand and then allowed it to fall against her side, she did not feel the stammer of anxiety, only formed delicate pink brushstrokes along her wintry pale cheeks. However as Daniel excused his skittish little doll, all Meora could manage was a forced girlish giggle, a strained sweet, and two quick words: "of course". This was not going well.

"How are you enjoying the party so far? Heartland has certainly done a good job this year," Daniel said casually, either pleasantly unaware or tactfully dismissive of her inner awkwardness.

The bright, wild, dancing colours, I love; the shallow small talk, the forgettable blur of faces, I adore - but the presence of my own kind sickens me and I keep feeling Soeri's eyes on my back and I keep hearing her words in my ear and both your doll are making me nauseously nervous and for the first time in my life I want to flee the whirring excitement of a party! That is what she ached to say, those childish and consequential words; instead she opted for a hopefully more mature approach: "I am having a wonderful time, Mr Clement; how about you-?"

Meora's sentence was abruptly sliced in two as a pitifully dressed, filth-caked doll in rags was hauled onto the dance floor by an equally as disgusting, if not more so, man, made monstrous by his vile treatment to the beautiful, young woman. Somewhere deep inside horror and guilt and hatred for the cruel man stabbed between Meora's ribcage. What if that had been me? What if I hadn't been so lucky? She asked herself, same hair colour, same eye colour; it could have been me.

For a moment that hung precariously as glass on a table edge, Meora felt a strange, instinctive link that seemed to illuminate the air with electricity, and then, as the mistreated doll was swept from the floor by a familiar angel, it was gone and Soeri's snarling expression burned at the back of her mind.

"There's nothing better than a good happy ending," Daniel's muttering snapped her from the chasm into which she had mindlessly, unwillingly fallen. She observed the man as he wandered through his own sort of reverie and she remembered the cruelty that brought him to fame; asked herself if he really had found his happily ever after...And prayed that she found hers.

"Hopefully that's the most excitement we'll have for the night, eh?" He laughed a little, a smile carved into his lips, a sip drawn from his glass.

"I do hopes so as well," She spoke in an almost-whisper, eyes discerning what truth they could from Daniel's appearance, "How are you these days Mr Clement?"