Her bitterness was a veil she wore well, at once seeming like a woman who respected herself enough to know she was wronged whilst always hoping for someone to tell her otherwise. There was something amiss - there was always a question in every silence - it hung between the two friends like a floater in one's eye, ever present, familiar and something each perceived to be only visible to themselves.
She seemed to fly into fits of anger; tears and laughter partnered in a strange dance that only she could perform so gracefully. The young one watched her in awe, like one looks in a mirror to see the face of a girl in the backseat as the sun falls in her eyes - all too aware that this moment could expose her, and yet the inability to move, to break away from the trance was her only companion when she spent time with Lanie
Their evenings had grown increasingly frantic, what with the wedding soon approaching and the house becoming saturated with relatives, each room now housed upto ten members of the extended family, and there was only silence between 1 and 4 am by which time an infant or an old aunt woke up the house with their moaning.
Lanie seemed to want to say something, yet as always, she wanted to be prodded for a response, she looked up nervously every few seconds and then looked away as soon as eye contact was made. She began to speak, then swallowed the invisible word, put it away in a trunk at the back of her head and continued to pretend like all was well. Emmi hated this habit, she could not understand what could possibly be so hard to say - what was it with adults and their need to build a moment up, to fill the room with tension until the other person couldn't take it anymore and would either nervously begin to ramble incoherently or worse, presume to know the reason for this unease.
She usually did the former, rapidly relaying details of her drama-fuelled teenage life, from daily stories of the boys in school, to a daily rant about her mother's inability to understand her, speaking fast, too fast to really understand what she was sayig - and Lanie never asked her to slow down because she knew that Emmi was not talking to be understood at all, she just needed to be able to hear the sound of her voice without being told to bugger off.
She seemed to fly into fits of anger; tears and laughter partnered in a strange dance that only she could perform so gracefully. The young one watched her in awe, like one looks in a mirror to see the face of a girl in the backseat as the sun falls in her eyes - all too aware that this moment could expose her, and yet the inability to move, to break away from the trance was her only companion when she spent time with Lanie
Their evenings had grown increasingly frantic, what with the wedding soon approaching and the house becoming saturated with relatives, each room now housed upto ten members of the extended family, and there was only silence between 1 and 4 am by which time an infant or an old aunt woke up the house with their moaning.
Lanie seemed to want to say something, yet as always, she wanted to be prodded for a response, she looked up nervously every few seconds and then looked away as soon as eye contact was made. She began to speak, then swallowed the invisible word, put it away in a trunk at the back of her head and continued to pretend like all was well. Emmi hated this habit, she could not understand what could possibly be so hard to say - what was it with adults and their need to build a moment up, to fill the room with tension until the other person couldn't take it anymore and would either nervously begin to ramble incoherently or worse, presume to know the reason for this unease.
She usually did the former, rapidly relaying details of her drama-fuelled teenage life, from daily stories of the boys in school, to a daily rant about her mother's inability to understand her, speaking fast, too fast to really understand what she was sayig - and Lanie never asked her to slow down because she knew that Emmi was not talking to be understood at all, she just needed to be able to hear the sound of her voice without being told to bugger off.
