Eyes
It was his eyes that she loved most of all.
It had been his eyes that had captivated her from the very start, from when she had first seen him. One look and wow! What eyes! They were large, bright and beautiful, sparkling, shimmering with life. And they were always what she looked at when she spoke to him. She couldn't look at anything else.
Such was their power.
She was different from her mother and grandmother in what she liked about the opposite sex. Her mother and grandmother had both said that they liked males with dark hair – the darker the better – and brown eyes. For both of them their look preference had worked well enough: they had married men with dark eyes and hair and a gentle, loving personality to match.
She had inherited the looks of her father, everyone said so – brown hair and chocolate-coloured eyes. She hoped that she was as kind and gracious as her father and mother too. She knew that she had her father's almost unshakable confidence. But whenever he was around, the boy who had captured her heart, she became like a shaking leaf in the wind, and every confident thing that she may have said or done in the presence of another person just went straight out the window.
He wasn't as good-looking as some of the other guys she had seen, but no one could deny that he was handsome. His black hair, with the odd blond streaks, was spiky and some of it seemed to have no sense of direction, sticking straight up, while the rest hung down around his face, not too long, but longer than most. His skin was pale salmon pink and his chin was pointed like hers. There was a yellow scar on his left cheek that ran from the bottom of his eye right down to his chin. Though she hated the mark itself, it detracted nothing from his looks - at least not to her - it only made him more interesting. He was tall, muscular, athletic, and his name, oh, how she always ached to hear it. It was such an unusual name, but it fitted him right down to the ground, and it was a beautiful name too. She would roll it round her mouth, emphasizing each of the two syllables, before letting it go, and she would repeat it in her head every night.
But it was always his eyes that stopped her heart beating for a nanosecond, that were the things that she felt she could lose herself in forever.
The first thing anyone noticed about them was their vibrant colour: a deep, brilliant blue, the kind of blue one sees in the evening sky or the bottom of the ocean, the kind of blue that is present in the heart of a sapphire or a crystal of cobalt. As he was so quiet, yet strong and powerful, it was usually very difficult to guess what he was thinking or planning; he never allowed it to show on his face. Only by gazing into those eyes could one gain the slightest insight as to what he was feeling, and even then he often kept that well hidden. But whenever she looked, it was as if she were gazing into a deep well of azure beauty that would suck her in and drown her.
Such was the power of those eyes.
He never gloated over a victory, he never looked down upon anyone else. He believed that every person in the world was needed and should be treated as such, and his kind heart seemed to know no bounds. The way he played his cards was admirable too. No one could ever guess what his strategy was, no matter how hard they tried, he kept that well hidden, like many other great duellists before him. She always marvelled at his ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, even when every odd was stacked against him.
Like when he was in prison.
She had used every power her parents had as far as security went, to find a way to watch him and check that he was all right. Her parents didn't protest to her being what they described as "love-sick", even if it was with a 'convicted criminal'. So she would sit glued to the screen in the control room, watching him sit quietly in his cell, talking with the friends he made. He never paced, he never showed frustration or impatience. Whatever he did was calm and calculated. She would watch as the jailers abused him, searched him, marked him with that scar, tortured him to make the dragon birthmark show up, though it never did.
A birthmark which she had only seen once, through the midst of fog and smoke, so she couldn't even be certain that it was real.
And as he screamed in pain and fear and anger, she would watch, powerless, tears pouring unchecked down her pale face. She would curse his jailers and the unfairness in their society which had landed him unjustly in that place, vowing revenge.
But.
Even after everything he had gone through, and he was still just eighteen years old, he still remained quiet and thoughtful and infinitely kind. When he finally went up against the chief jailer, standing up for everything he believed in, then persevered no matter how exhausted and full of pain he was, she watched and felt prouder of him than she had ever been in the few months she had known him.
He raised his head and she saw in his eyes a flicker of an emotion she rarely saw in him, particularly as it could lead to anger, and he was barely ever angry, but this time it was there…
Defiance.
Defiance to the corrupt society of their city, defiance to the cruelty of his jailers, defiance to the evil in the world.
You shall not take me, he seemed to say with every draw of a card, every move he made.
It captivated her. It inspired her. It reassured her.
When he was released and she finally saw him in the flesh again, she barely knew what to say. Her heart was screaming a thousand emotions at once. Part of her was aching to tell him how she felt, another part was cowering away from the idea.
He looked at her and the corners of his mouth twitched.
Then he grinned.
At her.
If there was one thing she didn't like about him, it was that he very rarely smiled, but on this occasion he did, and it was at her.
"Hi," he said, his voice low and bell-like.
She smiled too, and then she ran towards him and threw her arms around him with a cry of the most profound and exhausted relief.
She knew it was not over. He was still a marked criminal, however unjustly, and there was still a matter of his dragon birthmark to deal with.
But for now he was back.
"Hey, stop overreacting," he muttered gruffly, gently unhooking her arms from his neck.
She could have told him right there and then. She could have told him how she had fallen in love with him. She could, perhaps, have kissed him, like she had dreamed of doing so many nights.
Maybe.
But she didn't. For the nth time since she had met him, her courage failed her. However, she knew that for now it didn't matter.
"I missed you," she said.
"I missed you too," he replied quietly.
The grin had faded from his face. His rare smiles never lasted long.
But his eyes told all. His eyes were smiling. Once again she felt like she was losing herself within them and their colour and reflection and emotion. Once again she was almost paralyzed by his beautiful cerulean gaze.
Such was the power of his eyes.
THE END