Golden Silence

She hears the smile in a stranger’s voice, and she’s sickened by it. But she listens anyway, silence was money after all, and she refused to pay for shushing him.

“That’s the thing about this city, you only pay what you can’t afford, and the price will be steep if you pay at all.” 

It was an over-pretty way of saying, in the abstract, some notion about how not gaining is the same as a loss. Such a concept was ever necessary in their world, in her city. 

But he didn’t mean it in the way she believed it. He thought it was wrong. And she, well, she didn’t.

Seraphina was one too many syllables for a silent world, but that didn’t matter. She also lived in a world where people didn’t call out to her. It was a world she was happy to live in, one where she didn’t need to hear her own voice.

Where she was paid just that little bit, a little gold piece for every day’s silence. She even sighed quietly.

She hopes she never sees him again, and in such a large city she might never.

Seraphina moves on with her day anyway, off the platform and on to her work, a mouse amongst rats scurrying through.

After all, she might get her gold every day, but she still needed spending money.

…

Seraphina wasn’t too worried about the state of the world. 

The fairytale curse that gave her the heady silence of her life didn’t quiet everyone, but it didn’t have to, as she stamped her card and got to work.

It was so singularly quiet that it wasn’t even a bargain to assume that almost everyone would get a coin that night. There wasn’t one voice amongst her coworkers, a single reason to respond and it almost made up for the crooked fool earlier that day.

Her work was in text, voices punctuated by commas and periods rather than breaths and grunts, she was adept in reading them without even the smallest movement of her lips. Only the soft blurry roll of her eyes across pages and pages of documents, and the soft click of her keys in careful response. 

She never made more sound than she absolutely had to, so she always got her gold, but she wondered what she could make of it once, if ever, her voice were made uncontrollable. 

Though, she thought also, “why would it ever?”

Maybe her perspective was one of privilege, maybe it made her thoughtless, but she was proud of her gold, and she thought, maybe, that her temper was as such that she could make herself quiet for her entire life.

That she might manage without a single sigh out of tune.

Though maybe she ought to go without, if she wanted it so badly. Still, the day ended like any other, and she scurried home like was only sensible.

… 

Her home was quiet, and she’d be lying if she said she couldn’t feel it then. After all, she’d felt sick all day.

…

Seraphina woke quietly, not a breath out of place. Surprisingly then, how slovenly she’d felt the day before that she fell from sleep so composed. Still it shouldn’t have been, she was simply as she was after all, how could one day change that?

That was what she thought, of course it was. She’d collected her gold as pure as anything, and she was in good temper, so that was what she thought. 

And so she went to work, burning away the silent hours, signing in, and signing away, and living as she ought. Everything was quiet, she felt it in her bones. Nothing more than the hustle and bustle of movement, unpunctuated by things like cusses and slurs.

‘Why would anyone want to speak?’ she thought. On the Subway, awaiting her cue she hears a counterpoint.

“Hello?” she hears again, from the Stranger. A man she’s seen on and off again, regarding her with a familiarity that she wished she didn’t share, at least with his voice in any case.

She doesn’t bother to meet his eyeline, carefully unresponsive as he stands beside her.

What she sees of him from her seat is a shame, the curve of his lip and his lanky posture humbled by a favored leg. He’d have a kind face to her if his simple presence weren’t an annoyance.

Seraphina turns her head; she pretends for a minute that someone had called her name. And she can feel him smiling at her voiceless admission.

‘You noticed me’ she hears him think, she’s damn near certain.

She regrets nothing in the moment when she bolts from the subway car. He doesn’t follow, and whether it was on account of his leg, or in simple regards to her as a stranger she is grateful.

…

She’d paid dearly for it, followed after, not by the Stranger but- not her stranger, but a stranger still. There was the rush of it she’d have thought if she hadn’t been pulled away.

He couldn’t have on a wonky knee.

‘Where am I?’ she thought, small aches where her thoughts held weary.

The world is quiet when she comes to, soft start, in a not unfamiliar alley. Between the cold and the violence Seraphina’s body had seen fit to play dead with her inside it, and in the moment she was simply thankful that she could feel her toes.

Darkly she thinks, ‘I should scream.’ 

But instead, she dusts herself off.

And walks back home.

After all, was it not brave to cast off one’s tongue when one wrong breath could cost you everything? 

…

She felt the first snowfall, quiet again all by herself. Slowly now, overcareful of the crooked feeling down her form. Her home isn’t far, even to the strained feeling in her legs. Her back, however overburdened, wouldn’t make it so.

What light there was glared against the snow, graying out the darkness of the sky as she made her way.

Seraphina was alone, whatever had graced the streets with such silence had also made them empty. 

Made them safe.

That’s what it felt like, and by the time she got home, it was truly snowing outside.

Why did she feel safe?

In the moment she decided to forget about it, as the snow fell heavily and gusty in her window. 

A pretty sight to match her cold compress, the general malaise that had hurried through her mind.

…

Life goes on, and she decides to forget. She’s not the kind of person to pull a fuss, and so nothing is said. No gestures, no notes. Not a word, even in the forms allotted by the most common manners of her time.

She’s as cold as the air outside, in realizing it.

Seraphina is one too many syllables for a silent world, but that didn’t matter. She lived in a world where people didn’t call out to her. And she should be happy enough that everyone got their peace.

These are thoughts she understood well enough, but she still held out, even as such unnoticed things healed away.

… 

“Crap, you look worse than me.” her stranger says, still crooked as the last time she’d seen him. It was a different side now that she looked. She looked at him, no small gaze on the subway, right in front of him.

She doesn’t avoid him. She doesn’t say a word. But she doesn’t look away when he notices her.

When he smiles.

She feels it, the one action that held her ruin. Long healed over, made fresh by this small notion that was his attention. ‘Don’t look away’ she thinks, lonely forever in her shivering golden world.

He looks down at her, not saying a word.

She takes his hand and pulls herself up, takes hold of his face and kisses him. She means for it to be a peck on the lips, only calling his bluff, before she throws that away too. She wonders half sharing his breath, the taste of her own mouth, whether or not this was a fair thing, to share with him.

With little more than a breath Seraphina walks away, calmed for the moment wherever she went next. The next thing hardly mattered to her in that moment, not like snow after a beating.

She holds onto him as she leaves, waves gracelessly, and scurries off.

She hopes in the moment, that he thinks better of her than some horrid attempt at silence, but she knows.

If he thought so, he’d say so.

…

The week runs out, so much more a blur than that moment as she finds her way through the hours. She’s never felt this before, boredom in the face of her chosen life. The self-neglect that was her work.

Did she always waste her hours with this longing?

She carries this with an embarrassment she wouldn’t dare confuse with security in her previous beliefs.

She leaves work on an augmented path; it was the small things wasn’t it? that were supposed to protect you?

Seraphina doesn’t see her stranger, and she regrets changing this small thing, for want of his presence.

Still, she feels safe enough until she isn’t.

Until she sees the half-expected and stops to look.

She was being followed, whether it was the same sort or not, and she wasn’t sure of her locks. How easy would it be to disregard anything that happened as a nuisance?

She walks away, knowing that she’s close enough, she’s tired. And she’s lonely, and what does ‘no’ mean when speaking was the worse offence?

…

She panics, quiet still, as unseemly as that was, but she isn’t hurt. Nothing happens, and she hates herself for expecting it.

She wasn’t incapable, why did she feel like this?

…

She cries silent, angry, lonely. A little river’s mist fell from her mouth like smoke.

She sees a shadow.

Taller than most, crooked, as it moves toward her. Stopping at a healthy distance. Did he think she would bite?

They catch eyes, and if she were in any other moment it would feel laudable, but in that time and in that place she was just stuck inside.

He looks away, seeing her pain and says, “I reported you.”

Her heart breaks a little. It was good, right even, but it hurt.

“You know. I said the words, I told them. And they said, ‘ain’t it kind, how she chose to shut you up?” he said looking around, acting as her eyes while she was stuck inside. He moves closer to her, bends down to stay at her level, “You got hurt didn’t you? Before all that. Did you even report it?”

She shakes her head, shamed. She’s certain of that.

“I don’t misbelieve,” he says, “You understand now. But don’t you think the gold is just paying us to disregard ourselves?”

“Yeah, I do, But I can miss out on one day, if it means talking to you.”

She sees him struck with it, “Is it all right if your robbed? Fuck. I’m sorry.” He looks away from her, feeling like some kind of-

He shouldn’t feel that way.

“I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to push a fuss. Even saying so-” he lets her stop herself, “I haven’t heard my own voice in so long. Was it always this scratchy?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He said, gazing at her.

“Is that why I hated it?” She laughed, incensed. Smiling, a nuisance. Everything’s cold, except her and him, no ones listening. And he doesn’t seem as angry as he was.

“I’m sorry for the kiss,” She said voice scratchy, tearful, unused, “I’m sorry for my Glare. Whatever these things meant to you, I’m sorry. Please don’t look away from me.”

…

Of course he doesn’t, she sees, as he reaches out to hold her hand. He swallows back whatever thought he’d had, and just feels her hand in his.

Gently, warm, in the cold, across her palm. Too slow and wondering, like a kiss, thoughtless save the warring she could half hear between his ears. He doesn’t feel the same, no one could, but they stay there for a hair too long before she says, “I’m cold.”

“Little thief,” he says breathless, he smiles and lets go of her hand, he pulls himself up and then her.

She likes the name, taking his hand again and leading him away.

Away from this alley.

Away from the cold.

Away from this place where he could only be a stranger. Far from silence, she wanted the noise.