Autumn Tears And Winter Leaves

The waves coaxed themselves onto the shore tentatively, rippling over sand-scribed messages, ephemeral hopes and exclamations rich with schoolgirl excitement. Tasting the sweetness behind each bulletin, they absorbed them and withdrew, leaving the beach bleached of their memory.

Lawen stood at the tip of the waves' reach, the wind tangling around her shoulder-length brown hair. Her eyes were secured to the horizon, but her mind made a jigsaw map of the past. As one hand rooted her hair back from her face, the other dangled in a gentle fist by her side. Feeling her nails brush against her palm, Lawen opened her cupped treasure but found no pearl within the oyster.

Sprawling across her palm was a single hoop of gold with three diamonds spotted across it. "Diamonds for eternity. Three for luck." At the time, Lawen wasn't aware that eternity lasted three weeks and luck was just a green-coated façade.

A sigh clattered from Lawen's lips as she eased the ring onto her finger, sensing its familiar pang of discomfort. It was a golden-framed lie, a disintegrated dream. Her eternity that never came.

Lawen reversed her back harder against the wall, chewing excitedly on her lip as absolute inspiration filtered within her pulse. She nudged her notepad further up her leg whilst trying not to slide off the windowsill she was sitting on. Her pen was a rapid blur as it sketched spirited lyrics on the page before her.

"Blue roses, red violets,
the snow bell tears that
you cup on your fingertip.
They all meant something
once upon a time
when life was a fairytale
and you were the suburban princess.
But where's your Prince Charming now, Cinderella?
Far, far away is the land
broken-hearted lullabies flow from."

Immersed in her creative concoctions, Lawen failed to hear the front door swerve open and rock shut. Deliberate footsteps reflected through the house, sending shudders to the foundations, before Lawen's study door lethargically rambled forward and Craig's form stood in its place. As his steel blue eyes glazed over Lawen, his face gave birth to a greedy grin. He fell against the doorframe in an overly-casual way and watched her with smirking eyes. When he became bored, Craig ran a ravenous tongue over his lips, leant forward and called, "Boo!"

Jolting out of her words, Lawen staggered her eyes up to Craig's gaze. As she merged hers with his, a timid smile grew on her face. "Oh. Hey you." she greeted, with a muffled laugh. Pushing her notepad to one side and unraveling her legs to the ground, she added, "You scared me just then."

Craig's grin multiplied in strength as he stepped into the room. "Sorry," he answered, plainly. "I didn't mean to." As he reached Lawen, he plucked her notepad from beside her and scoured it with a skeptical expression. "Writing lyrics again, Lawen?" he asked.

With a down-turned gaze, Lawen nodded. "Well, you know. We've got band practice this week. And I wanted to come up with some new material..."

"I don't know why you even bother with this band, baby." Craig sliced in. He discarded the notepad onto the windowsill and turned away. "It's not like you guys are heading anywhere." Swiveling around to face Lawen again, he let a burdened sigh fall from his parted lips. "How long have you guys been going now? And what have you got to show for it? It's a waste of a time, Lawen baby. A complete waste of talent."

Lawen's gaze meandered mournfully to her notepad. "But I love music. I love the band." she insisted, one hand tracing gentle affection over her words.

"And I love you," Craig pressed as he knelt in front of Lawen "That's why I'm saying this."

Offering a faded smile, Lawen met Craig's gaze. "But if I don't have music, what do I do?"

Dropping one knee, Craig grinned forcefully. "Marry me." he suggested with heavy bluntness.

"What?" Lawen asked, her eyes inflamed with doubt at what she had heard.

"I said...marry me." Craig repeated, pulling a petite, blue box out of his pocket. As he heard a weak gasp slip from Lawen's throat, his grin grew with victory. "Well?" he pressed.

Muted, Lawen could only nod in agreement and didn't fight as Craig hauled her arm forward to force the ring on her finger. She only watched her silent fate unwind before her with a tear glissading down her cheek. She didn't even protest as Craig darted up and hurtled her into a crunching embrace. Instead, she reveled in it, forgetting the lyrics she had just scribed on the page.

"Where are your dreams now, angel?
Look under the ruins
but they're not there.
You sold them for a fairytale lie
and the gold-plated crown
around your finger.
The problem with Happily Ever After
is that it doesn't exist."

Lawen loosened the band on her finger as she faded out of yet another bloodshot memory she insisted on erasing. Her eyes were still drugged from reminiscing even after she scoured them with her balled fist. Breaths weighted with exasperation dropped from her lips as she scanned the beach for a focus point, an anchor to the reality she felt herself increasingly slipping from. But it was all an over-dramatized blur to her. Nothing represented her mood. As she ran a trembling finger over her stunted promise, she realized that the only solace was her pained reflections. In all their tarnished glory.

Wedged in yet another mid-day traffic jam, Lawen danced her fingers across the steering wheel, allowing them to hover temptingly over the horn before she twisted them across to the dashboard. As her hand rested against it in frustration, her sleeve rolled down her arm, revealing her watch underneath. Leaning forward, Lawen peered at the time and blew out her cheeks. Two-thirty. She was supposed to meet Craig at his apartment at three. Crashing her head against the window and noting the traffic outside, Lawen knew she would never make it.

With bitter resignation, Lawen sprawled across her car to reach her phone that was cocooned in her glove compartment. As she drew it out forcefully and slumped against her car seat, she offered silent prayers that her long-time planned weekend wasn't just going to crumble into non-existence. In the backseat of her car, she had manufactured a man-made mountain of bags intended to be her personal rations for an extended weekend away with Craig. They had the plans etched in their diaries months before they had even become engaged. It was a chance to flee from the rigors of their workloads. Lawen knew it was the perfect cure to their hyperactive stress levels.

Scrunching her phone next to her ear, Lawen listened impatiently to the monotonous ringing in one ear and tried to deafen herself to the aggravated beeping coming through the other. As her blood writhed within her, she became all too aware that she needed a break from the constrictions of suburbia. And from the deepening canyons in his forehead, Lawen knew Craig needed one too. It was becoming blatant to her doting eyes that his mind was laden with work. It smoldered in his down-turned smile, his averted gaze and his distant affection. And Lawen was determined to rekindle the person she knew beneath his negativity.

"Come on." Lawen muttered both to her phone and the traffic. Swinging her hand through her hair, she bit on her bottom lip before pleading, "Pick up, Craig." Yet, by the tenth ring, her hope had abandoned her and her phone clattered beside her on the passenger seat. "Damn it." she cursed under her breath before resting her forehead against the toasted steering wheel. She'd just have to wait for the traffic to fade.

Twenty minutes late and wound around her frustration like a mamba, Lawen pulled into a parking space outside Craig's apartment block. As she twisted the ignition off, she crammed mouthfuls of air into her lungs to quench her frustration that pummeled her stomach with discomfort. She tossed her gaze up to her rear-view mirror for one final gaze before she met Craig. Attempting to focus on the positive, she repeated to herself that exasperation had dyed her cheeks with a healthy tint.

Continuing to take measured sips of air, Lawen jogged up the steps to Craig's apartment block and slid into the gaping lift waiting for her. Lounging her head against the wall of it, she grinned to her thoughts as she realized that these journeys would be a memory in a matter of months. Once she married Craig, they would begin to build their own home together. Until then, they would have to persist with continuous journeys between her home and his apartment. As Craig repeated to her and her insecurities, it made sense for them to have their separate homes to keep their separate lives entwined within. It would make it even more special when they pooled them together.

As soon as Lawen stepped out of the lift, her eyes were immediately pulled to the right, to the door to Craig's apartment. Smiling at its bolted form, she jerked out of the lift's grasp as its doors rumbled closed behind her; a sound that never ceased to frighten her. She lowered her head as a suppressed laugh dipped from her lips. It wasn't long before her gaze was hauled up by the sound of a chain being unlatched behind Craig's door. In playful childishness, Lawen skid behind a corner and cautiously peered out as she planned her intended surprise attack on Craig.

Against her will, Lawen's brown eyes became injected with surprise as she saw a thin redhead step out from Craig's apartment, still adjusting the hem of her skirt. Shaking her head to rid herself of her own curious mistake, Lawen bound her eyes shut tightly. Yet, when she opened them, Lawen realised that the mistake wasn't hers. Boldly stood in the hallway was Craig, still fumbling to do up the zipper on his trousers. As the redhead saw this, she smirked and stepped forward to do the job herself. Flicking a seductive smile up to Craig, she left a teasing kiss on his cheek before walking away as Craig watched her hips unraveling every sense of control he had in his body.

And Lawen just stood. And watched. And waited. The whole time her heart was wailing a swan song as it cracked and her finger spun vain patterns over her engagement ring.

It wasn't the pain of the memory that jolted Lawen back to her salted-wound reality. It wasn't even the shrill shriek of the seagull above her head. What seized Lawen back to the modern world was the tear tarnishing her ring. Analysing it with unseeing eyes, she stirred its moulded shape with a reluctant sigh. In the turmoiled waves of her mind, Conall and Torban's words resounded with resolute gravity.

"It's hardly enough to fall apart, is it?"

"You really need to pick yourself up before you bury yourself forever. No one can love a corpse."

Despite the denial that had gradually made Lawen its host, she discerned the flashes of rainbow truth in what they had said. Polaroid memories of her own mascara-stained reflection scorched tear-shaped burn marks into her mind. She raised her eyes to the crowds of clouds above her head to focus on another image instead. She found a true reflection of her mood in their grey-filled, black-lined forms.

As her eyes weaved down to her ring, Lawen realized she had clamored at rotten memories for too long. The months had merged into one eternal tirade of anguished misery until she found herself flailing under something she couldn't locate the beginning of. The noose around her finger showed how her aimless reflections choked her from her reality.

Writhing the ring from her finger, Lawen examined its thin, golden promise one last time. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pressed her lips to it before she wound her arm back and hurtled it at the horizon. With a flicker of miserable hope, Lawen stuttered, "Goodbye" as it scribed ripples across the ocean before she turned her spine on the past to walk up the beach singing, "The problem with Happily Ever After is that it doesn't exist."