Epander II

See now?  Two posts in a row that I've made.  I can do things.  However, I'd like to say that it's actually to the detriment of the reader for me to post things up like this, as that one can only get a couple paragraphs at a time of scenes which are supposed to wrap one in a fit of emotion.  Alas, I shall have to only deliver snippets at a time.  Also, in this post there is a bastardization of a quote by John Stuart Mill which I'll have to edit in the future to become more original and not just blatantly stealing.  However, I actually really like the response that I give to it.

She looked up from her instrument for just a moment and noticed his gaze burning into her, instantly taking her fingers away and placing it down on the ground. Now only the orchestra of the stream remained, with the cadence of the chorus of birds accenting its steady tempo. There was love in her eyes, but also sorrow; he could only conceive that his own eyes had the same exact mien in them. They stared at each other in silence, through night and day, and in and out of surrealistic feeling; it seemed as but a dream. Her eyes began to water, and soon one tear raced down her face, followed by another. She kept her dignity, her poise; she did not blubber, she did not cry. But the tears refused their prison, their lacrimose journey being their message to the world.

She did not bother to wipe away her tears, but instead pled in gentle tones, “You don’t have to leave.”

He smiled, but not a genuine one, instead the smile that people give when they’re miserable, when they want to put forth a façade to fool the firmament of the universe itself, to make the public think that they’re contented, just as everyone else about them. She knew him, she knew better, she knew this not to be the case. He regardless refused to relent, “A man who is willing to fight for nothing, a man who places nothing above his own personal safety is a miserable excuse for a creature with the inability to remain free unless made so by the exertions of better men than himself. I am not that man; I must do what is just.”

“Men always return to their rhetoric, the shield behind which they hide when the darts of duty to their love and family are cast at them. They speak of duty, they speak of responsibility, they speak of honour. They never speak of their own heart, they never speak of the pain that is wrought unto those whose hearts they hold.”