Few minutes ago I was still in ComArte, the school laboratory. For some reason I wanted to go home, and/or go to the mall for lunch (in spite of being zero zero hungry). I also had to be home early, as my father needed the car. People could not decide what they wanted to do, let alone when they were going to do it.
In this while, this is worthy of note: people were browsing through DeviantArt pages, I was not paying much attention. Then there was a comment, "(...) posted on my picture! She draws some very indecent bishonen - and furry!" I chuckled, "Heh, furry", wondering what the hell could furries be doing in DeviantArt, and went back to not paying attention. "Follow this link here, now that one. Look!" It was not directed at me, but I looked anyway. Yaoi ("pfaw"), furry ("hmm"), pink and blue hair ("eh?"), inverted cross ("couldn't possibly"). "See? I said her drawings were indecent!" I looked at the copyright info. "Zer (c) Holly". Heh heh. The world sometimes seems incredibly small.
Onward. That IE window was closed, but people still did not decide to go, or anything else. I grew tired of waiting, and said I was going home. Bye-nyo's said, I rushed to the car under the drizzle that was falling, the kind that makes the day very gray ("Rather Londonish", said a friend today), the kind I love more than any other kind of day. Sidewalk, someone was walking in my direction, holding an umbrella. "White umbrella, must be a girl." The face was hidden. "Yes, body of a girl." A few more steps. "Maybe it is that girl that did not get to sign up for class in time last year and left me to do a group project nearly all by myself?" If that was so, I would have to nod and smile in greeting, nothing out of the ordinary. More steps, I could see the hair. "Red hair... No, not that girl, unless she dyed it. That is a beautiful red, no less; if it is not dyed, she must be a Nordic goddess." I looked at the exposed arms. "Very pale. Yes, the red hair may just be natural. Wow, who can that be, that I never noticed?" Kept on walking, the wind was blowing at my back, so she had the umbrella hiding most of her face to protect herself from the drizzle. "So pale, red hair... Who, who?" Then I passed by her, and for half a second I saw her eyes.
I wrote "Dream Debris" a few years ago. My favorite part is the description of the tavern, but I remember the hardest thing to write was the description of Liada. I just dislike describing people. But Liada was going to be the reason for the entire thing, so she deserved a good description, and she needed to be beautiful. Maybe it was a bit foolish of me at the time to base her on a girl from school - which led me to giving her brown hair. The girl from school had greenish blue eyes. I remember changing that bit. Acquamarine has always been among my very favorite colors - in the case of eyes, it is my favorite color. So Liada had acquamarine eyes - "bluish green". Two big gems that seemed to encapsule entire oceans of the purest water in them. I never remember how I described her hair, but I know well enough that her eyes were acquamarine.
(And an interesting fact: years later, after "Dream Debris" was forgotten by all, and Twila was already a big part of Etienne's life, she mentioned her eyes were acquamarine. Some things are very unnecessary, and seem part of a bad book - but the effect can be so stupidly cute and adorable. And yes, that was a coincidence.)
Either case, I indeed imagined Liada's acquamarine eyes (and Twila's for the matter) could not exist outside the scope of my imagination - and even in that realm it is problematic to find the exact color, for it is not one color, it is the effect caused by a perfect combination of blue and green in very specific shades. Acquamarine. As I passed by the red haired girl, for half a second I saw her eyes.
No idea who she was, I never saw her before (trust me, I would remember it). I also doubt her presence is frequent, assuming that was not a one-time visit - considering it was 11h15 AM when she arrived, I doubt she has any part of the set schedules. Therefore, I doubt I will ever see her again. No, I am not lamenting. Just commenting. I came to believe sometimes the gods decide to impress us, so they place in our ways things that defy reality, things that go beyond beauty, surpass the possible. Pale skin, red hair, acquamarine eyes. Surely, if not a glimpse of heaven presented to me by some friendly deity, she was surely not more than my imagination jumping on me to make me happy for a while - and turn half a second into thirty minutes.
Posted by Etienne at March 17, 2003 12:06 PM