Uncreated Conscience

There was a truth on the tip of her tongue, and she was afraid to speak lest it fall out into the open. She looked at him and would not let herself give in to the insistent pressure of those words against her lips. He was not ready. She was not ready. It hurt to keep her feelings inside, expanding the seams of her heart to a nigh-unbearable pain, but the pain of losing Raphael could only be infinitely worse.

So she would keep her truth secret and she would keep it safe until the world returned to its senses, and she would be free to feel without fear of loss.

"Evie," he said softly.

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.

I don't believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be the same person every day.

I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.

Allison Rushby's six episodes in an original e-serial, pitched as DOWNTON ABBEY for the New Adult market where triplets, estranged since birth, are suddenly brought together and forced to compete for their inheritance, to Dan Weiss at St. Martin's, with Vicki Lame editing, for publication in 2012, by Sara Megibow at Nelson Literary Agency.

When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Their first touch was gentle, and in it Sumire could taste his hesitation and fear. That first kiss was a question, a request for permission, chaste and sweet and not a little shy. They broke apart for the space of a breath, noses still nuzzled against each other’s cheeks, their lips still clinging as though reaching for an answer.

“I…”

She captured that question before it escaped his parted mouth with her own, breathing her answer into his. He deepened the kiss, and she met his ardor with her own. For every little nudge she felt, she pressed back harder, and she felt his kisses like a wish from him, like begging, and she could only respond yes, yes, yes with her own longing. Yes, please, yes, yes, yes…

She was dumbfounded by what was being asked of her. It had been years since she knelt on the hard wooden pews of the Giraffe’s church, years since she had been asked to absorb, to translate, to understand the abstract. She had always been concerned with the tangible, the practical, the mundane; she had no use for God or metaphysics. She was a scholar of the corporeal, not of philosophy or, heaven forbid, POETRY.

Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy...well.

I loved you, and perhaps I love you still.
The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished;
yet burns so quietly within my soul.
No longer should you feel distressed by it.

Silently and hopelessly I love you,
At times too jealous and at times too shy,
God grant you find another who will love you,
As tenderly and truthfully as I.