Secrets and Seclusion
Trust no one.
“That’s sweet of you to say” Marissa blushed softly as she looked up at him a small smile in place as they continued to walk. “Exactly, so what’s your story? If I don’t mind my asking? I’d like to get to know you better.”
“I’m just being honest.” He replied with a small rise and fall of his shoulders. When she asked him of his own story, his past, his eyes briefly went distant and unfocused but he quickly managed to snap out of it before he completely dissociated. “I… am the son of a Navy man and a Romanian immigrant. I never knew my father. Went into medicine young. My mother always insisted I was to ‘study are and become rich American doctor’ but ended up a drafted American field medic before that scenario could become reality. There were… repercussions following and I didn’t practice even after I finished school and passed the exams. So I took a teaching post. But even then, I struggled a great deal with… shell shock and anxiety and dissociation that I eventually lapsed and lost my job and my pension. I came here on a whim because someone talked me into it but they left and I just… stayed. I’ve actually never really partaken, ironically, but I’m content enough with a steady place to stay and lots of books and quiet places to read them.”
How have you been?
The usual. Holed up in my room reading. Though I did take Desmond to the hospital some days back. Thought he might have had appendicitis. Not fun. And yourself?
“I think I read ev’ry book in th’ entire library by now.”
That’s quite the feet. Might have to convince a few of us to dip into our personal libraries for new literature.
“Yeah that was always the scary part, well that and the heights …they tended to put me on the huge horses knowing I was terrified of highest and laughed when I got dizzy and fell off….my cousins were buttheads” she sighed as she looked up at him “reputations arn’t everything I find more often then not there is another side to the story, or a detail they left out.”
“A bit of vertigo, have you? Interesting. Not surprising or uncommon, though. It’s just goof you didn’t get seriously injured. Pretty girl like you wouldn’t suit bruises, I don’t think. Or rather, bruises wouldn’t suit you.” He replied with a small smile. He wasn’t meaning to be flirtatious. He was simply blunt and honest and Marissa was pretty and he would have hated to see her face bruised and scuff from a topple off a horse. “And you’re right there. Those who tend to cultivate a reputation seem to have the most to hide it would seem.”
