To Keep You

Seventeen: Chaya

Love comes in many forms. Sometimes it's in the form of friendship, sisterhood or brotherhood. There's the love a parent has for a child and a love shared between a grandparent and grandchild. Sometimes love is buddled in the form of fur and four paws. And even selfishly, perhaps at times love appears in the form of worldly object such as money, food, etc.

Where does it end? Where is the line drawn? Can't think of one can you? And isn't that sad, we've allowed the sickness of love to invade every aspect of our lives and most of us don't even care. It confuses me deeply, because if you scrape off all the glittery and shiny parts of love, you'll see it for what it is. Pain, heartbreak, and fake. For true love doesn't exist and love is meant for fairytales, not reality.

Wake up and realize that...

Sweat dripped down my forehead as I harshly ripped weeds from the role of mixed vegetables that lined the garden. However cold the air was, the bright sun shined tyrannically down upon my body. I may as well be skin and bones, a walking and breathing corpse.

Hanging my head, I silently looked to the right and left of me. It was only an hour ago that Malachi had forced me down upon my knees within the fence of the garden to work alongside the other woman. Without even saying goodbye, he instructed me on what to do and backed away from me as if I was fire and he was snow, afraid of melting away to nothing.

He stood watching me for many moments before painfully taring himself away as if he thought the very sun would burn my body to ash if he wasn't around to protect me.

I rolled my eyes at that thought for truly he needed to figure out how to act, one moment he was acting like a mindless beast and the next like a knight in shining armor. I needed not one of those in my life, and yet he seemed pleased to be both.

Why would I need another beast in my life when the love is already filling that role?

Sighing bitterly, I fell onto my backside and cursed underneath my breath as burning pain shot throughout my body.

I found psychical pain to be more durable than mental pain. For psychical pain is only a slight heartbeat of pain here and there, rather as mental pain feels like you're in a constant storm. One when your very soul is always at risk of drowning in the deep and dark depts of your pain.

"He's a good boy."

As soft as the wind and as ghostly as a phantom, the other woman, to whom Malachi had introduced as Esther, his mother; spoke lightly as she continued to work in the corner of the garden off to the right of me. She wore plain jeans that were baggy in all areas, while her upper body was cloaked in a large blue cotton jacket and her midnight black hair was bound by an old baseball hat. Her clothes hung from her body awkwardly as if they weren't hers and she was simply borrowing them.

They seemed rather...boyish.

Furrowing my eyebrows, my eyes narrowed for I did not know whether if she was speaking to me, God, or herself. Her eyes were focused on the weeds that she was gingerly plucking from the soil, and she seemed uninterested in everything around her.

Including myself.

"I beg to differ." I mumbled underneath my breath for even if she was not speaking to me, I highly disagreed with her statement for it was false and unimaginable. The Malachi I knew was beastly, ungentle-men-like, and rude. Heck, a wolf has more manners than him. However, he was strange for he appeared to be trying to gain some form of trust from me.

I could read a weed blowing in the wind better than I could that man.

Blowing out a hot breath, I gritted my teeth for what I hated nearly as much as love is being outsmarted. Growing up, I prided myself in always being smarter, better.