The world had always been a study in shades of grey for Elara Vayne, but tonight, the grey felt particularly suffocating. It was the grey of the rain-slicked asphalt eleven stories below her apartment window, the grey of the endless, unremarkable skyline of a city whose name she’d long stopped caring about, the grey of the silence that pressed in on her from all sides. It was the grey of a life that felt like a waiting room for something that was never going to happen.
She traced a finger through the condensation on the cool glass, her reflection a ghostly imprint over the neon sign of the all-night laundromat across the street. High cheekbones, a mouth that naturally settled into a disapproving line, eyes the color of dark smoke that missed nothing and found little to appreciate. She was beautiful, in a sharp, unforgiving way, like a shard of obsidian. People told her that, sometimes, with a tone that hovered between admiration and a warning. It had never done her any good. Beauty like hers was a fortress, not an invitation. It kept people at a distance, and after twenty-two years, Elara had decided that was precisely its purpose.
With a sigh that was more of a controlled release of breath, she turned from the window. The apartment was a monument to minimalist indifference. A sofa, a bookshelf crammed with dense, philosophical texts and dog-eared fantasy novels—her only true escape—and a single, struggling succulent on the windowsill she kept forgetting to water. It was a place to exist, not to live. The silence was a physical presence, broken only by the low hum of the refrigerator and the distant, rhythmic swish of a car through a puddle.
She picked up a book from the coffee table, its cover depicting a knight battling a creature of shadow and flame. It was comfort food for the soul, a predictable narrative of good and evil, of chosen ones and destiny. It was so much simpler than the ambiguous, disappointing reality of rent payments and grocery runs and the hollow ache of a Friday night spent utterly alone.
This is it, she thought, the familiar, cynical voice in her head chiming in. The thrilling culmination of another week. Should I make tea? Scroll through mindless feeds filled with people living lives more vibrant than mine? Perhaps I should just stand here until I fossilize. At least then I’d be interesting.
Her pride, a constant, simmering flame in her chest, bristled at the self-pity. She was Elara Vayne. She was smarter than this, sharper than this city, more deserving than this… nothingness. But deserving of what? That was the question that had haunted her since she could form coherent thoughts. There was a restlessness in her bones, a feeling of profound misplacement, as if she’d been born on the wrong planet, into the wrong story.
