The Quiet (River)

[Avianna (DELETED 9105)]

w e a r i n g

Avianna had been fighting with herself about talking to River for days. No - weeks. Maybe longer. She’d lost track of the time. Between her classes at the local college and her newfound job and the immense weight that crushed down on her shoulders as she agreed and disagreed with her conscience, the girl barely had time to think anymore.

And the silence was screaming at her.

Avianna had arrived in Harper Rock not long ago, brought over by the opportunity that awaited her in the city. She’d transferred to a college farther away from that little remote town she’d lived in all her life, hoping for a taste of freedom, and ended up getting that mouthful that was too big to swallow. Avianna grew up in an area where every neighbor was a friend and every friend was like family, and because of that, over the years, even the little kids that took the bus every morning and the old folk that went to bingo every Friday knew the basic ways to communicate with her. A hand motion here, a nod there, the occasional scribbled-down conversation. Harper Rock was so much different. No hand motions, no nods, no scramble for a scrap of paper and a working pen. It was all too different. Almost different enough to convince her to move back home.

Almost.

Avianna pushed through the one-sided conversations and confused stares with the utmost of grace and a smile on her face. Back at the community college, late one Friday night when everyone who was anyone was invited to the biggest bash of the season, Avianna had stayed inside the university’s library. She’d sat herself down in a chair in the farthest corner and was welcomed with the glowing screen of an unclosed website page that fed her information that was too good to be true. She didn’t even know if any of it was true. The website could’ve been a total joke, but she ate it all up as she scrolled through page after page after page. As she read about vampires in Harper Rock that were strong and were powerful and could heal themselves faster and better than humanly possible.

She figured that meant becoming a vampire could heal her deafness. She figured that meant she could finally, finally escape the quiet life she’d lived her whole life and be welcomed into a world of the loudest, clearest noise. She figured that meant she could speak for the first time and hear her own voice.

It was a miracle that River hired her a few weeks after her arrival in the city. It was an even bigger miracle that after watching and waiting, Avianna came to the conclusion that River was the answer to her problems. That River was the vampire she was going to go to. That River was going to heal her.

That night, Avianna ripped one of the pages from the back of her sketchbook, took the cap off her pen with her teeth, and wrote out her message in her neatest handwriting. The paper was folded over once and loosely shoved into her back pocket. She hadn’t even realized that she’d dropped it until it was too late and hoped that River was the one that had picked it up when Avianna couldn’t find it anywhere in Nightingale Institute, no matter how long and how hard she looked.

---

River,
Can we talk? It’s important.
-Avianna