and her words were limitless

there was a slow sort of rising in her chest whenever she spoke, something that told her these particular words would be deep. philosophical. have some sort of thoughtful meaning behind them, a curious thought taken from the head of a girl who never stopped thinking.

with every word, the world would listen with wide white eyes and quivering lips, moved by that subtle beauty in each sound she made, each echo that bounced from shoal grey building to building. she often spoke in the center of the city where crowds of sloppily dressed people would gather and watch with bated breath until her pale pink lips would crease gently and she would speak. it was a sound no one could clearly describe; the descriptions were too vastly different to come up with a tangible response.

her words were the sound of icicles turning into rain at the cusp of spring, or the last breath of a one-eyed soldier, or the moon itself as it descended into its black lake with a faint aurora.

her words became less frequent from time to time. the soldiers would move her away, clasping two white arms between themselves, and she would click her tongue in displeasure and plead with the council for a day or two. she was never found guilty; the soldiers sat, mesmerized by that ethereal noise which caused a hush to fall over the court room.

no one ever did discover the meaning of those words. not until the day of her death.

she had spoken fewer times as millenniums wasted away and the people shifted like a change in the weather. the grey city had become a sparkling palace of business and well-being, and she would smile at each marvel that passed her solemn eyes. the citizens who had waited for her voice were long gone to the graves in the sea and she was alone in a yellow utopia of action and movement for the first time in her very long life.

her tired eyes scanned the city she had once belonged to and the brilliant colors were dim before her eyes. she remembered, with a twinge of gentle nostalgia, those wide eyes and quivering lips and missed them with a powerful ache deep inside of her being. those words, the ones that had been fluttering inside of her chest for seven slow centuries, were practically bursting out of her heart, but her lips were pressed together with so much force that they bled.

the words didn't belong to this city of light and sound. they had no place here.

for the first time the city noticed her again, and by then she was paler than sea foam and as lifeless as a rag doll. The old men and women gathered around her corpse with a sort of curiosity about the girl who had saved a town with her voice; she was the subject to the often spoken myths of their childhoods, and for that they remembered her fondly as they watched her sink away into the ocean.

the words inside of her had killed her, but perhaps they had been better left unsaid, the men mused and the women whispered.
yes, they murmured. perhaps.