Last spring, when I was trying not to fall asleep for EVERY Shakespeare class I didn't skip (it was at nine AM! Don't judge me!) I found myself victim of a very common phenomenon: you know when you fall asleep in an environment that's not perfectly silent, sometimes you randomly wake up enough to catch a snippet of someone's conversation, and for some reason it just sticks with you? That happened to me while my teacher was lecturing on As You Like It - one of my favorites... if only I had taken a later class! - and was discussing in particular the relationship between Orlando and Rosalind. These two characters epitomize love at first sight; they have nothing in common, but they don't even get a chance to discover that before falling head-over-heels the first time their eyes meet. Professor Gerstein was discussing this scene, and those of their interactions later, and came to the following conclusion: "Two spectacular individuals fall in love immediately and irreversibly. These extraordinary individuals have met under ordinary circumstances, and yet, what is it that draws and keeps them together? Simply that they are spectacular."
This got me to thinking. I'm sure we all know that odd couple, the quintessential "opposites attract" type: the lolita and the skater boy, the art kid and the future rapper- those people who society says should have nothing to do with each other and yet, somehow, they have beaten the odds and found one another. As one who has always had literary delusions of grandeur, I was inspired to write up a few vignettes about fantastic individuals who, upon entering a situation they are unfamiliar with, find themselves drawn inexorably to another spectacular individual. And because I am nothing if not a visual learner, I have illustrated them with Polyvore.
Aislin was not in her element. She was much more used to strolling the paths of the woodlands than climbing through its trees and over its rocky precipices. But these were desperate times, and, well... everyone knew the end of that, especially Aislin. She wouldn't be here if she didn't, but she saw on the News today that the deer population had increased to thirty per square mile in her county, and officials had practically declared it open season for the beautiful creatures. She knew the locals would be having a field day soon, and dammit, she wasn't going to let their time on Earth be extinguished by a gloating redneck. She had brought a beautiful hand-carved bow with her, and she knew her way around it, but she was probably the only one in these woods who hoped she wouldn't have to use it. She wasn't here to hunt deer, she was here to
protect them from the horrid members of her species who couldn't accept that the deer problem was their fault for killing all of the wolves and natural predators. You can't just mess up the natural order of things like that and expect.... her brain froze. A doe was standing in the dappled light on a mossy bank, drinking deeply from a burbling stream, and directly in front of Aislin was a young man, dressed in fatigues, aiming a compound boy straight at the animal's heart. Everything seemed to stop. The string tightened momentarily and then slackened, but despite Aislin's gasp, the deer raised her head before bounding away. The arrow lay discarded on the forest floor, and the boy's shoulder were hunched in defeat. He turned - her gasp had made her presence obvious - and, eyes down, admitted his defeat. "Why couldn't I do it?" he asked, not really of her but of the Universe.
"Because," she replied, "you have a soul."
He looked up and smiled at her.
Larissa wondered what on Earth she was doing here.
She had been invited to the Murder Mystery party by a friend of a friend who ended up not being able to attend but insisted Larissa go without her. Of course Larissa had spared no expense on her outfit; costume parties were where she usually felt the most comfortable in her every day wear. However, when she stepped through the door, she felt certain this would be the mistake she was dreading. Apparently no one had told neither guests nor hostess that one was supposed to dress up when attending a Murder Mystery party; the women wore chintzy little dresses of the popular style that alluded to vintage-wear with towering heels no flapper would have been caught dead in, and the men wore designer jeans with vests and ascots and clearly thought themselves quite dapper. All of the men, that is, except the one who was cutting across the party straight towards her. This man looked a quintessential Victorian lord, and when he took her hand and kissed it, the shortness of her breath and flush of her cheeks had nothing to do with her corset.
Mirielle hated this part of the job. She may be handsomely paid to be the nanny for these rich teenage brats (which, of course, basically meant she was their chauffeur), but the fact that her luxurious lifestyle was supported by being laughed at by the kids at the skate park was just too much. She never would have ventured to such a dirty, classless place if she weren't getting such a hefty sum for picking up and dropping off little Nick and Joseph every afternoon. She was leaning against the car, tapping her wingtips impatiently and trying to ignore the snickers of plebian youths, when a runaway skateboard launched directly at her. Trying not to shriek, she turned angrily to the young man approaching her, and suddenly felt her anger evaporate. There was something odd about him that she could not place... except... wait a second. Were those Armani jeans? He was devilishly, bad-boyishly, so-not-her-typeishly handsome, and when he tried to apologize, she just smirked. Nodding to his Decepticon T-shirt and dog tags, she held up a hand to show off her Autobots-insignia ring. "I think we're going to have a problem here."
By the time Nick and Joseph had shown up, they had to spend the entire car ride asking what she looked so smug about. She vowed not to tell them about the slip of paper in her pocket, bearing nothing but a boy's name and a phone number. There may be hope for this one.
