A Portrait of Power
Verbal Portrait № 1
People are interesting. Not necessarily in a get-up-and-talk-to-them kind of way, but rather in a keenly-observe-from-a-distance way. It’s fun to take a quick gander at a person and construct an entire narrative around them, a whole life of which they are most likely scarcely aware.
Sometimes these will be real people I’ve had a passing near-acquaintance with. Sometimes they will be people I’ve come across while daydreaming.
Sometimes they’ll be feelings. Feelings brought on by people, places, moments. Joys lived and sorrows imaged and all manner of ecstasy in between.
Welcome to the Verbal Portraits.
Have you ever felt invincible? Utterly and absolutely, unquestionably invincible? A foolhardy notion to be sure, one apt for no other than those who share the attribute's namesake. Yet, should you ever find yourself in such a person’s company, you would find them vexingly inescapable, wilfully and happily ignoring the warning klaxons blaring in your mind. They’re bad for you – you know they are, you know you should turn your back to the face that’s too pretty to not have been sculpted – but you don’t want to. Forever or down in flames, but either way you’ll be warm.
You know the type – they’re never seen without a partially-unbuttoned shirt and a jacket that refuses to crease; they spin through the room instead of walking, as if something so mundane would be an insult to their style; they mutter the most casual of remarks, but their voice is always dripping with power, as if the very air they exhale is laced with gold.
That was the person who just walked into the garage. That was Frost. No one knew if that was their first name, their last name, or a nickname of some sort because no one ever thought to ask. Very few people managed to think anything around them. All your attention was on them, but they somehow had a way of making you think everything in the world revolved around you. The lights overhead bent to highlight their form as they glided around the room, but they all but gave off a light of their own. They showered each car with attention and its mechanic with praise, the vast majority of the ones the shop currently had being owned by Frost themself.
They came up to me and slipped out of the jacket as if they had been in and out of suits since the second they were born – which they probably had. They fixed me with one of their trademark smiles – too perfect to not have been practiced – and asked if I could show them what I was doing, their hands signing the words with grace. It took every ounce of my willpower to focus on their hands instead of the way their smile curled at the edges, looping up and down in all the right places. I handed them a wrench and they took it, grease and all, and attentively followed my directions, tightening this and loosening that, the car obliging as if it too recognised their power.
In a flash, they were done, and they spun out the same way they had arrived, and I was left staring at the door they had walked through. I shook my head silently, dismissing the foolhardy notions spinning into being in my head, and turned my attention back to the machine – for Frost was not human, that much was clear – I actually understood.
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