The Unexpected Encounter

"I knew you were trouble when you walked in..."

Taylor Swift - I Knew You Were Trouble

***

Alice's beautiful face could not be seen because of the flowers. She had always taken care of the great florist at the circus, she had memorized what each plant liked and needed.

Birds in the sky chirped as she placed the flowers in her hands in a large pot. Childhood memories came to mind, causing her to drift away. When Alice was a little girl, she liked to put a birdcage on her head and squeak like a bird, and she couldn't be mad at her little mind that thought birds belonged in cages back then, because the caged birds she'd seen at the circus since she was little had taught her that cages were their home.

Alice had never pretended to flap her wings in her plays. She believed that she could be a bird with a birdcage on her head. Her distraction ceased as Alice's bright blonde hair fell before her eyes, and her cheeks turned pink when she realized who she was looking at, albeit absentmindedly.

There he stood. His straight black hair resembled a hedgehog, and his hair had always been short at the sides since the day she saw him. His eyebrows were thick and black like his hair. His light green eyes were squinting, she would have given up even this flower shop to see those eyes up close. No man in the circus, she thought, had such a purified face and a stern countenance.

Alice sighed deeply. Because no matter how much she looked at him, Damon's eyes had never touched her.

*

-1 Month Later-

Gazelle woke up in the morning and went to the nearest stream to bathe, but it was raining. She still didn't care, why would someone care about the pouring rain when a person has nothing?

She desperately hugged her naked body as it rained and lightning flashed. One hand was on the back of her head as she tried to reach her back. She wept, sobbing despite the voice of the sky trying to drown her cries.

Hours passed as she washed herself crying in a small stream, and eventually, the rain stopped. She stood up as if nothing had happened, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Her body was naked and wet, but not cold. She was used to the difficult conditions of the forest where she lived for a month. In the stream, she took slow steps as the stream's water reached her groin. When the clouds in the sky disappeared and gave way to the bright sun, she turned her face to the sun, she smiled like a person smiling for the first time.

After getting out of the stream and putting on the clothes she washes and dries every day, she loaded all her belongings on her back and set off for the hut deep in the forest. On the way to the hut, she picked daisies and sunflowers, holding them gently in her delicate hands. When she saw flowers covered with cobwebs, she did not clean the cobwebs like other people because she knew how nature works and did her best not to disturb the order.

She did not collect flowers in normal times, because she believed that flowers were happier in their natural environment. There were only moments when for her because she could not remove the unbearable pain in her heart, she would pull the flowers from their roots. Like every human being, she was trying ways to deal with her pain.

When she got to the dead old man's horse she had left a few kilometers away, she remembered that there was nothing to eat in the hut. She squinted her eyes at the sunlight as she took the bow and arrow slung on her back in her hands, and pointed the bow toward the sky, but she could still see well. When the arrow shot from the bow, it pierced the body of a large bird, knocking the animal a few meters away. Gazelle calmly walked over to the animal's head and grabbed its legs and lifted it into the air. After removing the arrow from its body, she tied the rope she carried with her to the animal's legs and hung it on her back. She was now ready to go.

It worked for the first time since she had attended wilderness survival courses when she was younger, at her father's urging, and also spent time in the woods with her father all the time. Using the bow and arrow was seriously difficult, but the training she received as a child made her a professional. When she remembered how much she hated those trainings, her father's shouts flashed before her eyes, repeatedly trying to use the bow and arrow. She thought she would never make it, but in the end, she became the girl her father wanted.

The animal was running when she climbed the horse and started to ride through the forest. A few tree branches scratched her face and arms, but Gazelle didn't flinch. Two drops of tears fell from her two eyes, but she never took her hard eyes off her front side.

She had been trying to talk to people for a month, but everyone was looking at her like she was crazy. Everyone was running from her. She had been looking for that man for a month, looking for him in every hole, but could not find him anywhere.

*

The previous owner of the hut must have liked to paint because the warehouse of the hut was full of paintings. After searching everywhere for the painting materials, Gazelle finally found them and started to spend time using them to keep from going crazy.

While painting the canvas on the floor, she was surrounded by paints and brushes. She had a pensive expression in her eyes. She drew and painted the raven-haired man, although she realized what she was doing later. When her pensive eyes noticed the face on the canvas, she frowned angrily, throwing the canvas in front of her against the wall in a single move.

Her anger did not subside, so she got up and left the room, slamming the outer door of her little hut open, and stepped out. She smiled angrily as if she was going to go crazy. Why couldn't she find that man anywhere? "Give me a reason," she whispered to herself. She bent her face forward, and her dark brown hair fell to the sides of her face. "How do you know who I am?

She thought she needed to sleep to get rid of the man's face, but she was wrong. Those sharp brown eyes would haunt her in her sleep. Gazelle, who was hugging tightly to herself with her hair falling over her face when she entered her hut, met him in her dreams.

His brown eyes were piercing. Her heart was pierced, she was shattered. Why wasn't the man smiling at all? Why was he looking at her like she was his enemy? And most importantly, she had only realized until now that he had regained consciousness. So why couldn't she remember the hero of the novel who had regained consciousness? "I didn't create you..." she whispered. "You created your own story and I have no place in it."

The man answered, and Gazelle was caught between dream and reality the moment she heard his voice. "I was always there. You just never saw me."

Someone was standing over her when Gazelle woke up on the floor of the hut coughing. She knew him and had been looking for him for days. He was the way out of this world: the raven-haired man.