Acceptance

     Ta-tatata. Ta-tatata. Ta-tatata. Tatata-tatata-tatatata. The rain pulses against the glass patio door, pounding in a background roar on the roof. She rolls her fingers along the glass of a dormant phone screen yet cannot mimic the music of rain upon the glass doorway. She gets lost in the thunder of the droplets pounding overhead until the tatata of rain hitting her patio door falls silent. Needle-like drops fly through the air, snapping upon the glass as if to break it only for they themselves to shatter into hundreds of smaller drops. The storm drones on outside, tame in its cries. 

      The crackling pop of fire flares up as heat leaches across the room. The orange glow burst along the shadow clad walls instantly, redressing the room in brighter attire. 

     "You didn't have to start a fire." Her voice cracks softly against the flame's chatter. 

     "It was cold anyway." A voice booms across the room, faded and breathy even in its volume.

     It wasn't really. The glass fogged from the warmth inside and each raindrop sizzled against the ground ready to rise in mist even with the continuation of the torrential downpour. Still goosebumps rose across her arms, nipping at her pale flesh with the bite of an intangible chill all her own to suffer. She tugs the thick blanket tighter around bony shoulders, molding into a mass of dark fabric against an even darker sofa. She rings her hands as one would ring clothes, doing so slowly as if she can pull out all the sweat, push out the very essence of the nervousness coursing through her body. 

"You're right." The words fall from her lips after a moments pause, reluctant like a jumper off a cliff. Her words hit the ground with a solid thud, pounding against the sound filled silence. 

     She has relented to the room edging in towards her, the peace they had fabricated dying the moment the words had left her lips and entered the still space. Somehow that single acceptance of a false truth has rippled through the room. Though the voice had in fact been very wrong the rightness which settled into her bones worked to verify the one thing she had been meaning to deny until she no longer could. And perhaps she accepted this thing of all things because no longer could she deny it. What is it? She is left to ponder that which she has accepted. Though she had no proper words to put it under she knows that something before that had failed to consume her has been allowed past the final door to invade her entirely. 

     In a moment, maybe of weakness or strength of acceptance, she glances to the space next to the fire where shadows crawl and sway, but no form stands. The pool of orange light grows and falls, but the shadows are unchanging, daunting shapes devouring the rest of the room, dancing but never do they grow and never do they shrink. The flames and the shadows are her only companions, each so very different yet depending drastically upon the other. 

     "It is very cold." She whispers, this time to herself and only herself.