She hitched up her now-dirty skirts and got slowly to her feet. With a last backward glance at the broken
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flower, she trudged through the forest and emerged onto the gray rock beach.
Ian was standing there, as tall and straight as the ancient trees beside him. He held a pocket watch in his hand. "Selena!"
She stepped into the sunlight. "I am here." The watch snapped shut. He spun to face her. "Good. Then we can begin."
She tried to give him a smile, but her lips were trembly and wouldn't cooperate. She felt like the flower. Without thinking, she moved toward him. Her skirts dragged over the damp rocks.
He frowned, drew a step back. "What is it, Selena? Do you have a headache again?" She kept moving. "No."
His frown deepened. "Why are you looking at me that way?"
"Why you are looking at me that way?" "Don't repeat me. Answer me." "I did."
"Stop." He said it so loudly, with such force, that she responded in spite of herself. She didn't know why she'd been moving toward him anyway, what she wanted of him except that he see her.
He whipped open his journal and pen and sat down on a hulking gray stone. He directed his analytical gaze on her, narrowed and probing. "Did you try to read the Kierkegaard?" At her obvious confusion, he clarified himself. "The book. Did you read any of Kierkegaard's book?"
She fought a rising sense of panic. Very carefully, she picked up her dragging skirts and moved toward him, kneeling on the hard, cold stones at his feet. "I stayed up early last night reading. I... concentrated very hard. I tried to understand-" She looked up at him. For you, I tried so hard. "But ... I did not understand the words."
He scratched something in his book, then gave her a
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smile that for a heartbreakingly perfect moment transformed his face into the angel of her dreams. Then it was gone. "Did you comprehend anything? Random words, sentences, ideas. Anything?"
She sagged back onto her heels, "The man in the story thought that life was hopeless and without meaning and ugly. And that only by believing in the very worst could God be found. It was ... silly."
Ian sta
red at her. "That's exceptional, Selena."
She didn't understand the word exceptional, but she knew she'd disappointed him. Again. "I am sorry. I am too .. . brain-damaged to understand the otter's words."
"Author," he corrected her in a soft voice. Slowly he edged off the rock and kneeled beside her.
She couldn't look at him.
He touched her chin, gently forced her to meet his gaze. When she looked at him, her heart caught. There was a softness in his blue eyes that stole her breath.
He brushed a straggly lock of hair from her eyes. "You just described the theory of existentialism."
"I did?"
"You understood it."
The surprise in his voice made her want to cry. He expected so little of her.
She leaned closer and tilted her face to his. "Look at me, Ian. What do you see?"
He frowned, drew back a little. "What do you
mean?"
She pulled the book from his hands and flipped it open to a random page,