Noctuary

A short little thing from a prompt that caught me. (I have been browsing Book Depository for a book to inspire and reading through a few previews. This one doesn't seem like something I'd want to buy, but one prompt did set me thinking.)


She sat behind a table in the café with tears in shining lines down her face. Wet blackness made a mess about her eyes, her mascara like ink smudged by a careless hand.
          She cried, and sipped her tea and didn't wipe her tears away. I suppose she felt she owed them the chance to see the world.
          She cried without a sound. Any sobs had long since died away and their harsh echoes hadn't touched the café walls and their hanging prints of Picasso and Pollock. Yet new tears still fell, unashamed, from each blue eye.
          From time to time her eyes would close, just for a beat. Then she would turn her face towards the steamed-up window and watched the blurred shapes that moved with such mad haste on the other side.
          When she left without a word through the café door I went to collect her payment from the little silver dish beside her cup. There I found a note, €20, and another in red ink writ on the bill:
          "Lies".


I'm not sure about that "writ" but I needed another syllable in there, but not two, so I couldn't use "written" and "upon" looked clumsy.