TC - Number 14 - Smile

     Lucy couldn't take it anymore. She had been stressing herself out. She was going crazy for that smile. She thought about every touch, every whisper. . . none of it made sense without that maddening smile. Thinking on it made her skin crawl and tingle all at the same time. For the life of her, this train of thought was making her lose it and she had to get ready for work.
     She sat at her vanity and started brushing out her plain, dark red hair and sighed as she watched herself brush. She knew she wasn't perfect like all those people she read about in her fashion magazines. Her skin wasn't alabaster perfect and her lips weren't altogether symmetrical and she had a size fourteen waist with a little more padding to it than should be allowed. Hell, she hadn't had a perfect hair day since she was seven. But that smile at her was all for her and she knew it somehow.
     Maybe that's why she couldn't get over it, or shake the feeling that the smile was a bad thing. No one had ever looked at Lucy that way before. She knew she wasn't pretty. . . in fact, she wasn't even passable. So why would someone waste such a gorgeous smile on her? It was such a perfect, hypnotic one too.
    No more of that, Luce. You're going to be late if you keep it up. She thought to herself that she'd had to scold herself everyday for almost four months now. It was a miracle that she hadn't been fired yet. She knew her job was important, but she never understood exactly why. Being a semi-professional book illustrator didn't always merit very high praise. So why the smile?
     Lucy slipped a sun-dress on over her underthings and pulled her just brushed hair into a clip. Slipping into her mary janes, she checked her sparse make-up before hurrying out of the door. As she was walking to work, she kept feeling as though someone (no, something) were watching her. That something would make Lucy a paranoid mess if she let it. C'mon Luce. You've made it this long without cracking up. . .why start now?
    Pretty soon, she rounded the corner. Her thoughts were still a sort of a mess and (she was normally pretty scatterbrained) she really wasn't paying attention to where she was walking. So she never saw the beautiful form that she had just unknowingly run headlong into until she had done it. "Oh! I'm. . . I'm. . ."
    A lovely, yet soft, voice spoke in answer. If Lucy didn't know any better, the voice could have been likened to a haunting, rolling growl. As the voice replied to Lucy, she lifted her comely red head and a pretty hand took one of hers. "Oh come now,Lucy. There will be no need for repentance from you. If anything, the true wailing and gnashing of teeth should be mine."
     Looking up into the person's face there were many things that, to any other person, would have been shockingly beautiful. Her eyes saw two beauty laden sapphires that blazed out at her, daring to pass for eyes. The nose was sloping and so near to perfect that angels would have yearned for one such as it was. The mouth, which looked as though it should match the nose in its marbled perfection, held a light scar running from the top of the left corner to the bottom right corner. But that was not what drew Lucy's attention. It was, as those lips had curled as she paused breathing for the briefest of moments, that self-same smile that had been haunting her for almost four months.
     "Why. . .why do you say such poetic things to me? You - you don't even know me." Lucy was losing it, she knew it. This wondrously lovely person with hair as brown as the down of a goose and twice as soft had complimented her. Lucy's hand almost revolted on her and roamed up to touch it. Thankfully, Lucy has a good control of herself and all she did was look up into the gorgeous face and hope against hope to hear that growl and see that haunting smile again.
    Her wish was soon granted on both accounts. The voice once again began to flow like heavy water over rocks, a hint of that infamous smile playing over those near perfect lips. " I let these pretty things roll from my tongue to your ear because that is where they make their home. These pretty things flock to you because that is the port to their vessel from whence they did flee. My dearest Lucy, you receive  all of these things because of all people on this wretched rock, they follow only you. You are their mistress and for such order as you can give me, I follow their lead."
     Then came the full smile and it took all that Lucy had not to melt fully into her shoes. She would have shyly looked at her feet had her eyes not suddenly alighted on her watch. " Oh, great! I'm. . . I'm sorry again. . . I'm late for work, then. . ."
     She fumbled a bit and began to hurry away, but the stranger didn't move, toned arms crossed and waiting for her to turn back. It was almost as though the beauteous stranger knew that she was missing something. Way to go, Luce. Late again.
     "I'm sorry. . . I didn't catch your name."
     The stranger's smile never wavered as that great, rough melody spilled carefully from the lips that fate forgot. The brown down that was that stranger's hair, cut in a short manner that sloped to a chin that held the slightest hint of yet another scar, bobbed as a laugh that betrayed the voice that had cascaded from those drawn up posies-colored lips as she tapered it off to answer.
     " My name, dearest love, is Romero."
    Lucy blushed a bit and finally gave up on restraint. She reached her dainty hands out to touch the navy pinstripe that Romero's body was clad in. The wing-tipped shoes looked almost out of place on the near, busy streets. But to Lucy, they were as perfect as Romero's ghastly smile.
     As she ran her hands up the vest and around the newly named wonder's waist, a deep sigh ran through Lucy. Romero uncrossed the toned arms and let them fall into place on Lucy where the fit perfectly. They could have been two lovers embracing or saying their goodbyes, but either way they were as perfectly fit as two lovers could be. And as Lucy lay her head on Romero's chest, the wonder did something that illustrated the purpose of this being's appearance. The wondrous head, with the chin and lips of light scars, lay atop Lucy's and Romero smiled.