Part One "What'd you think about love, Lee?" Mira asked, looking intensely at the younger boy by her side, her turquoise eyes boring into his thin, pale face.
He did not look at her but gazed out at the distances with his strange, yellow-gray eyes; so opaque they were that nothing of his soul could be shown through them. Mira thought she would love to incorporate their appearance in her artistic design.
"Everything I think is in my poems; you know that, Mira" he said, resuming his writing, his whole being absorbed in the computer terminal. She watched as the words appeared swiftly on the monitor.
The content of the poem did not seem to Mira to answer the teacher's requirements, but Lee was a law onto himself - the teacher did not really care what he wrote, as long as she could have him reading it in class.
They attended the same class in literature, though Lee belonged to a younger age group than Mira's; but he was precocious in that field, and allowed in by an enthusiastic teacher. Mira had been in love with him since the first day he set foot in class, but Lee was dedicated to poetry and there was nothing else in his life; at the age of fourteen, Mira could have easily been the model for the ancient maxim (had she known it): 'There is always the one who loves and the one who allows himself to be loved.' There was hardly a lesson to which Lee would not bring a fresh poem to read in front of the class. The teacher loved it; she loved all Lee's poems.
"Is it for class?" Mira asked.
"I've no idea what is for class," Lee shrugged; "I write what's in my mind. This one is a comparison between the changing clouds in the sky and the changing heart of Man, as you can see -" as much as Lee had shunned human contact, he had never been shy about his poetry. Mira, who wrote much more personal, inward-looking poems, did not mind effacing herself in his company; she drowned herself in his highly metaphorical expressions while being hypnotized by the musicality of his voice. She yearned to take his slight, willowy body in her arms, hold him to her slim, rather bony figure. There was no chance, though, for this ever to happen; he only noticed her as responsive to his poetic ideas, to the rhythm of his reading. He knew nothing about her, either as a physical or mental entity.
"You know," she ventured, "I could add some visual design to your words..."
