I looked down at what was placed in my hands. A small, silver and glass chain stared back at me, the rays of sunlight reflecting on it from the window in a hypnotic shine, enslaving my focus on the blue gem within.

"It's a necklace, with a birthstone." they said.

"Turquoise. Your December."

Silence.

I looked up from the Persian gem with a silent breath. The air smelled of a foreign sense, like that of an expensive perfume, yet I had never experienced it's replenishing effect until now.

"It is said to be the oldest stone held by man, that it relaxes the owner's thoughts... and keeps it's wearer safe... whenever it's worn."

Their head tilted down, their hands grasping mine to a close around the gift. They spoke to me, their eyes diverting away from view.

"It is a symbol of love."

I watched as my Love stared up at me, their violent irises cursing my memory with nostalgia of our hidden past.

"It will make you happy."

I could not blink, for if I did we would have lost our entrancement in eachothers' gaze. A lifetime glossed before our continued efforts of attachment passed in the blink of our eyes, quickly turning our heads away with a steady flow of boiling, cold blood.

I glanced back to the jewel. My mind may lie, yet I felt as if the stone had changed colour, if by only a minuscule amount of shading, impossibly unnoticeable. I saw not by sight, but by a sense I could not describe—a sense I believed humans were incapable of perceiving, but with only a second of struggled understanding, quickly buried away.

The touch of the stone felt strengthening, like a medicine, but with a failed vaccine of distraught mentality. Our Love's warmth left my hands, but the sense of our brief connection remained.

It remained in the stone, or in me, I could not say.

But he did not leave.

He did not leave.