Work Text:
The pencil told the story better than either of them could. The print was a ghost of its former self; the orange faded to a dingy white, the bats decorated with deep scratches and two sets of chew marks. It started as one in a pack of many, on sale at a convenience store and stuffed away in a closet, no different than its jack-o-lantern and black cat siblings.
But Kris and Susie agreed this pencil was special.
It saved her life at least once. It drew the event with their deft strokes until a stylized sketch emerged. It helped pass several notes in class, from the inane to the vital. It doodled in the margins of multiple composition books, mingling goofy phrases with silly pictures of their adventures in the light and dark.
It sometimes, privately, wrote of bonds, sticky-sweet and pure like summer rain. It wrote of fears, of losing each other, losing themself, losing everything.
It wrote of hopes. Of dreams. Of friendships gained.
And, sharpened down to a nub, it wrote of love.