sixwordstories | (no subject)

What is?

A woman I am acquainted with.

Ah. She must be very pretty.

[There are some who find Silas pretty for a boy, bone-white skin and hair making him look otherworldly at best. He is quite real, though; merely albino.] You are lucky.

Beautiful, yes... but beauty alone does not make Helen.

What does?

The appeal. The air.

A woman who consumes them wholly, makes them sure they must have her or their lives are not worth living.

The type of woman that men fight, die, and kill for.

You must know very interesting women.

Just the one. Another like her... I've never met.

I am afraid I don't know many people here, women or not. Not many tend to talk to me.

You would do well never to meet a Helen.

[That makes the young man laugh lightly.] I am not sure she would not think me a ghost. I hear that more than I'd like.

It would not matter. Her opinion of a man makes no difference on Helen's effect on him.

Perhaps I should look for a woman like this. It would give me an excuse, at least...

[It's not entirely obvious, but Silas wears a rosary around his neck under his shirt; he also has little interest in women aside from simply as friends.]

...I should think you quite foolish if you sought to find a woman who ensnares men and turns them against one another. Who causes men to fight and die for her and laughs as they do so.

A Helen's beauty is deadly, my boy. Better to seek a Penelope, by far.

I do not think a woman of any name is what I would be looking for in a companion, truth be told.

Narcissus, then.

The beauty and destruction is the same, though Narcissus did his worst only Echo while Helen destroyed two great armies.

True. Your lady must have made quite the impression on you for you speak of her thus.