Nocturne reads midnight poetry

Her name was Nocturne. She stood in the ruined abbey where she had stood for a hundred years, under the same full moon, in the same black velvet gown with the slit that showed her porcelain knee joints. The book was already open. It always was. "Chapter One," she read aloud, her voice small and clear and clicking like a music box wound too tight. "On how roses remember." She turned a page. The red bookmark ribbon fluttered. "Every rose given in this courtyard was never dead. It was only sleeping. Thorns are only there to remind you to hold gently." A wind moved through the arches, and a little moss shivered on the stones. Her long black hair moved with it. She turned another page, carefully, with her jointed white fingers. "Chapter Two," she whispered to the empty arches, to the moon, to the single rose in her other hand. "On how to wait." She smiled then just a small movement of her dark plum lips. "Waiting is easy," she read. "You just stand very still, and you keep the rose fresh, and you keep the page marked with red, and eventually someone comes to listen." She looked up from the book, her big violet eyes catching the moonlight. And for a moment, it felt like she was reading to you.