The woman pressed the palm of her hand against the dirt-speckled pane.
Glass and skin met with wistful pressure and the blood was drained from her hand. From the other side one could only see the pale negative of it and the edge of a roughly woven sleeve. All around her opressive silence had got the upper hand. Her companions were hardly more than outlawed equals.
Just minutes before she had been the eye of the storm. Everyone had rebelled and like a pot of cooking water they had been babbling, sloshing against the doors and windows. Could they have taken more? Would the soap not have been a waste? This was quickly put to an end.
Only the woman crossed the line and reached the boiling point at last. And leaped up.
The man near the woman waited shivering with cold. He had not seen his twenty-third summer yet, but at this moment there where loads bending his back. He starred at the scrawny fingers at the window.
Although he tried to concentrate on the small tips and the hardly blossomed features, the chapped lips threw themselves in his focus.
And the narrow ring.
The features grew distorted in the blurred background, the mouth spoke words he couldn't bear.
And in spite of all the promises he had made to himself, he got lost. Lost to the sweet chestnut-coloured eyes. They saw past his raised shoulders, now both hands on the window pane, hammering on it. Their look pierced the air few centimetres beside his ear. As if they where looking for another frost-bitten soul.
Then they bore into him, scortching his mind with their last strenght.
Not even the icy glass could cool that look.
It singed him. Her fear singed him.
She could feel the wheels streetching, breaks giving way. Shrill whistles. Marching steps. Commands. If she could have stopped the stream of coal, she would have done everything to do so. A uniform pushed her back onto her small seat.
And thus stood the young man alone, noone else had been insane enough to come here. And thus sat the young woman, only one to many others. Crowded. Next to the window as if she wanted to pass through it. Shirt sleeve, shirt, the yellow star and the woman had melted in hot panic and now they cooled off.
Became grey.
She didn't shout anymore. The next blow of the whistle was salvation for him. The jolt that went through her put out the fire like a gust of wind. There was no more life in her. The spell of her eyes was broken and he finally turned his head to the ground. He would keep it there. Clenching his fist, he took a new oath.
His sobs were tiny clouds.