To him, she was the essence of youth, pretty and vivacious. You couldn’t see her and not smile; couldn’t be in her presence and not fall in love. Her expressions changed with the speed of coins dropping from a slot machine, always different, always inviting. She moved with confident grace, not like the other gangly teenagers who were catching up with their bodies. She was young, and yet she was already mature in ways that counted. You could hear it in her seriousness of emotion when she talked about love and loss. She wasn’t a melodramatic teenager weeping over a dead kitten on the highway. She understood better than most adults that life was fragile, quickly birthed, quickly spent. Seeing her, talking to her, laughing with her, made his heart ache. She reminded him that his own youth was behind him. She made him wish he could go back and live it all over, even if he could change nothing. Then again, Ashlynn made his heart sing, too, because she had such promise. When he was caught up in the evil of the world, she showed him a glimmer of light.
