Word Count: 913

The glow of the computer screen stared Paris in the face, taunting him with a white word document and its pitiful word count: 0. He had nothing. No introduction, no body, no conclusion, and the paper was due tomorrow, just in time to make him miserable before the winter holidays. It was bad enough that the snow was still piled high outside; being stuck at his desk writing a paper about the French Revolution instead of in bed – warm and preferably snuggled up against a nice male body -- was not how he’d intended to spend his day. He didn’t care about the Bastille or Louis XVI or the Tennis Court Oath. That had all been over two-hundred years ago. Why should it even matter anymore?

He was half tempted to write a very sarcastic paper about commoners who didn’t understand their place in society and cruelly stripped their betters of all their privileges. He would have loved to see what sort of a grade he actually managed to make on it and if his teacher thought it amusing and creative or just plain wrong, but the words weren’t coming to him. He’d started typing out some sort of a thesis statement an hour ago, before deciding the struggle wasn’t worth it and backspacing over everything he’d written – miniscule as it was.

He hated writing papers. He hated reading and researching and trying to come up with his own ideas when everything had already been written about by smarter people to the point of exhaustion. By all rights, this topic should be an easy one for him. He was French – or at least he was French enough to know when his father his cursing at him in French – yet he felt no pride in it. He cared about as much for Bastille Day as he did for the Fourth of July; the only good thing about it was that he got to wave around a non-American flag and have people look at him as if they couldn’t believe he’d have the nerve to flaunt the non-American half of his blood in their faces.

Eventually, Paris sighed and gave up, figuring he would just have to find someone to write his paper for him. Annoyed, he shoved his small stack of books from the library across his desk so that they would no longer be in his way. In doing so, he accidentally pushed them into his non-Christmasy snowglobe, an action that had the object teetering on the edge of his desk before toppling over and zooming toward the floor.

For some reason Paris was unable to explain, his heart rose to clog his throat at the sight of the snowglobe careening toward the ground. In seconds, he was out of his chair, knocking it to the floor in his rush and throwing his hands out to catch the winnings that should mean nothing to him. His fingertips brushed the curve of glass that encased the woman within, but he was unable to grab hold of it. With a sickening bang, the snowglobe crashed onto the floor, then rolled out of sight under his bed.

Paris cringed, his heart hammering wildly in his chest. Ha waited a few moments, tense, before crouching onto the floor and crawling to the side of his bed, hesitantly peaking beneath it. There sat his snowglobe, waiting for his reaching hands. He grasped it tightly, pulling it back out to hold it up and examine it for damage.

There was nothing – no chips, no dings, no dents. It looked as perfect as it had the moment he’d taken it out of the box. There wasn’t even any dust or lint on it from beneath his bed. The base was unbroken, every piece in place, and the globe itself had not a single crack in it. He turned it around in his hands to make sure, but found no evidence of the fall. The water sloshed around on the inside, the woman situated tranquilly in the center, surrounded by swirls of sparkling glitter.

Paris gaped at it, amazed, holding it reverently in his hands as he made his way back to his desk. He sat the globe next to his computer while he picked up his chair, sitting down once he had it upright and staring in both bewilderment and relief. He reached out for it again, ran his hands over it, picked it up to twist the key and hear the music play. He feared it might sound distorted, that some of the gears inside might have been jostled out of place, but the song had not changed a note since the very first time he listened to it. Still sad, still wistful, like a memory encased in glass.

“What are you?” he asked after a heavy sigh, more confused than ever. “This is ridiculous.”

Yet he couldn’t help himself. He sat and he stared and he heaved another sigh, his heart finally settling back into his chest.

When the song was over, Paris lifted the snowglobe to place it somewhere where it wouldn’t be harmed, in his wardrobe amongst the softness of his clothes. He didn’t know why, but the thought of it breaking set his mind spinning, and he would rather not have any more close calls.

He didn’t know what disturbed him more – the strange globe itself, or the thought of how crushed and broken he would feel if he came into the room one day to find it shattered on the ground, the floor soaked with water and glitter like blood.