The sun streamed through the windows of the coffee shop, filling it with an almost solid, yellow glow, as though the very air was made of gold. It already stood in that part of the horizon which heralded its return to a place beyond the sea; the day was radiant with the last of its light.

Tendrils of sun seeped about the warmth of the seat she had picked. She lounged with almost careless grace; her arms draped over the seat as she brought the mug to her lips and took a long sip. Closing her eyes in an effigy of pleasure, she flipped through the magazine on her lap and decided, much too late, that her coffee needed some cream.

Time seemed suspended behind the shops glass, as though the decision to surrender her place of comfort halted her desire to treat her taste-buds. She stood up anyway, mug in hand, magazine in the other, striding in the confines of her suit, elegant like an angel claiming her right over a piece of something divine.

She arrived by a tabletop, picked up the cream, and smiling half to herself, turned as she picked up the stirrer.

She stopped midway from the table to her chair, brushing shoulders with someone in a summer dress. It was the smell of flowers that made her forget that her coffee had waited for the cream in order that she may drink it.

Her hand went limp for a moment and she snapped back almost immediately as a splash of brown bloomed on the floor and a warm, stinging pain bit at the back of her hand. She licked her fingers clean of the coffee, looking about her to see if anyone had seen the little accident.

The memory was sweet, a hint of taste, a blur of color, a strain of rhythmic poesy that could only be written by passion, by heat. She paused and found her head whipping behind her, as though to catch a glimpse of it, skimping the road back to comfort and knowing what she would eventually see.

Her heart stopped. There it was; the rays of light, falling against a face that beauty had spun for over a decade, muttering pain with the distinct throb of a newly cut wound.

And it breathed only one name: Tina.

There was definitely reason to follow the pleasantness with some bit of fodder: *****.

The woman was occupied with a newspaper, had walked with the least of her attentions to the counter, not noticing the person who had brushed attentively past, and was now looking up to see an employee of the shop giving her the five oclock smile. The perfunctory greeting from her lips to the man behind the machine only served to remind Bette of two things: life and love.

Life, in every dealing of Tinas limbs as she threw words at the man in soft, uncertain commands, telling him what she wanted. Love being dealt to only one person, one woman, one beloved and true.

And the thought shattered the moment into the reality Bette had lived in for over a week. The luckless void she had created around her existence, licking every corner with bitterness and ice, ballooned to bursting point. It gave her courage to simply carry her feet to where her heart did not want to go.

Bette hurried out, as though leaving the space would ultimately spare her from the rush of emotions that constricted her throat and threatened to soak her eyes. She dumped her coffee into the nearest trash-bin and risked a glance backward to see if Tina had seen her.

Whoa, Porter! Whats the hurry? Alice called out, leaning against the wall beside the coffee shop entrance, waiting for a friend as she swatted her thigh repeatedly in an act of impatience. Her face was unreadable though her eyes registered surprise in finding Bette scuttling out of the place Tina had rushed cheerfully into. Pity softened her posture and she leaned quietly into Bettes space. Whats wrong? she finally asked, certain of the answer.

Bette blinked twice. Im whats wrong, she muttered half to herself.

The look on Alices face rent the festering wound a little wider. *Good you know, Porter*. A cool look of dismissal fell on Alices eyes and Bette gratefully made little use of her voice.

A quick nod, a hasty escape, and off Bette went into the shade of some very comforting trees. An alley lay conveniently opposite to where she stood as she nervously collected her thoughts.

Staring at the alley, she noted that it emulated her mood. Blank shadows born from the opaqueness of taunting, brick walls waited seductively, seeking to maim the one who would step into the dark, to drown in its anonymity. She threw herself in, wondering for a moment why she did so and suddenly, found her breath shorter, her lungs suddenly trimmed of their outer edges, such that grief filled half of their volume, and regret drained the rest of the air. Her hand stretched out to balance herself.

She choked, leaning against a wall, pleading for it to catch her as human hands would and yet failing to hold herself up as she folded in a sob that was more silent than boisterously expressive. Her face crumpled, creased into the grim happenings of seven days and a weeks worth of control fled with the memory: a hint of taste, a blur of color, a strain of rhythmic poesy that could only be written by passion, by heatby love.

It was a surprise, that first trace of moisture, as though a faint drizzle had finally fallen on a desert cursed only with sunlight and nothing else. She found herself coughing up the voice and bile of something that had long been kept silent, weeping its strange, unfamiliar tears that did not stop until the sunshine vanished and left her huddling in the dark. Cold, shivering, afraid of even the minute movements of darkness falling, she knew that she had been pushed to the complete reverse of what she had always been. And there was but one question to ask:

*Where in the world have I put my better half?*