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// A Thousand 
// Story: Lemon Sorbet 
// by Annuska 
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	One-thousand was one of those numbers that sounded much larger than it actually was.

Well, it was a big number. It was a big number for counting to and a big number for purposes of hyperbole, like when she was super busy and said she had, “like, a thousand things to do” – though she did not, in reality, have a literal thousand things to do. It was a big number for passages of time – a thousand seconds (16 minutes, 40 seconds), a thousand days (approximately 2 years, 9 months), a thousand years (a really long time).

But generally, it sounded much larger than it actually was.

A thousand sheets of paper could make a single book or a gift of paper cranes. A thousand cupcakes was an appropriate number for a decently-sized party or wedding. A thousand grains of sand barely composed a handful.

A thousand strands of hair through her fingers barely a small portion of the long locks they played a part to, a thousand words not enough to convey properly how she felt, a thousand stars overhead incomparable to the galaxies that were swirled up inside of her by even the smallest smile accompanied by those bright cerise eyes. A thousand seconds articulated by syncopated heartbeats would never be too many – no, they couldn’t even begin to be enough – nor would, nor could a thousand nights together.

A thousand was not enough ways for her to express how much she loved every last thing about her – how much she loved her. The more-than-a-thousand little things that composed her very being, all the things that a thousand reasons could never begin to explain – and where to even start? the look she got in her eyes when mesmerised, the way the colour of her irises blossomed with awe? the interspersing of the words like and totally throughout her speech with the slightest melodic hint to it? the—

“Heyyy. You like, totally zoned out.”

—infectious giggling that interrupted her poetic thoughts?

“I guess I was,” Pinkie returned with the dumbest of smiles as she looked down at Sonata looking up at her. Not that she hadn’t been looking at her before (for a thousand seconds – 16 minutes, 40 seconds – perhaps?), running through her mental list of all the things a thousand was too small a number to account for. “I was thinking.”

Sonata relaxed where she sat, back against Pinkie’s chest, but her eyes remained fixed on Pinkie’s and her head remained tilted backward. “What about?”

“Numbers,” Pinkie said, lifting a hand off the ground to pull through Sonata’s hair. First along her fringe – then the bit framing her face – then the loose strands, free of a ponytail for the night. When Sonata’s face took on a perplexed expression, Pinkie inhaled; something inside of her chest suddenly overfilled to the point of bursting, and she didn’t know whether it made her want to laugh or cry – or both? Definitely both. And she definitely couldn’t keep herself from giggling even as tears touched the edges of her eyes, and she definitely couldn’t keep herself from kissing Sonata’s head not once, or twice, but three times, just for good measure.

“Numbers are really meaningless sometimes,” she continued before Sonata had the chance to question the eccentric behaviour – though she was doubtless all too familiar with Pinkie’s eccentricities by now, so maybe she wouldn’t have questioned it anyway – and before she lost her chance to keep the brimming tears at bay. “Like why would I need a thousand words to say something when ‘I love you’ does it super perfectly already?”

“You wouldn’t?” Sonata guessed, laughing again.

“I wouldn’t,” Pinkie affirmed. She paused a moment, placed a kiss against Sonata’s lips, and added, “I love you.”

A thousand words could never be enough, but they didn’t have to be. She didn’t need to quantify a thousand, not when the echoing of her words was more than she needed. A thousand reasons, a thousand stars, a thousand moments – what did it matter to number any of it, anyway?

That was silly.