Live Dove Please Consume

Live Dove Please Consume is a two-part novella, and arguably a bildungsroman, about a young woman and her mostly one-sided romance with her penpal.

The story is set in a limited third point of view, following a young woman without a name but later inferred from later a story to be Liphrin who is around 17 at the time of the story's beginning. She explains how winter is setting in for the town, and takes note of the the little that had changed since two years prior when she came to see the town square during the holidays. The boy she is with, unnamed, is assumed to be romantically involved with her, but neither seems interested in the other. She notes since an incident two years ago where she had to switch schools, she hasn't been very social. The girl reminisces an old pen pal, believing that they would have treated her more romantically on the date. In a flashback, the reader learns that the penpal was extremely verbally loving towards her but suddenly ended things. Spring begins and the boy dumps her, before a new one shows interest in her and again she compares him to her pen pal.

The end of her school year is coming, and she sends a letter to a friend in a city, asking if the offer to still room together is up. She uses money one from a newspaper story contest, the same contest that prompted her pen pal to contact her, and travels off of the island of Guervana to the mainland city Ashburn-heia. She finds difficulty in getting work, but eventually finds a small, smoking bar to make a minor living. She hates the smell of smoke. Her friend takes care of most of the expenses, to her guilt. She continues to send letters to her pen pal, pleading a response.

One day, outside of the bar she works at, a someone asks if she has matches. No, she doesn't but the stranger seems... off to her. They do not have a ciagarette in hand. The stranger asks her name, she hesitantly answers. This begins part two of the novella.

A bit of time has passed and the protagonist has gotten into a routine. Her roommate is wary of Noya, the stranger from outside the bar. Although never confirmed, the girl believes them to be the penpal they have been sending letters to. She also becomes close friends with Justin and Abaq as they all live together in the immigrant quarters of the city. As she spends more time with Noya, she drifts away from Justin and Abaq, to Justin's disgust. Noya confides that they have an affliction that makes them extremely weak if they aren't constantly having their blood replaced. They say they are sure that she is the perfect donor, and asks her to help them with their disease. She readily agrees, wanting to be dependable (a running theme in the story from financially helping her roomate to doing her best at work).

The bloodletting is detiorating to her health, represented by the diwndling appearance of cigarettes throughout the story. Motifs of sacrifical pigeons from jewish traditions foreshadow her death. Tension builds between the sickly protagonist and Justin, the only one who refuses to let her push him away. She has moved in at this point with Noya in his apartment, which she points out is a different adress to her penpal. The two have one last major schism outside of the bar she works, the only job she has been able to sucessfully keep down with her falling health. Angered, she goes to Noya for comfort but at this point he is becoming disinterested in her, implied to be because he is losing use in her. She desperately tries to please him in one last ditch effort to convince herseld that she did not make a mistake. He dissmively tells her to sleep it off, and so she leaves.

Its winter again, just before the holidays, and she takes not that she never did come to see the Lijehwa festivities since she moved to Ashburn. She thinks about how Noya never took her to the holidays, never took her to nice places. In exhaustion, she sits down at a park, and lays her head down to sleep, the cold getting to her.