02-07-2018, 01:53 PM
She smiles in the darkness and her smile is melodic; her smile is birdsong and tree-bough, rainstorm and cloud cover – her smile is bright-seeming and shadowy, invisible against the bone-white of her hide and the ripples of sunlight between the trees. She could love him: she knows this, it is a thought that passes idly by, swimming through her mind lazily, as though it has no errand to run, no task to dash off to; it is a thought which is altogether disturbing, for she was once a lonely and solitary creature, loving none, needing none, content in her solemnity and seclusion. Once
She sometimes wishes that she can bury her memories among the waves of her dream-sea.
What a different world it would be, then.
”I wish I had an answer for you, but I often ask myself the very same thing. ”
”But it´s hard to lose something you never knew you had.”
It is a strange remark, and as it leaves her tongue she is not certain it will make sense to him; and yet, somehow, it will – he will read beneath the syllables to the slow, mellow tone of her voice, to the inflection she has used, to the slight uplift at the trailing end… as though it is more question than statement. And she does not move; she does not turn away from him; she does not take a step toward the darkness of the trees and the shadow of the bracken. She stays still and silent – waiting? Perhaps. But for what?
”I am happy you brought me here”
But there is another question in his eyes which she longs to answer, and a countering query in her gaze which begs his response. She is happy that she had drawn to his doorstep – though uninvited and unsought, there is something within her – that run-on sentence, that complex puzzle – which implores his company. She shivers despite herself as he touches her – and in that moment, beneath the leaves and sky and sun, she is beautiful in her curiosity, rendered lovely by her insecurity.
”Don´t apologize” and she is surprised by the strength that carries the sound of her voice, how abruptly it flies from her throat and how callously clear it is as it rings the silence asunder.
”Don´t apologize” she begs now.
Through the eyes of stone and tree, he is no more than boy – but ah! The paradox! For through the eyes of horse-flesh and muscle, she is no more than girl. And so here they stand: boy and girl, again, and silent. A courtship of less than words, but more than answers.