Her jaw dropped when she saw him enter the classroom: scowling, head lowered, and doing his best to slip in unnoticed as the other students filed out. Nevertheless, the dark purple bruise surrounding his eye and crawling up the left side of his nose was unmistakable as his shifted through his classmates, obviously having missed that morning’s class for one hell of a reason. She could feel only pleased at the sight as she smugly gathered her books and headed up the aisle with the rest of the students.

A sweltering three hours in the Arizona sun, a potentially expensive hospital visit, three different IVs, and a week later, Atri found she utterly loathed the boy who had stranded her in the desert over a failed make-out session. Fall break had become nothing less than a nightmare of nurses and hospital bills that she hoped to never repeat again, and it was all thanks to the wounded pride of the loser who presently sported a very fine, very deserved black eye.

If only she could thank the person who had given it to him.

Walking swiftly through the foyer of the academic building, she was glad to look out the approaching doors and find it was overcast; his little ‘incident’ had made her rather averse to the sun for at least the time being. Although the temperatures that day had been nothing close to record-breaking, the heat had been potentially deadly, her only savior in the vast, deserted road the driver of a black sedan that had been lucky enough to stumble upon her. His face rose to her mind at the same time that Atri pushed aside the glass door leading outside, stopping her dead in her tracks.

“Hello, darlin’. Feeling better now?” Like a god, he leaned against the sedan, brown hair unruly and falling into blue eyes framed by stubble. He was older, definately not a college student, but not so old that the words ‘robbing the cradle’ would have crossed her mind. Broad, strong face; sharp, bright gaze… He was more handsome than she had remembered through her daze of dehydration. He wore the same boots and blue jeans he had when he had first picked her up. His words were soothing to her ears, despite the fact that she did not even know his name.

“How…?”

“You had your ID on you when I brought you to the hospital,” he explained nonchalantly, tapping one thick finger to his temple, “That’s all this brain a’ mine needs to find a person. You look alive today; better than you did a week ago.”

Atri shook her head in wonder, failing to realize as she slowly approached him until they were standing almost nose-to-nose. As soon as she was close enough to share heat, he pushed away from the car and straightened to look down at her with a quirk of the mouth. “You… Were you the one who…? Sean?” The quirk warped into a dangerous grin, the gesture making something curl in her belly.

“Ah, you noticed that, didya? Heard him bragging in the student union when I was trying to find your dorm yesterday. Don’ worry, darlin’, he don’ have the balls to do anything about it. He’ll be thinkin’ twice about leavin’ a lady stranded from here on out.”

She goggled at him; there was nothing else she could do, really.

“…And you’re here today to see me?”

“That’s right.”

Shaking her head dazedly, she asked the only thing she could, “Why?”

“After spending all those hours with you in the car and at the hospital, then not having the chance to talk to you, I realized there was something I needed to do,” he explained with that grin still plastered on his lips. She could feel his breath on her face, he was so close.

“…What?”

Unlike Sean, she was perfectly happy to accept her stranger’s silent demand for a kiss; there wasn’t any desert to strand her in if she decided to slap him later.

Haven Part 1

The stairs were longer than he remembered; which was absurd because he had climbed them as a child with legs only half of what they now were. Nevertheless, he felt as though he had climbed endlessly, the stairs twisting and winding up and up and up until he was out of breath and gripping the stone walls for balance. Around him, the walls seemed thinner, closer, and somehow warped away from what memory told him they should be. Consciously, he swept a deliberate finger over their surface and came back with soot and ash that suddenly smelled as though the fire still burned. Shuddering, he ran the remaining steps to his destination.

The door was old and heavy and just as he remembered–a stark contrast to the foreign memory of the stone corridor. He wondered vaguely what kind of force it would take to break such a door: a battering ram to cripple the hinges maybe? Or a sharp axe to chop through the layers of sturdy oak? Could the door ever be destroyed?

Still pondering the idea, he reached into the depths of his tunic to pull out the old rusted key that still fit so easily within the lock. With a quiet clicked, the door swung soundlessly inward, allowing him access–haven.

She was waiting for him.

Dragon Cry

She watched as red flashed across the sky, the sun exploding and shrinking all at once just before it disappeared completely beneath the horizon. For an instant, the air warmed as though the pulse of light were the last remnant of life. Faintly, the dragons were singing.

She sometimes wondered how they still lifted their great heads to croon to the evening stars, so great was their loss and sorrow. She had seen them only from afar, but they were delicate to the eye: thin, papery wings, long arching necks, and lithe bodies that did not look as though they could withstand the demands of time. She had heard tales of their ferocity and strength, but such stories seemed distant on the days when she crouched in the fields, watching them swoop and roll like children in play.

Tonight, their song was lovely; heartbreaking. She longed to join them in their mourning.

Dry earth shifted beneath bare feet as she rose and brushed dust from her dress. All around the fields seemed to droop with the decay that crept slowly across the land. Black smears stained the backdrop of the fading day, marking dead trees that had already been claimed by the Crush and she tried to imagine what the world would look like green and vibrant. The world she knew was sallow, but somewhere in the depths of memory there was light and growth. Once, before she was old enough to name a memory for what it was, there was new life.

In the silver and chrome of twilight, the dragons whistled into the crest of the sky, their eerie song melding into one bittersweet chord. Parting her lips, she lifted her voice to join them.

Lit

It had been a long time since she had let herself dream so far.

Watching the world in its darkness beyond her window, she felt the old calling sing through her blood and heat something deep in the pit of her chest–a part of her that had ached and pulsed since she had first severed her relation with it. Fixated on a light in the distance, she felt as though she should smile, but the time had not yet come to confirm such a gesture.

The flame was lit, but the fire had yet to burn: an intention with no kindling yet to make it grow.

But it was a start. It was a slow throb that had lingered like the craving of a junkie.

Sometimes the only solution was a return to addiction.

Ugly Duckling

He strongly believed in all his life he had never seen a person dirtier or more caked in grime and waste than the small mouse of a girl that stood before him now, glowering up at him and somehow managing to make herself look more dangerous than she was. Actually, it was almost laughable, but he was too distracted by the very state of the girl to spare a chuckle over her obvious superiority complex.

In all honesty it was like looking down at a breathing pile of mud; some elemental monster of old, if one wanted to be philosophical about it. He was not sure if she actually had any hair of her own, for her head was completely covered in a helmet of dried, cracked dirt that had surely been gathering there for years. Her face was no better, with layers of earthen smudges that were so thick that a true skin tone was impossible to identify, except perhaps if she were to strip off her undergarmets. Even her clothes seemed to be cemented to her body, but any curves or femininity that might have shown through were masked by the shapelessness of the coarse fabric; it hung from her small, thin shoulders much like a ragdoll, making it impossible to even tell if she was old enough to sport her own pair of breasts. Altogether, she was the filthiest creature he had ever seen, and he shuddered to think of what it would take to even begin to relieve her of her burden of mud, or what might be found beneath after years of neglected good hygiene.

At least, that was how she appeared to the untrained eye. His eyes, however, were refined enough to pick up even the smallest nuisance within the cracking and brittle exterior. The girl was a mess, filthy and soiled beyond measure; but she was anything but hideous.

Ciar smiled grimly.

“Tough little bitch, now aren’t you?” Without warning, he reached for her and caught her by the arm, dragging her forward until she was unbalanced and using the moment of panicked confusion to hoist her over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes – which was exactly what she was for the time being, as far as he was concerned. She screeched in protest and began to struggle, but he only tightened his grip and turned, walking from the room as quietly and nonchalantly as he had come.

A bath would do her good.

Lost

Two sides remain, and yet neither can reconcile with the other: strength versus passion. Somewhere along the way, both became entangled and inexorably separate; she gropes after both and is left with nothing. She sees this as weakness, but I never understood where it all became shattered. She was always a source of inspiration to me.

Talented, beautiful, determined…

Simplicity and complexity so deep you could drown in it, and I wonder if she ever let me in at all, because somewhere along the way she lost herself and I lost her.

I grope after her, but am left with nothing. Is this my weakness?

Somewhere along the way I lost myself. Maybe she’ll find it.

Conversation

She was the type who talked at the most inappropriate times: funeral sermons, theater performances, school recitals, sex…

The sex bothered him the most.

It wasn’t just that she talked; it was that she expected conversation. Who wanted to have a conversation during sex? It was a conversation all on its own! And hell hath no fury if he didn’t respond… That, or else the sex would end right then and there.

Of course, he could never tell her that.

“You’re making that face again.”

“What face?” Blonde hair falling around her like a halo, eyes a smokey hazel-green that cut through him. For all her verbal shortcomings, he would never call her unintelligent.

“Just admit that you wouldn’t know what to do if I was silent.”

“I… uhh… You know I love your voice.” Shit.

“Mm-hm… You love it so much that you wouldn’t mind if we stopped right here and just had a nice, intimate chat, right?” She had him by the balls, and for once he wished it wasn’t literal.

…Then again, he had already thrown himself into the fire. “Do you really like hearing yourself talk that much?”

Oof! The feeling of her elbows suddenly jammed into his sternum was not comforting, and as erotic as it was to have a naked woman impaled and sprawled out skin-to-skin to his own body, the look in her eyes was dangerous as she cradled her cheeks in her hands. “Why, yes, I do.”

He saw a cold, cold shower looming in his future.

Galileo

If she stared at it hard and long enough, she could see the sun move, almost imperceptible.

The day had been long, and the sun on the horizon was taunting her. Half an hour until sundown. Can you make it? The summer solstice was always the most cruel of days for one who worked from dawn til dusk.

The fields had been long ago plowed, the seeds planted, the fields cut and razed. It was the most strenuous of days, an annual affair of planting those crops that would mature just at the end of the fall to feed them through the winter, and it was always done on the longest day of the year. However, for the first time in almost a decade the task had been finished while the sun still hung, yet still they were not allowed to return to the village until dusk. If they were seen, the guards would kill them with smiles on their faces and insubordination on their lips — the rebellious slaves.

And so they waited, singing quiet songs and crouching among the tall grasses to play pebble games that they had learned as children.

Another half hour and then sweet reprisal.

Bachelor

Twenty years old and his joints hurt like he was eighty. What kind of man was he?

Stretching out the length of the sofa, his knees popped at intervals until fully extended, and even then they throbbed from the pain of three jobs and the early onset of arthritis. Life was not a kind thing. Sighing, he turned on his side and stared across the mostly empty room to take in the sight of the barren, whitewashed walls of his apartment, observing the blank surface with neither appreciation nor disgust. Decorating was something his mother did.

Outside, he could hear the windchimes a previous tenant had attached to the porch overhang. When he opened the windows during the high winds of the spring, the light tinkling reminded him of harsh realities softened by gentle hands and bleeding knees that were far less important than the feeling of a foot kicking a ball at the obnoxious kids next door. Of course now it was the dead of winter, and he knew the chimes were swinging with the onset of a snowstorm. But, like the white walls, it was something he had come to accept rather than notice.

His wrist throbbed vengefully.

He could always go home, he knew. There wasn’t a day gone by where his mother didn’t clamour to have him back under her roof again, claiming he was too young to live on his own (twenty was not too young). If he did that, the pain would lessen and his work load would drop, but she would be hovering over his every movement. He preferred the pain and the work. What kind of man was he? The kind that had to leave his house to stop himself from throttling his mother in her sleep. She would never have plain, white walls. She would never collapse on the couch after a long day of work. She would never forget to eat. She would never have a half-empty, one-bedroom apartment because she couldn’t afford anything more.

He loved being a bachelor.

Musings

There are moments when the days simply meld together: one into the other, an endless stream, where it’s hard to tell when you were waking and if you slept. The mind forgets: a form of malfunction programmed into the very psyche of humanity. Maybe it is simply the passage of time — Time, an intangible construction measured by human means, at human whims, for human purposes. Aging will happen regardless of whether you consider Time or not.

But one can always hope.

If you were to ignore Time, would you stay forever young? If no one ever finds the body, how do you know a person has truly died? Time is subject to humans, but are humans subject to time? A twelve-year-old trapped in a coma until adulthood is still a twelve-year-old when she wakes.

Perhaps only Time would tell.