chaustia: by moonlight
A set of four drabbles that I could not resist.
Each is, finally, exactly 1OO words.
Or so my MS Word tells me.
#08 - nostalgia .
She cannot bring herself to explain the beauty of these moments to anyone; they are hers and hers alone.
During nights when the moon is full of stolen sunshine, Chaustia cannot stay away from the wide lake. It is a dark pane of glass and a single pearl hangs on its surface.
She sees at once her swirl of hair and curve of shoulder in the rippling mirror, lit from behind by gentle touches of silver along her spine. There is a completeness here that fills her with all the missing pieces.
Her heart sings in that white glow.
#41 - words .
"Your house is a mess," he comments after his minor wounds have healed and he doesn't care that his voice is dry and stoic.
"It's home," she says with a shrug, hands smoothing over the hem of his shirt as she folds it; not once does she look up at him. It is a terribly domestic scene and so normal and dull it baffles him.
"Why'd you help a stranger?"
Now at last she meets his eyes and he is startled to find hers to be so very lovely. "Because you needed me to."
He has never heard truer words.
#34 - conditional .
In the beginning he ignores them, the signs and screams inside his head in favor of her sweet laughs and shy touches. He pretends he does not hear the demands of gods driven by fear and the slow keening of a treacherous moon.
Until the day he sees her crying silently into her hands (he can't believe that they have gone this far) does he start to question his options.
"You will return, or her sorrows will be only one of many," they say. They don't realize that her broken heart is the one that makes his bleed the most.
#37 - heartache .
The misunderstandings between them flickered between confusion and memory, the difference between a distance that could be collapsed by a single touch - a single word - and an incomprehensible rift that was his fear.
His fingers reached, thoughtlessly, for the curve of her cheek every time she smiled and he had to clench his hands into fists to remember that the fragile balance he had fought so hard for would disappear if he surrendered to furtive fantasies.
And yet, sometimes he thought the risk of that chaos would be worth the knowledge of how soft her skin would be.
Each is, finally, exactly 1OO words.
Or so my MS Word tells me.
#08 - nostalgia .
She cannot bring herself to explain the beauty of these moments to anyone; they are hers and hers alone.
During nights when the moon is full of stolen sunshine, Chaustia cannot stay away from the wide lake. It is a dark pane of glass and a single pearl hangs on its surface.
She sees at once her swirl of hair and curve of shoulder in the rippling mirror, lit from behind by gentle touches of silver along her spine. There is a completeness here that fills her with all the missing pieces.
Her heart sings in that white glow.
#41 - words .
"Your house is a mess," he comments after his minor wounds have healed and he doesn't care that his voice is dry and stoic.
"It's home," she says with a shrug, hands smoothing over the hem of his shirt as she folds it; not once does she look up at him. It is a terribly domestic scene and so normal and dull it baffles him.
"Why'd you help a stranger?"
Now at last she meets his eyes and he is startled to find hers to be so very lovely. "Because you needed me to."
He has never heard truer words.
#34 - conditional .
In the beginning he ignores them, the signs and screams inside his head in favor of her sweet laughs and shy touches. He pretends he does not hear the demands of gods driven by fear and the slow keening of a treacherous moon.
Until the day he sees her crying silently into her hands (he can't believe that they have gone this far) does he start to question his options.
"You will return, or her sorrows will be only one of many," they say. They don't realize that her broken heart is the one that makes his bleed the most.
#37 - heartache .
The misunderstandings between them flickered between confusion and memory, the difference between a distance that could be collapsed by a single touch - a single word - and an incomprehensible rift that was his fear.
His fingers reached, thoughtlessly, for the curve of her cheek every time she smiled and he had to clench his hands into fists to remember that the fragile balance he had fought so hard for would disappear if he surrendered to furtive fantasies.
And yet, sometimes he thought the risk of that chaos would be worth the knowledge of how soft her skin would be.