I need that fire just to know that I'm awake
Her memories might be lost to her, but still she dreams. Sometimes they are pleasant, and sometimes they are not, but always they leave her with a hollow ache in the pit of her stomach. As though her sleeping mind knows things her waking conscious does not. As though it is only in sleep she could hope to reach for things she had lost.
But it is not just memories she aches for. It is those emotions that sometimes stir within her that she cannot give name or meaning to. The hollow feelings that remind her of what she’s lost in the most visceral of ways. This is one of them, she thinks.
In the same way, it is now impossible to put words to what now stirs within her. Were she cleverer, she might have known it is that very love she longs for. Perse fears it would terrify her, but maybe (just maybe) it is the glue that would help hold her soul (as fractured inside as her body is outside) together.
Perhaps she hopes in vain. But she has nothing else left to her.
She listens with stilled breath, her skin prickling as she waits for the answer to her hopeful question. It’s not, she says, and she breathes again, pressing her lips against the silver skin only a whisper away. I found you beautiful. She closes her eyes, a heartbeat passing. Her lips curve slightly, smiling against Perse’s nearly flawless skin (not entirely, but perfection in comparison to hers).
“I still don’t believe you,” she whispers, but a glimmer of light drifts slowly along the dark lines etching her body. Sparking to life beneath words both ancient and new. “Maybe,” she continues, her voice impossibly softer, a bare thread of sound, “if I were less broken...”
She presses her cheek against her, unable to stop herself from taking that much. She might wonder why Perse would have once thought her worthwhile, but she has been starving for too long now. And her silver companion hasn’t moved away from her yet, hasn’t recoiled from her touch. Joscelin is too hungry for affection to care that she shouldn’t. She would devour every moment and every touch Perse let her take. It might be all she has to sustain her, a lifetime lived on stolen memories.
Joscelin
