06-11-2021, 02:22 PM
clementia
The beautiful things she has touched have all been similarly soft.
(Save for the one dark thing that had disguised itself as something sweet, even as he’d thumbed so freely through her thoughts.)
But he is different, isn’t he, Web? His sweetness is saccharine, obviously artificial, and there is something in this that is so terribly alluring that she has no hope at all of denying it. She is powerless to turn away from it. Powerless to do anything but bat her lashes at it, simper dreamily, watch him with those galaxy eyes and hope that he might find himself equally as taken.
(And he seems to be, doesn’t he? With the way he watches her with those golden brown eyes. As if she is the finest thing those eyes have ever had the privilege of seeing. And she is not arrogant, Clementia, but she allows herself to believe that she is. Because there are entire galaxies that shift ceaselessly beneath the glass of her. Milk-white at the center, pale enough to get lost in.)
He says her name just as easily as he’d said his own, as if the two were meant to fit together. Her father had told her the name meant mercy, though she has none when she reaches out to touch him. (Could this touch not bring a man to his knees? Though he does not buckle beneath it but rather reaches for her in return, as though she had begged him to do it. Had she? Perhaps she had.) She touches whatever she can reach. She will commit what she can to memory of this stranger who has to pretend to have manners, who says her name so practically, who touches her and speaks poetry into existence.
Is this romance?
Or is it truly a dream?
What a heavenly sigh it is that leaves her.
Who is Clementia? She will be his dream thing, galaxies trapped under glass. She will be his spring after winter. “I will be your dream,” she tells him. So gladly she will be his dream. She will wrap herself so greedily around him and she will not think of honeybees or how it felt to have her most private thoughts exposed.
But she makes for the shore and perhaps she only does so to see if he will follow. (She is not a coy thing, Clementia. No, it is not a test. She will not be disappointed if he stays there in the water, she will not punish him. But even she cannot deny the delicious thrill in the pit of her gut when he does follow, when he sidles up beside her on the shore. When he reaches for her again, touches her like something precious, something unearthed, like she belongs to him.) It is quiet there on the shore, when it is just the two of them and the water that collects on the surface of their skin only to drip down into the mud at their feet.
And he speaks, or begins to, and then he doesn't.
And then. And then. And then.
This is her first real taste of confusion. It all devolves so rapidly that she does not have time to comprehend it as it happens. Only when it is still again do the pieces fall into place and she stares at him as he stands there, the wings unfurl and then curl against his back again.
In this peculiar stillness, her heart continues to beat something frantic, startled. Such a stark contrast to the whimsy she wears so well as she studies him now. “No,” she answers plainly, “I don’t think I’m quite sure of anything anymore.”
Her expression softens as she moves toward him then, eliminating the space he’d wedged between them in the chaos. She touches her cool mouth to his furrowed brow. “Are you in pain?” she asks.
(Save for the one dark thing that had disguised itself as something sweet, even as he’d thumbed so freely through her thoughts.)
But he is different, isn’t he, Web? His sweetness is saccharine, obviously artificial, and there is something in this that is so terribly alluring that she has no hope at all of denying it. She is powerless to turn away from it. Powerless to do anything but bat her lashes at it, simper dreamily, watch him with those galaxy eyes and hope that he might find himself equally as taken.
(And he seems to be, doesn’t he? With the way he watches her with those golden brown eyes. As if she is the finest thing those eyes have ever had the privilege of seeing. And she is not arrogant, Clementia, but she allows herself to believe that she is. Because there are entire galaxies that shift ceaselessly beneath the glass of her. Milk-white at the center, pale enough to get lost in.)
He says her name just as easily as he’d said his own, as if the two were meant to fit together. Her father had told her the name meant mercy, though she has none when she reaches out to touch him. (Could this touch not bring a man to his knees? Though he does not buckle beneath it but rather reaches for her in return, as though she had begged him to do it. Had she? Perhaps she had.) She touches whatever she can reach. She will commit what she can to memory of this stranger who has to pretend to have manners, who says her name so practically, who touches her and speaks poetry into existence.
Is this romance?
Or is it truly a dream?
What a heavenly sigh it is that leaves her.
Who is Clementia? She will be his dream thing, galaxies trapped under glass. She will be his spring after winter. “I will be your dream,” she tells him. So gladly she will be his dream. She will wrap herself so greedily around him and she will not think of honeybees or how it felt to have her most private thoughts exposed.
But she makes for the shore and perhaps she only does so to see if he will follow. (She is not a coy thing, Clementia. No, it is not a test. She will not be disappointed if he stays there in the water, she will not punish him. But even she cannot deny the delicious thrill in the pit of her gut when he does follow, when he sidles up beside her on the shore. When he reaches for her again, touches her like something precious, something unearthed, like she belongs to him.) It is quiet there on the shore, when it is just the two of them and the water that collects on the surface of their skin only to drip down into the mud at their feet.
And he speaks, or begins to, and then he doesn't.
And then. And then. And then.
This is her first real taste of confusion. It all devolves so rapidly that she does not have time to comprehend it as it happens. Only when it is still again do the pieces fall into place and she stares at him as he stands there, the wings unfurl and then curl against his back again.
In this peculiar stillness, her heart continues to beat something frantic, startled. Such a stark contrast to the whimsy she wears so well as she studies him now. “No,” she answers plainly, “I don’t think I’m quite sure of anything anymore.”
Her expression softens as she moves toward him then, eliminating the space he’d wedged between them in the chaos. She touches her cool mouth to his furrowed brow. “Are you in pain?” she asks.
To take me, to take you, too
@[web]