01-26-2020, 06:31 PM
There is a flash of something brilliant at the very center of her.
It fills her with new warmth. It reorients the pattern of her pulse so that it is quicker, stronger. Heat pools in those star-kissed cheeks and she has to look away. Because it is such a simple thing to say, but it is quiet and it pools in her every uncertainty until she is no longer aware of them at all. There is something secret in it that makes her precious head swim and she has to skirt past it simply to stay on her feet. Because it could knock her off balance if she let it.
She watches him consider the question. She watches, too, as something dark passes across his face.
It is the weight, though, that gives her the most pause. She cannot help but wonder if he means it in the same way. If he were to touch her, if it would scorch her. Or if his burning is something else altogether. She knows the pain associated with the isolation, the agony of having to live in a world without touch, but whatever pain she hears in his voice seems different.
She is not an especially smart girl, Leonora, but she cannot help but feel like their suffering is different. Her smile weakens, fades until it seems as if it had never been there at all. She wants to touch him now more than ever. Perhaps she could make him smile, if she could just wrap him up in the gravity of her embrace. But she does not trust that he would be impervious to the way she burns.
“Oh,” she says, quiet. There is no relief in it and whatever hope had colored her tone is gone now. It is forlorn, though she is uncertain exactly what she is mourning. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs after a beat of silence. Not for asking. But for the hurt in all of it.
He turns a question on her and she turns her head to study her own shoulder. Smooth, unblemished. Every inch of her virtually untouched. And she shakes her head and then smiles ruefully, turning her attention back to him. “No,” she says, plain. “Nothing can get close enough,” she adds. And then rolls those unblemished shoulders in a kind of shrug. “Because I destroy everything I touch and everything that tries to touch me,” she admits, though she’s not sure why. Perhaps to explain the amount of space she maintains between the two of them. Perhaps simply to warn him.
It fills her with new warmth. It reorients the pattern of her pulse so that it is quicker, stronger. Heat pools in those star-kissed cheeks and she has to look away. Because it is such a simple thing to say, but it is quiet and it pools in her every uncertainty until she is no longer aware of them at all. There is something secret in it that makes her precious head swim and she has to skirt past it simply to stay on her feet. Because it could knock her off balance if she let it.
She watches him consider the question. She watches, too, as something dark passes across his face.
It is the weight, though, that gives her the most pause. She cannot help but wonder if he means it in the same way. If he were to touch her, if it would scorch her. Or if his burning is something else altogether. She knows the pain associated with the isolation, the agony of having to live in a world without touch, but whatever pain she hears in his voice seems different.
She is not an especially smart girl, Leonora, but she cannot help but feel like their suffering is different. Her smile weakens, fades until it seems as if it had never been there at all. She wants to touch him now more than ever. Perhaps she could make him smile, if she could just wrap him up in the gravity of her embrace. But she does not trust that he would be impervious to the way she burns.
“Oh,” she says, quiet. There is no relief in it and whatever hope had colored her tone is gone now. It is forlorn, though she is uncertain exactly what she is mourning. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs after a beat of silence. Not for asking. But for the hurt in all of it.
He turns a question on her and she turns her head to study her own shoulder. Smooth, unblemished. Every inch of her virtually untouched. And she shakes her head and then smiles ruefully, turning her attention back to him. “No,” she says, plain. “Nothing can get close enough,” she adds. And then rolls those unblemished shoulders in a kind of shrug. “Because I destroy everything I touch and everything that tries to touch me,” she admits, though she’s not sure why. Perhaps to explain the amount of space she maintains between the two of them. Perhaps simply to warn him.
leonora