Welcome to Gaia! ::

Late at night, I stayed up and held the light in my hands.

It was bright gold, blinding, dazzling, a miniature sun. Its heat warmed me from the outside, to the inside, with the warm glow of contentment, happiness, and quiet strength. It threw dancing shadows across the walls, thrusting the darkness away in mysterious patterns until only the light remained around me.

The dancing, the flickering, the shining--it was all part of a battle that transcended the ages, a battle of implications that I could never imagine, of a magnitude and proportion that my self could not comprehend.

I didn’t care. The light was mine, it fought the shadows--my shadows.

And for a time, it won.

~

I stepped into the sunlight at high noon. The daylight always felt hollow somehow after my vigil with the handful of light. Weak. Diluted.

I went to visit Gabriel.

Every time I ventured into the hectic, public streets, I marveled at the strangeness of it. 100,000 people passed me as I walked, and I was going to see Gabriel. I would never visit these people. I did not know them. But on the other hand, I knew Gabriel, and I would never see him walking down the street. Somehow, the world doesn’t work like that. It surrounds you with the nameless-faceless--perhaps so that you can appreciate the familiar, and the quiet.

Gabriel’s house was always quiet.

I was not certain that he lived alone--I actually doubted it--but there was never any sign of another person in his dim, soft, comfortable home. In fact, there was no sign of Gabriel there, either. In a sense, he was never there. His body was not his, nor was his home; they were merely a setting in a scene, an actor in a play. The house was just a house, with clocks and carpets and chairs and a window-seat, and his body was just a body, plain-featured, dressed in bland clothing. He was, in that sense, a mere face in the crowd.

What made Gabriel himself was not his home or his body or what he ate or wore or did for fun. What made him himself was just that, himself. The unseen yet tangible essence of Gabriel, the ever-pervading calm and tranquility and softness that he carried around in his immediate vicinity like an umbrella. It was ever-present; it exuded from him like the warmth from his living flesh.

I talked to him all the time. He was my friend.

Today, I told him about a book I had read, a sight I had seen, a dream I had dreamt. He always listened patiently. He always had time for me; he was always interested in my stories. And I never left home without a story just for him.

I intrigued him with a tale of a man, a woman, and a love potion. With a heart full of love and no one to share it with, a desperate man once upon a time slipped love potion into a woman’s drink, not knowing that she saw what he had done. But she drank it anyway. That, I thought, was true love, the general kind of love that is just waiting to be funneled into the category of familial or romantic or friendly love; she gave him that much of a chance. She loved him before she ever even got to know him….

“And then what?” Gabriel asked me.

“Another time.”

He smiled. “Where do your stories come from?”

“From my light.”

He, familiar with my light, nodded as if that made perfect sense. Everything made sense to Gabriel.

~

That night, my light was beautiful. There was never a time when it was not beautiful, but that night, beautiful was the only word that fit.

I held it in my cupped hands and watched it, like a child with a treasure, as it seemed to grow, to spread apart, to reveal what had once been hidden. I watched in wonder as it seemed to pulse, to vibrate with life, to send its vitality coursing through me.

Awe and a sort of terrified and soaring hope, the contemplation of beauty, filled me as I watched it. I felt desire singing through me, irresistible, unquenchable. With one hand I held my light; the other hesitated above the shining orb, then gently touched it. It had the consistency of molten light, warm liquid fire; beneath my fingers, it seemed as firm as soft gold, but I felt movement under the solidity, an endless current of light and strength and hope and joy.

My fingertips stroked a soft petal within the radius of the light, spun and formed from purest sunshine, traced its outline, finding another and following its delicate curve. I felt it push against me, opening, unfolding--blooming.

The desire pulsed through me, burning, longing. I felt the irresistible need to DO something…to fulfill an unknown purpose….

But how to make it known…?

~

Perturbed, I decided to ask someone about the strange new feeling.

I went to Rafael.

Rafael was an artist, and a deep appreciator of all things aesthetic. Like Gabriel, he lived in a shell-house; like a hermit crab in need of a new shelter, he had merely found the first one that would fit him. And as it happened, the house did not fit him at all; it was much too small and insignificant for all the grand ideas he had in his mind.

It had empty rooms painted in dull, common colors, the kinds that supposedly agree with everyone: tan, beige, gold, white, brown. It had stripped floors and no furniture. There was no sign that anyone could possibly live there--or at least, no sign that was not hidden beneath all the paintings.

Rafael was a man who lived entirely in his mind; the tubes of paint, empty canvasses, easels, brushes, and pallets scattered all around his house were nothing to him, merely in the way until they were in his hands; and then they were only an extension of himself, of his brilliant mind. Even the completed--or rather, rejected--paintings scattered all over meant almost nothing to him; he told me, often, that not a single one ever fully represented what had been in his mind at the time. To him, the old paintings were air holes in a small and suffocating space; they were an outlet, a means of releasing the buildup of creative frenzy, as well as a means of letting in a few lessons; when looking at them, he knew what he had done right or wrong, and knew how to improve.

But no matter how much he said he improved, he was still never satisfied with the paintings he mass-created. Night and day he painted…I was never sure what he intended to accomplish, but maybe it was just something he had to do.

Vague classical music poured from a radio in another room. I told him about my light; he stood absolutely still for three seconds, then moved in his quick, jittery way to the corner to grab a blank canvas. He strode around the room, selecting a canvas and pencil, set the canvas on an empty easel, and began to draw with short, careful, yet furiously energetic strokes. I could sense his energy bubbling to the surface, channeled into the tiny outlet at the tip of his paintbrush.

I was used to this; Rafael loved to paint, and often while I told him stories, he’d jump up and begin to illustrate. It was rarer for me to see him sitting or standing still than painting feverishly in the middle of his paint-flecked floor.

“Describe the light to me,” he said tersely, fully absorbed in his work.

“But I must have told you all about it by now--”

“Yes, but describe it. In detail. Help me see it.”

I realized that he was painting it, and proceeded to give him every detail I could, curious to see the outcome of his work. When I was finished, he worked for awhile in a tense, heavy silence, loaded with all the underneath-the-surface emotions that made Rafael, Rafael. I could feel his fervor, his passion, his consumed happiness. He was lost in the painting. I waited patiently for him to emerge.

After a long time, he slowed, adding a few touches here and there where he saw fit, then showed me what he had made, a detailed pencil sketch. I saw myself sitting cross-legged in total darkness, only my face and hands illuminated by my light, resting in my hands. It was beautiful, and I told him so.

He nodded his thanks, then told me brusquely, but with a hidden affection and concern: “That light--it sounds like the voice in my head, that flashes pictures before my eyes and tells me what to draw and how to draw it. It’s your muse. Do what it says, always. Never ignore the gift, girl. When it talks, you must listen.”

I promised to do so, but when I left I was still confused. I would listen to my light…but what was it saying?

~

Deep in thought, I drifted into a small café for lunch, abandoning the semidarkness of the restaurant as soon as I could in favor of the sunlit patio. I often found it hard to function in dim lighting, so accustomed was I to the brilliance of my light.

I picked at my food as my thoughts drifted away from me, soaring into the skies, soaking up the warmth of the faraway, communal sun. My thoughts turned to it: the sad pale orb, given to many, appreciated by few. I sighed into my tea and murmured a stanza of Emily Dickinson into the steam cloud that billowed forth:

“‘How dreary to be Somebody,
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!’”

Poor sun. It was not as beautiful as my light. Not as pure…not as soft…not as warm….

A slight rush of cooled air reached me from the open café door; I shivered and glanced around for a table that the cold air wouldn’t reach. I could stand the cold no more than I could stand the darkness.

The door swung shut; the air was balmy again. I continued looking around, my train of thought sweeping over the people eating near me. I wondered what they were like. I knew very well that many of them would be hollow, leading a pointless existence, hurrying through their lives at such a breakneck speed that when it was over they wouldn’t have anything to look back on but blurred scenery. But they seemed happy enough in their prattling and empty state.

I looked at each one for a minute, trying to guess their stories. They weren’t terribly interesting…or at least most weren’t. One caught my eye. A boy staring at the ground, at the patches of dappled sunlight filtering through the tree behind him. I wondered which he was following, the light, or the shadows….

He didn’t seem like anything special; he looked ordinary in every respect. But I had learned a lot from my friends--most importantly, that the true person lay far inside the external, visible layers of flesh and blood and bone.

I could think of no story that suited that boy. After a little while, I turned away, my thoughts traversing elsewhere. Eventually he left; eventually, I left too.

~

I went to see Gabriel again. One is not supposed to have favorites, but I admit, he was mine. I thought that anyone would have like him. If Rafael had reveled in speech instead of art, he and Gabriel would have been the best of friends. Gabriel listened patiently; he had told me that he loved to hear people tell him stories, however small. And I had plenty to give him.

I told him about my light, about the strange phenomenon I had witnessed the night before. He thought for a few moments; then he told me, quite simply, that he was certain I’d have to figure it out on my own in the end. The light would tell me; it always did, didn’t it?

I nodded, comforted slightly by his wise words. He smiled and leaned forward.

“So, please…tell me more about that story from yesterday.”

I obliged.

~

The desperate man, craving companionship, bought a love potion from a gypsy woman and searched and searched for weeks. Even he didn’t really know why he waited so long; why he didn’t just slip the potion into any woman’s drink. There were many pretty young ladies around…but the one he chose seemed dull and boring and dim at first sight, and he couldn’t explain to himself why. Still, when he saw her, sitting alone in a café, he at once sat across from her and engaged her in conversation.

After only five minutes, he was sure. When he thought she wasn’t looking, he quickly uncorked the potion bottle and poured it into her tea. Then he waited for her to drink and fall completely in love with him.

But she had seen him, and knew immediately what he was doing. She had seen the loneliness behind his eyes. In the few seconds’ natural pause before she would have to take a polite sip of her drink, she thought hard. He was not a bad man at all; he was, so far, sweet and clever. Was it worth a try?

No one could possibly know what went on in her head in those few moments…. But when they were over, she smiled at the man, lifted her teacup, and swallowed a large mouthful of the potion.

The look of relief and joy on the man’s face told her in that one moment of lucidity that yes, it was worth a try.

She knew, unlike him, that love potions wore off eventually. She knew that one day soon, she would return to her senses; the obsession would fade.

But when that one rushing moment of sane thought was gone, she no longer cared, save to hope that day never came.

After the woman drank the love potion for the first time, the man reached across the table and kissed her, no longer afraid of rejection. She kissed him back, and traces of the potion passed from her lips to his--the heady irrationality of passionate love took him over, and he proposed to her on the spot. She accepted, her head a swirl of heat and longing, and left everything behind to run away with him.

They were married that very week, in an empty church that echoed as they vowed to stay with each other in sickness and health, until death, or eternity, whichever came last. The man was nervous, his head spinning, his body soaring with joy; the woman never took her eyes off his face, her heart swollen with happiness and love that was both false and real.

When the ceremony was done, he swept her off her feet and took her to his home. That night was the most wonderful of his life; he had never been so happy. He could hardly believe that she was his…but before he fell asleep beside her, he recalled the potion-laced tea he had given her this morning, and felt the first twinge of guilt at what he had done.

But he loved her; he cared for her flawlessly as the weeks and months and years drifted by. She was still the same person he had met in the café; the potion couldn’t change that. They talked late into the night; he was fascinated by her intelligence, and her beautiful thoughts. She had so many ideas that could change the world…at times, he felt somehow that he had taken that away from her….

For seven years they lived in harmony: every morning his wife drank her cup of love potion and mint tea, and every night they stayed up late, talking, kissing, or merely enjoying the other’s presence.

And every day, the guilt grew stronger.

After seven years had passed by, the man’s guilt had grown into a constant ache; every morning as he carefully fixed his wife’s tea, he wondered why he was doing this, why he couldn’t just let her be free. But he was worried that she would be brokenhearted, when she found that he had drugged her--she might think that their love was a lie. And he was afraid--afraid of losing her, losing everything. He had never been happier than he had in those past seven years. Some days he took a mouthful of the potion himself, like a drug, to assuage his guilt and spend one sunny, irrationally passionate day with the woman he loved.

As for the woman, in the few lucid moments she had sometimes, in the early morning, she too wondered what she was doing. She knew he was afraid to let her go, and would keep drugging her until she intervened; but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. His heart would be broken if he thought that what he had done made her unhappy.

She was not unhappy; she was content. She remembered all the good times she had had with her husband, and regretted nothing--nothing but lying to him, day after day. Neither wanted her to have the potion any longer; but neither wanted to do anything about it. They loved each other too much to hurt them.

But one day, at half-past three in the afternoon, the wife suddenly felt ill and collapsed to the floor. Her husband brought her to bed and did everything he could for her; but days passed, and she only got worse.

It got to the point where she could no longer drink anything; she didn’t have the strength to swallow. The man panicked; now, along with fearing that she would never get well, he feared that she would be hurt when she found out, and she would never love him again. While the wife slept for days upon days, he drank the love potion she would not himself, just to give him the fortitude to face another day.

His wife was herself now; but it was still several days before she finally decided to speak the truth. One morning, she opened her eyes and found his. Neither were drugged; both knew now what was going on.

“I know about the potion,” she told him.

He nodded slowly, hiding his face in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She hesitated--unsure how to say it the right way. “I knew,” she finally said, “from the very first day. I saw you put it in my drink, and I knew what it was.”

“Then why did you…?”

She pulled him close and kissed him. He didn’t know what to say.

“The potions,” she said softly, “were too strong. I took too much, and now it’s made me sick. I’m not going to get well.”

“There must be something I can do,” the man begged her, tears pouring from his eyes. “Please. I’ll do anything.”

She reached out and took his hand, pulling him close. “All this time,” she told him, “I’ve known what was going on, and I’ve remembered everything, good and bad. But I haven’t been myself. I’ve been alive, but I haven’t lived. All I want, now, is for us to be together--really together…. I want one night with you as myself. Can you give that to me?”

He nodded; they leaned toward each other and kissed once more. But then he broke away. “If you knew, this whole time,” he had to ask, “and you knew what it was doing…why did you drink it?”

She smiled. “Because I love you.”

~

Gabriel smiled, though his eyes were sad. “That’s a lovely story,” he said, “but it was very tragic.”

“Most are, in a way,” I replied. “Lies taint every story, and frustrate anything that tries to let the truth live again.”

“So, did she die?”

“I don’t know, Gabriel.”

“But you said that was the end.”

I smiled, my eyes falling to the steam swirling from my tea. “A story,” I told him, “never really ends.”

~

That night, the feeling pulsing through me was no less than urgent.

I felt a powerful longing to get up and do something, capture what had henceforth eluded me, though I did not know what it was. It was such an insistent and potent urge that I could not sit still; I paced the length of my room, then the rest of my home. No one was there; like Gabriel, I was never quite sure if I myself lived alone or with others. It did not matter to me then, or ever.

My light threw eerie shadows away from me in every room I hurried through; I took no notice of them, preoccupied as I was with the light. What did it want? I felt like it was leading me around in circles. It was frustrated, caged, helpless; and so was I.

I had never been around my home much; I had never seen it in the glow of my light. It all looked surreal, in a different plane than reality, part of the mystique and the beauty that my light showed to me in stories. I did not like to confuse reality with my own, beloved fiction; eventually I forced myself to sit in my room again, on my bed, cupping the light in my hands.

I did not need sleep. I stayed up and listened to the light, my eyes closed, sorting out the blur of time and place and event and emotion, trying to figure out what it wanted from me in return.

~

Back again into the loud and raucous blur of a world that I did not contribute to in the slightest. I felt restless; I needed to talk to someone.

Gabriel and Rafael had already offered their assistance, so I turned right instead of left and went to see Ezekiel.

Ezekiel, again, was nothing ordinary on the outside; he had rather a nice house, but didn’t seem to do much with it. I never saw him anywhere else in it but in his living room, where there was a long strip of bare floor available for him to pace back and forth. He was an agitated soul; he paced, he ranted, he went on strange and brilliant trains of thought that were sometimes hard for me to understand. He raved like a lunatic, but he was a genius.

While I spoke, explaining the reason for my visit, he paced. When I finished, he paced some more.

“Well,” he muttered to himself, “logic dictates--” Logic always dictated something for Ezekiel. “--that there are no secrets, or at least very, very few of them, that want to remain so. We are discovering new things all the time, every one of us. It would make sense that your light wishes to remain a secret no longer.”

“So I should tell someone?” I said, shocked. “But I can’t do that! They wouldn’t understand, they’d take it and test on it and I’d have nothing left--”

“You wouldn’t show it to just anyone, my girl,” he consoled me, still pacing agitatedly. “Someone who understands. Your light, I think, is conscious, and if it is conscious it is in some ways like humanity; it can never quite be satisfied for long. Humans, you see, make goals for themselves to achieve their own happiness, but they find that once that goal has been achieved, they are always restless, still; they always have to make a new goal. Life is never fully completed, there’s always something more to do. And while your light probably cannot die away, it might still feel the same, and want a bit of adventure, don’t you think?”

“Adventure?”

“Something new. Something exciting. This doesn’t mean,” he added consolingly, “that it is tired of you. It simply means that it desires something more. Companionship, if you will. You have more than one friend, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there you go.”

I thought about this, a bit worried at the idea of showing my light to someone. But then I thought of something that sent waves of relief crashing over me. “Gabriel,” I said decisively. “I’ll show Gabriel. Or you, Ezekiel. Any of my friends would understand, wouldn’t they?”

Ezekiel paused for a heartbeat and a half, a record time for him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he told me.

“Why?”

“Well, you know, we’ve all heard about your light, and we love it, we really do…but it wouldn’t be quite the same. The wonder is gone for us. You’ll need to show it to someone new….”

Troubled, I thanked Ezekiel and went immediately to Gabriel’s for lunch. He listened patiently as I told him what Ezekiel had said. Then, to my surprise, he agreed with what Ezekiel had said.

“You shouldn’t be so nervous, though,” he assured me, sensing my preoccupation. “Just because it can’t be a friend of yours doesn’t mean it’s so intimidating. Just make a new friend. Charm someone with your beautiful stories.”

“But WHO, Gabriel? How do I know if someone will think I’m crazy or not?”

“No one will think you’re crazy. But if I were you, I wouldn’t force it too much. Just follow your instincts…things have a way of working out all right in the end.”

I couldn’t help but trust Gabriel, but when I left, I still had my doubts. Show my light to someone…that felt like violating a sacred trust; I had always treated my secret with reverence, telling someone only if I knew they’d understand….

So many things could go wrong…what would I do if I lost the light forever?

Rafael was, predictably, painting when we arrived. Rich, intense music, like Beethoven’s darkest and Spanish opera combined, echoed through his near-empty house. Michael looked around him, baffled. No couch. No table. No people. Just art supplies, rejected paintings, and music.

I led him by the hand to Rafael’s work room. He was intent on his work, splashing small, jerky lines of red on the canvas, consumed by his passion. I hated to interrupt; I waited quietly with Michael until Rafael unbent to look at his work from a distance, then waved to get his attention.

He waved back, surprised by his unexpected new guest, and quickly reached behind him to turn the music off.

“Hey,” he said curiously, wiping the paint from his hands on a rainbow-stained cloth, “who’s your friend?”

Michael told me later that he’d had the time of his life.

At first we were content to watch Rafael paint, a favorite pastime of mine--it was both inspiring and relaxing, bringing the joy and terrible grief that true beauty gives to true artists. We sat side-by-side on his long supply table, saying nothing as the music flowed around us, and witnessed beauty take form, captured from the metaphysical world by the thin paintbrush like cobwebs wrapped around a branch.

At first the canvas was patched, blackness with red streaks surrounding an expanse of pure white marred by pencil marks. The shape looked vaguely like a flower, and later, rather humanoid; it only made sense to me when it was near completion. It was a girl with caramel skin and long black hair, dancing furiously, her black-and-red dress whirling around her and catching on the shadows beyond.

“A Spanish dancing girl,” Rafael explained. “Haunting, isn’t she?”

Rafael was always haunted by his visions of people, places, events, things. Some I did not understand, but as he painted the girl’s face, it was clear why this one struck him so. Her head was tilted back, her eyes watching the room, missing nothing, shining black and staring. Her red lips curved in a hollow smile. She was beautiful; but she was soulless.

“Her dress isn’t quite right,” was all Rafael would say about her.

Michael sat perfectly still the entire time, thunderstruck by the power of the image he had seen take form. Rafael chuckled at his expression.

“Do you paint much, Michael?”

Michael shook his head.

“Would you like me to make you something? Heaven knows I have enough material for it….”

Michael seemed to want to be polite, and refuse, but I nudged him and smiled, and he gave the request some thought. At last, he shyly opened his mouth; with a bit of prodding from Rafael and me, he finally described the scene he wanted. Rafael pondered it a moment, visualizing it in his mind, then grabbed a canvas and a soft pencil and began to draw the scene. When Michael approved of its rough sketch, Rafael pushed a Mozart CD into his player, carefully dipped a delicate brush in bright golden paint, and began to work his magic.

Two hours later, he showed the finished painting to an open-mouthed Michael.

“Well, it’s no Starry Night,” he said, modest as ever, as he inspected it as well.

“Oh, Rafael,” I sighed, lost in the beauty of the thick strokes. “You’ve outdone yourself.”

He pulled a teasingly insulted face, but chose not to speak; even he couldn’t deny that it was beautiful.

Michael’s vision had become incarnate onto the canvas: his eyes feasted on the scene as he stepped cautiously, nervously over to take a closer look. He could not tear his eyes away. I knew, as I had known two hours before, why the scene would appeal to him so much.

It was sunrise in Alaska. The sky was tinted a hundred shades of gold, pink, yellow, orange, and mint green. Rafael had painted it in a rough, swirling way; it looked like it was really shining, bright gold with many thin, far-reaching rays. It was set in the upper left side, half of it visible, its rays spreading over the ocean and staining the iceberg-tips and the virgin snow as many colors as the sky. A few jagged blue mountains spread across the right side, small in proportion to the sun but smooth and slender and beautiful. Above them, the Aurora stretched across the sky, wrapping around the sun to appear on the far left side. The ocean reflected the lights, save for the patches obscured by snow, icebergs, and a small spot in the center, near the bottom, where a schooner rode on the height of a small, white-capped wave, all its lights burning brightly, following the golden beam of a lighthouse light that stood tall and firm on the Alaskan shore.

He couldn’t find the words to say. I gave Rafael a huge hug, but he didn’t seem able to follow my lead--Rafael, after all, was nothing like Gabriel. In the end, they shook hands. Michael’s palm was stained gold and blue and white for the rest of the evening.

Then it was time to take Michael home; we were hungry and Rafael had nothing to offer but very strong tea. He took his painting, still staring, awestruck, at it, and carried it gingerly out of the room. I waved and made to follow, but Rafael caught my hand.

“I didn’t know if you’ve told him yet,” he said to me in a low murmur, “so I didn’t want to show you this in front of him. Look.”

And he pulled a long canvas from the gap behind his shelves.

“Oh!” I gasped. It was me, holding my light and sitting cross-legged on the soft floral pattern of my bedspread; he had painted the picture he had drawn for me before. I was surrounded by darkness, my face and hands illuminated by the perfect brightness of my own little golden sun. He had gotten it just right. “Rafael, it’s perfect!” I exclaimed.

“Good,” he said seriously, but he didn’t smile; he merely touched the painting, running his long, slim fingers over the sphere of light, its rays, my painted self’s arm, and the dark space beyond. I noticed, then, that the painting wasn’t centered. I was too far to the left.

“It’s….” But I couldn’t say it; it wasn’t a mistake. Rafael, for all his insistence that he was not talented enough, never made mistakes like that.

He moved his eyes from the painting to my own. “I don’t think it’s finished yet.”

When I continued to appear as baffled as I felt, his lips twitched into a small, warm smile, and he jerked his head to the hall, where Michael was undoubtedly waiting for me.

“Oh,” I breathed. I studied the painting again, imagining Michael…where? By my side? Across from me? Or in the far corner, looking away, with fear in his every rigid angle?

To say I had butterflies about that particular vision was quite an understatement.

“I haven’t told him,” I confessed. “I don’t really know how.”

Rafael arched an eyebrow, returning my worried gaze with his cool, calm one. “Maybe,” he said slowly, “it’s not for words. Or paintings. Or songs. Maybe it’s one of those things that has to speak for itself.”

And I had to admit, as I left with Michael, as we walked down the street lit by stray lamps behind curtains and stars, and as he held my hand, staining it with gold and blue and white, that he was right. There were some things that words could never describe.

Michael did something he had never done before when we reached my home: he pressed his lips swiftly, but sweetly, to my cheek.

“I had a great time,” he told me softly. “Thank you.”

That night, my light sang with happiness as I held it in one hand, while I kept the other raised to my face, smiling giddily and staring at my illuminated palm. The paint was streaked across it, staining the skin for several days afterward: gold, blue, and white. The colors of a perfect day.

~

“Do your friends know each other?”

The question caught me off guard. I frowned. “They know OF each other.”

“Have they ever met?”

“I don’t know. It feels to me like all five of us have always been friends. But who knows what they do when I’m not around?”

“They aren’t anything alike, really…but it would make a lot of sense if they were friends. They kind of…seem to fit together.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, staring thoughtfully at the sky. “I suppose they’d get along very well. Ezekiel and Gabriel balance each other out, and Rafael would love listening to Isaiah--and painting his scenes.”

Michael said nothing; I had expected him to, but was untroubled. “And Ezekiel and Isaiah would enjoy debating each other,” I giggled. “And playing chess…but Ezekiel would win, and then Isaiah would be upset. He thinks he’s very good at that sort of thing, you know…. What’s wrong?”

I had been wondering why he was so silent, and had glanced at him, only to find that he was staring at me.

“What?” I repeated nervously.

“You were just staring right at the sun,” he said through numb lips.

I blinked, glancing upward at the--relatively--pale and unoffending sphere. “Um,” was all I could think to say.

“Doesn’t that hurt your eyes?” he demanded. “Isn’t it too bright?” It seemed almost insulting to him--to think that another mere mortal like himself could look his idol in the face, when he could not…or perhaps dared not.

I stared mildly at him for a moment, straight into his misty, chocolate-colored eyes. He was not offended, really; he was just bewildered and incredulous.

It was a few days after I had heard Rafael’s advice, and I had had a lot of time to think. Now, I decided that it was time to start telling Michael the truth.

So I gave him an impish grin, and told him nonchalantly, “Oh, that thing’s nothing--it’s a stuttering candle compared to some of the other things I’ve seen, anyway.”

I balanced carefully on a large rock as I spoke, avoiding his eyes, wondering if he’d ask the inevitable. He did.

“What could possibly be brighter than the sun? That’s insane!”

I merely hitched my grin back into place. “Lots of things. I’ll show you sometime.”

He looked doubtful. Then pensive. I watched him discreetly from my peripheral vision as he kicked a small rock into the river. The sun glinted off the water, shining in thick dusty rays through it all the way down to the stones and gravel carpeting the bottom. Reflected clouds raced across the surface of the water as the wind swirled my hair around my face.

For a minute or two, it was very quiet; the wind rustled the tree branches and made the flowers sway, sweeping dandelion spores into the current of the wind, off to distant lands. When the wind blew this way, everything bent with it; it made me feel dizzy, like the world was turning sideways.

Finally, he spoke. I could barely hear him over the babbling river.

“I used to stare at the sun, too,” he said. “All the time. Until I started going blind.”

He raised his head and looked at my shocked face--no, I realized, at the empty space from whence my voice had come: for I knew now that that was all he could see of me.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” he murmured, his eyebrows furrowing--of course; he couldn’t read my expression.

“You’re blind?” The shock was turning into horror, and he could read it in my voice.

“Not completely,” he said softly. “It’s just…hard…to see.” He struggled with the words, but in the end couldn’t seem to stop them from being so simple, so blunt.

I felt my legs quiver; I forced them forward and stumbled over to him, tripping a bit on the rocky ground, catching myself on his outstretched arms. I held both his hands and looked closely into his eyes--strangely misty and unfocused as always, though now I knew why.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. It seemed like the only thing to say.

“It’s okay. It’s all just light and dark to me now, and color…but I like it a lot better that way. Everything is beautiful….”

I had never thought of it that way. He smiled serenely down at me.

“No wonder you’re so clumsy,” I joked feebly.

He shrugged. His motions were easy, and leonine; I had never noticed before how smooth his movements were. How focused he was when he used his fingertips, like now; his hands explored my own, very carefully, one at a time, while his eyes remained unfocused, unseeing. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he felt my palms, my wrists, my fingernails; his eyes blinked and struggled to focus on my face.

“I don’t really even know what you look like…” he murmured. His hands pulled gently away from mine and hovered tentatively in the air, fingertips stretched toward me. “D’you…?”

I shook my head, closing my eyes; he let out a breath, and his fingers softly touched my face. I kept very still as the tip of his index and middle fingers stroked the sides of my nose, my eyebrows, my lashes, the hollows beneath my eyes, my cheekbones, my lips. Then he held my face in his big, warm hands for a moment; my eyes were closed, and I could not read his expression.

My heart was suddenly pounding. I wanted him closer; I wanted to snap the distance between us shut in a locket, in Pandora’s box, and throw it into the river. My insides felt anxious and hyperactive, but when I moved, my body was slower than ever; I edged closer until our chests touched and slid my arms securely around his neck. He hesitated, then pressed his forearms against my shoulder blades and wound his left hand through my hair. His right caught a strand floating in the breeze and fingered it carefully, as if it was something beautiful and perfect, but delicate. I felt my cheeks burn; I pressed my face in his shoulder.

“It’s sun-colored,” he said quietly, brushing his hand against my curls. “It’s beautiful.”

I didn’t know what to say. Words had left me. I pressed my mouth to his skin, closing my eyes, breathing in his soft, spiced smell.

His arms locked around my waist. I felt safe like that…warm, comfortable--and unbelievably happy. Like I was basking in concentrated sunlight. Like I had my light in my hands.

~

Days, weeks passed. Michael was with me everywhere I went--a soft, solid presence when he was there, a ghost of drifting thoughts and a dully painful yearning when he was not.

He spoke to me. Told me of everything. He spoke words like rain…like flower petals…like blossoms that opened at the slightest touch and released new images and heady smells. Describing things I had never known about before. Feelings, sounds, happiness, sadness, sights…images that I could see clearly in my mind’s eye….

He described the places of his lonely sojourns to me: a beach with bleached sand and clear green water, curved like a smile, lined with jutting rocks like teeth. Tide pools, murky and secret, with pulsating starfish, urchins, anemone; glittering stones and fragile shells.

Or a lonely, secluded wood, tall stately trees swaying placidly above while remaining solid and firm below, green foliage like a roof, leaves staining the sunlight that striated downward in minted bands onto the carpet of loam, pine needles, and soft tall grass.

Or stranded in a kayak in open water, the banks invisible, alone among the blue. Cloudless blue sky, smooth blue water, blue-painted kayak, blue jeans, blue shirt. You could lose yourself in the blue, easily lose focus and become part of it all. Look up, look down, look from side to side, and all that could be seen was blue. Stars and moonshine would come later--nights that stained everything blue.

Or vast expanses of snow and ice, rearing upward and curving down to blend smoothly with other snows, other mountains, the dull grey sky. The sun glowing off-white behind the clouds. Snow covering everything, purifying the world. It forced everyone and everything into hibernation; only the quiet, lonely souls ventured above the ice, to drink in the last vestiges of warmth.

Or underwater in the tropics, deep below the surface, bringing nothing but a tank of air and goggles. The stream of bubbles drifting away as you let go of everything, immerse yourself completely in the surreal. Hovering in the water, feeling the gentle pulse of the currents and the pull of the moon; surrounded by seaweed swaying in an unknown dance and reefs piled up one on top of the other like the rich-green terraces of the Mayans. Fish mistake you as scenery, dart carelessly around you, forgetting you in seconds. Below, there is only darkness; around, there is an almost crippling openness, exposure, so much blue. And above, you can see the sunlight falling in rays to pierce the water like swords; and then the sun itself, set in a wavering sky, the only warmth that soaked into the waters, the only light for the world under the sea.

I was fascinated at his stories; he was more detailed than Isaiah, more passionate than Ezekiel, painted more vivid a picture than Rafael, and was kinder to me in a different way than Gabriel, a way that left me burning inside, longing for it like an addict. Michael’s stories made me forget who and where I was; my eyes lost focus as I was transported to another world, a different reality than the one I knew. It was as rich and beautiful as my fiction, the world my light gave to me, but it was real.

Until I met Michael, I had never known that the real world could be like that.

He was interested in my stories as much as I was interested in his, though I insisted that they weren’t mine at all. I told him a new one every day, glowing at his avid absorption in my words and the quiet praise he offered after each one--a praise not spoken with words (words that I was finding increasingly deceptive and futile as time passed) but rather with repeated, sincere, and almost uncontained enthusiasm.

When I was done with the day’s tale, he would often ask me to tell him another of his choice. “Tell me about the sun kingdom,” he would beg me in his soft, gentle voice. “Tell me about Ica.”

So I would.

~

Ica’s was one of his favorites. It began long ago, even before the dawn of time, though I have trouble with beginnings and endings; I started it with the tale of the first mortal and his reflection.

When the original man saw his reflection for the first time, as he was hunting in the freezing winter and happened to glance down at the distorted face in the crystalline ice beneath him, he did not dismiss it as a trick of the light; he, a true believer in the gods, knew that the goddess Ica had conjured the magic to show him what his true self was like. He had seen other mortals, his wife and his sons and his friends, and knew their faces well, but the goddess had granted him the gift of knowing his own--knowing himself. Ignoring the biting cold and the hard, slippery ice, the man fell to his knees and praised Ica, the goddess of whom he had never heard but knew of her existence as surely as he knew of his own in that one moment of discovery.

Ica before the dawn of time was the Goddess of Dreams. She would rest during the day, enjoying the sunlight and imagining new fantasies; then when the sun was gone and the moon rose, she would rise and drift among the sleeping gods and goddesses, touching their foreheads to deliver her gifts to them. To the King and Queen of all the Gods she would deliver sweet visions of happiness and peace and joy amongst all the gods for all time; they were pleased with her and praised her virtue in their waking hours, and Ica was happy to offer bliss to her fellows while in their vulnerable sleeps.

But after countless and unimaginable years passed for Ica, she began to notice a strange new longing in herself, a longing both of the body and the soul; she became lonely during the night without knowing why, and her mind conjured strange dreams of love and courtship and children and sunlight and sweet midnight dances known only to immortal lovers. One day a god teased her lightly about a fantasy he had had the night before involving his lover; though he meant it kindly, Ica was embarrassed by her unexplainable longings and cast a spell over all of her new dreams--a spell that would make each dream unique, beyond describing words, and often impossible to remember. No one confronted her again.

But her strange illness refused to desist; in fact it strengthened over time, until one day she finally discovered what ailed her. Ica was a virgin goddess, devoted to her work as the Dream Caster and never before even curious about the relations between a man and a woman. When she began to feel the longings they were unfamiliar to her; but one night as she was visiting a strong, handsome god in his sleep, and discovered that she could not take her eyes off of him or keep her mind from imagining lustful encounters of the two of them, alone, she realized that she had fallen in love with the Sun God.

She now knew why she felt so peaceful in the sunshine; why she glowed when she saw the object of her desires; why she wove his dreams so carefully and lovingly and sang happily as she worked; why she would visit him last every night, just so she could linger until he had to rise and make the dawn. The feelings that she had been aware of but had not understood now made sense to her. She was in love, just like in the dreams she created--fantasies stolen from her, sacrificed to others when she was the one who desired them the most.

Ica withdrew; for a time no one dreamt at night. She hid in a shadowed grove, away from the sunshine, and wondered what was wrong with her heart--of all the ones to love, why had it chosen the Sun God? Her love was forbidden; it was amoral; it was everything the gods and goddesses were against, for the Sun God already had a mate, the Goddess of the Moon. The Moon Goddess rested in the day and rose to the sky in the night; she and her lover met at the end of her cycle, during the new moon, when instead of glowing she would fade and drift down to spend a night of passion and sweetness with him. Ica, who always knew when someone was sleeping, had always sensed their consciousness and left them alone to love each other in the dark. Now the thought of it almost drove her mad with grief and envy.

During her time in the grove as a hermit in shame, an eclipse fell over the world; the Sun God and Moon Goddess were impatient for the new moon and could wait no longer, preferring to leave the world in darkness as they disappeared. Ica burst into tears and screamed with brokenhearted agony; no one heard her, and eventually, when the day had returned to its usual brightness, she calmed and realized that something must be done. She could not spend the rest of eternity hiding; she must realize that the Sun God would never be hers, and return to her courtship with fragile, lost, and meaningless dreams.

And that was what she did; slowly at first, she created dreams that felt to her hollow and pointless, and in the night she deposited them at random, though avoiding the Sun God’s room as best as she could. For a time, as she became accustomed again to her old routine, she stayed far away from him. But she could not help herself; it was worth any amount of pain, she decided eventually, just to see him sleeping peacefully in his bed and wish that she was his. She would save him for last again, watching silently, her heart aching.

Then, fearing that he would become alert to his dreamless state compared to the other gods, she began to make him dreams, the only gift she could give him, small ones at first that were easily forgotten. The dreams became more elaborate, more detailed. Her helpless longing for him surfaced with uncontrollable strength before long, overwhelming her, and she caught herself making dreams for him that were indescribably passionate, some sad, some bleakly happy, and some explicit. She tried at first to make him see the Moon Goddess in his fictional nighttime dances, but it frayed at her sanity and before she could stop herself one night, she kissed his forehead and implanted a dream that was entirely her own, a dream of him and her meeting in secret at night and twisting smoothly together, their hearts racing and longing for the other, and then, when they fell apart exhausted, his voice whispering in her ear, telling her that he loved her too.

It was not the sort of dream that someone could forget. Ica knew that she’d made a horrible mistake but could find no way of taking the dream back; she watched the Sun God dream, tossing and breathing roughly as her fantasy took place in his mind, with a mixture of horror, hope, longing, and sadness. Then she turned and ran away, hiding shivering in her grove and waiting for dawn to come.

But the sun did not rise the next morning. Ica had feared that it wouldn’t and knew the worst was coming: the Sun God was looking for her, and it was not to reenact the dream she had passed from herself to him. She did not run; she merely waited.

He found her eventually; he was alone, and furious. He confronted her, demanding an explanation. She could not look into his eyes as she admitted that she was in love with him. The truth only made him angrier than ever; he ordered that she accompany him to the throne room of the King and Queen, so they could decide what was to be done with her. She followed docilely, weeping quietly as she tread in the wake of the man that she loved, who now hated her.

The King of the Gods listened patiently on his pearl-and-silver throne as the Sun God, by nature given to passion in times of stress, angrily described his dream. The King was silent after hearing the tale and the Sun God’s demands, some vocalized and some left hanging in the air, before dismissing him and the Queen, leaving only himself and Ica left in the room. She was sobbing in earnest now, helplessly awaiting a fatal blow, for the gods do not tolerate mistakes and wickedness.

But the King of the Gods was wise and kind, and had taken pity on her, unlike the man she loved. He knew that she had not done anything to be mischievous; she was only suffering from a broken heart, something that not even the King of the Gods could repair.

“Ica,” he told her gently, “I lament your sorrows. But there is nothing that I can do. You acted out of foolishness, and foolishness must be punished.”

He did not smite her, as she had expected, even hoped--oblivion would have been welcome to her, as desperate and heartbroken as she was. But she did not escape a terrible punishment, one that would not allow her to return to her normal life for millennia upon millennia.

“I am making a new world,” the King told her, repeating common gossip that she had already heard. “A smaller one, less grand, more fragile. It will be inhabited by people that seem like us, but are very different; they will have equal portions of virtue and vice in their hearts, they will be fallible, they will be weak, they will not live forever. Many have asked me why I would make such a world; that answer, I will keep to myself. But I have thought long and hard about it, Ica, and I wish for these mortals to have dreams like the ones you have given to my Queen and me. You will live in the new world and deliver dreams to mortals at your discretion.

“And Ica, I cannot ignore the demands of the Sun God, though I fear he is overreacting to what you have done. He wishes for the two of you to never set eyes on each other again. You will be on the new world, and he in this one; he will not have an opportunity to see or speak to you until your punishment is done. But you, Ica, for as long as you shall live, cannot gaze upon him or his light, nor any of his descendants, for if you do you will melt as the ice among the flames.”

And so Ica was banished to the earth, where she soon found herself growing fond of mortals, especially the children. She would make dreams for them, some darker and more frightening than she had ever thought it possible for her mind to imagine, some happy and hopeful and true. She was the Queen of Ice, and could only venture out during the nighttime, turning her face away from the mocking glance of the Moon Goddess, diligently and dispiritedly avoiding flame, heat, and sunlight wherever she went. She spun dreams and laid them into the sleeping minds of mortals, watching them rest, thinking of how everything went wrong. She gave them the reflection out of fondness, wishing to show them that there was more to life than love--that discovery of oneself can be just as wonderful as the discovery of a lover.

And often, at night, she would stand in the shadows, a tall pale goddess clad in white and wreathed by ethereal strands of lost dreams, and watch children sleep. She loved the children; she would, unless it was absolutely necessary, try to make their dreams happy and sweet. Then she would watch as they smiled in their sleep, thinking of what she had lost, that child of hers and her unrequited lover’s that would never exist, the child that existed only in her dreams. And her dreams, of course, were entirely secret, entirely encased in a hard crystal shell of pure ice and frozen for all of time, and most of all entirely her own.

My light mourned that night, so intensely that it was difficult to bear; we shared our grief, it and I, and allowed ourselves to be submerged. I knew that night that Rafael and Gabriel and Isaiah and Ezekiel--everyone but I--had been right…the light wanted Michael. It whispered his name into the dark with its silent little voice.

Michael, Michael, it cried, in a way that it had never cried for me. Michael…I need you, I want you, come to me, Michael…Michael….

At first I grieved with it, because we were together; but then I found that I couldn’t stand it--I didn’t want to feel my own misery reflected back at me. I felt sharp hatred building up in me, though at what I did not know; I attributed it to my light and its abandonment, and grew disgusted at its betrayal and myself. The darkness in me grew to a potency that hurt me.

I couldn’t take it anymore. For the first time in my entire life, I thrust the light away. It landed on my bed, a foot away from me, shivering like a flame in the wind, suddenly seeming very tiny and worthless. It had turned as pale as the sun outside, as dim and weak as a light bulb. I could feel a quivering in me, an emotional pain like I had been slapped by someone I loved. It was hurt, or was I?

We’re connected, you and I, I told it--as if it could hear me. But I don’t want to be. Part of me told another part that I was lying to myself, but the part that was thinking did not care. A person can’t lie to himself anyway, everything that is in the mind is both truth and lie, and what is the truth anyway? How can we say what’s real? My brain was spinning in circles.

If you were going to leave me anyway, why did you ever bother? You’ve been with me all my life. What makes you think I can be without you?

It said nothing. I could not tell if its flow of emotions was restricted to when it was in my hands--or, as I suspected, it just had nothing to say. I sneered, letting anger wash over me to drown the tears before they came.

I’m leaving. I’m running away. With Michael. If you don’t want me anymore, you won’t have me. I’m leaving and I’m never coming back.

Again, it said nothing, though I vaguely sensed despair. Was it the light’s, or mine? I couldn’t tell. But it made me think a moment, remember exactly where the problem was in this. It wanted Michael, who needed it. I couldn’t exact vengeance on the light; it would hurt Michael, an action I found both repulsive and heartbreaking. I stared at the light, thinking that one way or another, both would end up happy, and I would be left all alone.

You see what you’ve done? I hissed. You’ve ruined everything.

But I couldn’t blame the pathetically shivering light; it felt too much like blaming myself. I stared at it for a long time, trying not to think about what I would do without it. At least, I could be without it for a few days, couldn’t I? We’d be back. I had promised him that. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I would return.

I felt a rush of despair, echoed by the light, which shuddered and dimmed until it was almost a sheen, a reflection instead of a glow. Weak, muted. I missed my light, I missed Michael, I missed the way things had once been. To my distracted surprise, the fear of losing Michael and the fear of losing the light were almost exactly equal; just as the loneliness the light had felt for weeks previously was the same as any day I spent without Michael, without meaning. What were stories if there was no one to tell them to? It was the light and Michael, both at the same time, that had kept the balance for me, that had kept me whole.

But no more, it seemed. I sighed, biting back tears, and continued staring at the light, wondering if it would disappear entirely like a match blown out, leaving me with nothing, nothing to give and nothing to keep. Then I bit my lip, the anger draining out of me and leaving only sadness, and reached down to pick up the light again. It glowed faintly now, gaining strength from my body heat.

“What are you?” I asked aloud, but I got no answer. I got nothing. The flow of stories had stopped.

I realized that I had to get over my need for the light, or the inevitable separation would cause me nothing short of torture. I had to detach myself. My heart stung. But Michael?

Maybe he would stay with me. Maybe he would be the same as ever. I had to depend on that. The light was no more, but I couldn’t give up on both--maybe, just maybe.

I sighed again, flattening my palms; the light faded and died away.

I was left in darkness so deep that my breath caught; I had never experienced such blackness before. I stared around me, blind. A soft noise caught my attention--what was it? What was there?--but it did not happen again. Still, I could not relax; I sat rigid, terrified. What lurked here that my light had kept away? What had I thrown myself into? For a moment I was tempted to throw my hands back out and conjure the light again, beg it to return, but I hastily sat on my hands before I could let that happen. I began to cry, very softly, making almost no sound--I was frightened that something might come after me, stalk me in my blindness. I wanted, no, I NEEDED my light, the sole ray of hope that had gotten me through so many hard years, but I wouldn’t let myself give in. I was giving up on it, quitting it in a sense; I was the addict who didn’t want to stop, but was making the sacrifice--for a child, for a friend, for a lover he was hurting.

I closed my eyes tightly and bit down hard on my tongue to stop myself from screaming. More noises were creeping in, soft slow consistent ones that had been unthreatening in the daytime but were unbearable now. I heard a rustling behind me and imagined a giant insect, a rotting corpse, a shapeless demon stalking me…. I couldn’t take it anymore. I screeched and buried myself in the blankets I had never used, sobbing and shivering until, for the first time in my life, I fell into a natural sleep.

~

I had never dreamed before; the sensation frightened me enough to jolt me from my first one. But in a few moments I settled again and fell instantly back asleep, and the dream continued.

It was strange to me, but I suppose all dreams are strange. They visit us in the night after all, when we are most vulnerable, when every suppressed and ignored thought can reach us in full force. How odd it was, to see my world so distorted, to experience strange inexplicable knowledge of various mysteries, such as where I was exactly and why I was there, and also to be left in the dark about what should have been clear, words spoken, sounds heard.

In my dream I was on a beach, a phenomenon I had only read about and imagined previously. It was nothing like I had seen in my mind’s eye; the waves were much gentler than I had thought, tipped in white, heaving grey-green in a tired, meditative sort of way. The clouds were yellow in the light of the sunset and shells were dotted underfoot, most in unrecognizable fragments but some whole: a conch, a scallop, a nautilus.

I was alone, but not as unnerved as I should have been. I was standing knee-deep in the waves, which I remember were cold; and I was gazing out to sea. The sun was setting right in front of me; I raised my hand to shield my eyes as they watered. The sun was a strange color and consistency, too bright, too rich, too ALIVE…it seemed to sing, to cry out as it disappeared amongst the waves.

I looked up; the stars were visible in the already darkening sky. I stared at each one, awed; I could never remember seeing them before. A voice in my ear whispered that when there was a light in front of you, you were blind to all others. You never knew what you were missing until you removed it and let your eyes adjust.

Out of nowhere, four people stood in front of me, placidly balancing the balls of their feet on the top of the water. Where they stood there were no waves; the water only heaved a little, as if the world was breathing. Something told me that these were angels, though there was nothing striking about them; and something told me that they were more than the norm, set a notch higher than the rest of us.

I looked into their faces and smiled, finding that I recognized them. Gabriel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Rafael. They smiled back at me, then gestured beyond them, toward the open sea.

It took me a moment to adjust, even when they were no longer blocking my view, as I gazed into the setting sun. I blinked, and could suddenly make out a black splotch silhouetted against the fiery light, a splotch that became clearer and clearer to me as I stood on tiptoe to see, raised myself even higher until, unnoticed by me, my feet were gaining purchase on the surface of the water. I recognized the unfamiliar shape.

It was Michael. He was sitting on a makeshift raft, logs with the bark and nubs still on lashed together with tough seamen’s rope. His legs were folded and his back was hunched; he was staring away from me, away from the sun, gazing out at sea. Though I could not see his face, I knew instantly that he was bearing the same expression as I had seen that afternoon, the pain, the unbearable loneliness. And in just the same way, I knew that he was sinking, that when darkness fell he’d be lost to me forever.

My heart sang out to him, even though he was fading; the light was dying. I took a step, found that the water was quite solid--a mirror now, reflecting the sun a hundred times over, so that I seemed to be walking on flames, on solid light--and began to run, struggling to reach him as his outline blurred and was consumed inch by inch by the darkness. I was getting closer and closer, though I feared I wasn’t fast enough; Michael turned to look at me but did nothing, did not even show recognition in his eyes. I pushed myself to run faster, my fingers reaching for him, lunging for him just as the sun disappeared.

In a split second I realized, too late, that the sun had been my light all along, and now it was gone. But then it didn’t matter--none of it mattered, nothing--because that’s when my hand found Michael, found his wrist with its strong pulse and grasped it tightly, lifting him up with me. I could not see him, but I knew that he finally recognized me. He breathed my name as he pulled me close and kissed me. A pleasure such as I had never known rose in me, through me, warming me like a bath and making every part of me sing in bliss.

I vaguely registered a glowing as the night went on, but when I peeked it wasn’t coming from anywhere; the horizons were dark, the only light was from the stars. As the glow burned on I noticed a fire in my chest, a flame, a passion, and I felt the heat grow between Michael and I; I felt it spread through us, until I looked again and saw that there was a golden light shining behind his eyes.

It didn’t make sense to me then, but at the time it didn’t matter; I spent the night in Michael’s arms, and not once did ever I fear the dark.

~

I met Michael at the river before the sun had even risen; the sky was a pale blue, the twilight of morning, the world cool and quiet. He was waiting for me by the water, skipping rocks over the calm surface. As he heard me approach, he looked up and smiled, holding out his arms. I slid into them like I had been born to be held by him, met his lips like I had been conceived just to kiss him.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked me, and I nodded. My dreams the night before had filled me with a bewildering sense of peace; the dream had been happy after all, if strange. I had not given a thought to my light, or the night I was going to spend after this day was done without it.

He helped me readjust my backpack, which contained cans of food, a pot, a knife, three bottles of water, some clothing, and a small stack of books--all I would need and all I had in the world. Michael’s was more substantial; I asked as he heaved it onto his back and he told me that it contained the tent, among various other things. A tent? I blushed as I thought about that, turning away so he couldn’t see.

We caught the first bus out of town, which was nearly empty but for a trio of elderly ladies and their dog. Michael had asked me which way I wanted to depart in and I had answered that I wanted to go to the sea without another thought on the subject. He had paid for a ticket that would take us to the west coast, and now we were sitting side-by-side, watching the scenery fly by.

“Why the sea?” Michael asked me curiously.

“Because I’ve never seen it before,” I replied, thinking it a bit too much trouble to tell him all about my strange dream.

He stared wide-eyed at me. “You’ve never seen the ocean before?”

“No,” I murmured, pressing my forehead against the cool glass of the window as I watched grass and trees and roads and people flit by; it felt wonderful, like cool water on a hot day. “I’ve never been anywhere but here.”

Michael gaped at me, open-mouthed. I smiled a little at his expression; I knew that it wasn’t feasible to him, that he couldn’t imagine staying anywhere for so long. He was a voyager by nature, an explorer, an adventurer--everything I had ever wanted to be, but hadn’t quite accomplished.

He recovered his manners after awhile and told me stories: about Greece’s pristine beaches and olive-colored water; about Britain’s harsh grey coastlines that were beautiful in a hard, cruel way; about the place we were visiting now, a spot he had been to on the west coast--Santa Monica, California. The ocean was cold there, but the sand was white and the sun was very warm. We were destined for a place much further north, but if I wanted to see the ocean, anywhere was a good place to start.

“The ocean is different everywhere you go,” he explained to me softly, pulling me almost unconsciously against him so I could lay against him and nap. “But it’s always beautiful…you just have to catch it at the right time, in just the right light….”

I drifted listening to his stories, my ear pressed against his chest, the deep echoes of his words fraying and dimming at the edges until it was all one lovely song of background noise pulling me more deeply into sleep.

When I awoke we were halfway there; Michael asked me if I wanted to go back to sleep, if I was still tired, but though I was I didn’t want to look away from the window; the scenery had changed and was fascinating. The grass was yellow-colored and long and it swayed; the sky was a strange cobalt color that I had never seen before, and the clouds were huge and soft and pristine white.

“What’s the matter?” Michael asked when I yawned, worried; he had never seen me tired before. “Why are you so tired?”

“I slept last night,” I said, frowning. “It was very strange.”

I watched Michael’s face in the window’s reflection, wondering what he would say. In the end he didn’t; after he had blinked away the shock he composed his face carefully, probably deciding whether or not I was joking. “Do you not normally?” he asked me offhandedly.

I shook my head.

“What do you do all night, then?” He was partly humoring me--was partly curious.

“Make up stories,” I said--which was not, exactly, a lie.

He gazed at me curiously for a few moments, then turned and leaned forward in one smooth movement, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling us close together. I could suddenly see our reflections side-by-side, mine blushing, his with its head on mine’s shoulder. He rearranged us until I was seated on his lap, warm and secure in his embrace. He didn’t seem troubled about the odd looks we might or might not have been receiving; not many were around to care much in any case, as the bus contained few new passengers and those present were spread as far away from each other as was possible, seeking their own individual bubbles of privacy.

Michael slid his cheek across mine, pressing his lips to my neck. “So is that where your stories come from?” he asked me softly. “How do you stay up all night, coffee?”

An answer formed swiftly on my tongue: Of course not, I had never had coffee before, what in the world did it even taste like? It smelled heavenly to me, but it had never touched my lips. But I swallowed this line of thought before it could escape, realizing that this was easier for him to understand. “Sort of,” I half-lied.

He kissed me again, in a steady line down my neck. I closed my eyes and let myself be distracted from my thoughts; it was easy, oblivion was almost impossible to resist with my skin burning and stomach soaring.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he murmured. “I love your stories, don’t get me wrong, but I’m more concerned about YOU.”

I caught my breath at this, then let it go; the rush of heated air tumbled out of my mouth and obscured a small patch of the window with white fog. The idea of myself, as a being separate from my stories, was one that I had never thought of before. My mind reeled; I had once believed that my stories WERE me, though I harbored that notion no more--how could they define me when my light was separate enough to betray me so abruptly? Now I wondered what was the real me; if I peeled back the layers of protective stories, one by one, what would I find underneath?

“Don’t worry about it,” I murmured vaguely to Michael, leaning against his neck and closing my eyes and letting my thoughts tick away on their own methodic train as I gazed absently out of the bus window. I had a lot to think about; this was the least painful of the subjects.

But my mind was more exhausted than I had thought, wrung out like an old sponge, so weary that even the lightest of thoughts rolled about with leaden heaviness. My eyelids felt heavy, and I suddenly did not want them open, just like I did not want the rest of my suddenly sluggish body to ever move from this comfortable place. I realized, suddenly, that I was tired.

It was a very odd sensation. But, I thought sleepily, I am human: and with that thought I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion have me.

Again, I didn’t dream; I slept for only a few hours, but awoke feeling well-rested and content. The light outside had changed, but it was no later than midafternoon--we still had a few hours left before we reached our destination.

I looked up at Michael and realized that he was asleep. I turned away. But then I felt the strangest compulsion in the world--I wanted to look at him again, to watch him, even if he wasn’t doing anything at all. I LIKED to watch him sleep.

This seemed very strange to me. Out of all of the peculiar habits that humans had developed, sleep had always seemed the most pointless and foolish to me--perhaps because I had been incapable of it. The other people in my world had seemed wasteful and unappreciative for spending a third of their lives with their eyes closed, for how could they bear to ignore the world when it was so beautiful? But I hadn’t realized how sweet it could be, to feel tired and then wake up relieved and light once more.

And I had never seen anyone sleep before--at least not anyone I knew, or up close--so I was unprepared for this longing to watch and watch him and wait for him to wake up, however many hours that it took. And it shocked me, also, to see how innocent and peaceful he looked in sleep. He no longer squinted; he didn’t smile, but he also didn’t look sad or lonely or troubled. He looked like he was having nice dreams, almost like he was smiling. His arms were still wrapped loosely around me, and I wondered if he liked that--if it helped him to sleep.

I sat and watched him for a long, long time, slowly beginning to understand that it wasn’t just the newness of watching another person sleep that was entrancing me--for everyone around us had nodded off and woken up again at least once during the journey. It was Michael; he was the only one who held such a strong appeal to me. I loved to watch him, loved the way that he seemed so vulnerable and childlike and innocent, loved how passively happy he seemed.

And I vowed that I would never sleep again. How could I, when I would miss so much of this beautiful new world that was mine now, all mine…?

Small warning: PG13 material. Nothing you guys can't handle.
~

We reached the station as the sun was setting and walked to the ocean, hand-in-hand.

I could smell it before I could see it; the smell stung my nose and sent an electric current through my blood. It was salty and strong and overpowering; it wasn’t appetizing or subtle at all, but it was invigorating, and oddly appealing. Suddenly I understood the sailor’s call to the sea, the poet’s love of it, the blissful freedom of the seagull or the albatross. How wonderful it must be to follow the siren call of that wonderful smell!

I fell in love with the sea at first sight.

It was enormous; my mind couldn’t hold it all in. I drank and drank it in with my eyes, staring all around me, unable to believe that there was so much water in the world.

“It goes on forever!” I gasped to Michael, running to it with arms outstretched as if that would convince its incredible size to make more sense.

He laughed, delighted at my reaction. “Not really,” he said. “It just looks like it because the earth curves and you can’t see Japan or the Pacific Islands or anything that’s over there. But it is huge--there’s more ocean in the world than there is land.”

More ocean than land? I couldn’t wrap my head around it. My mind instantly called up images of a world under the sea just like the world above, only bigger and grander, filled with people like anemones, like seaweed, trees like living gems, fish like birds and dogs and children, labyrinthine caves with hairless monsters like legless tigers, many-headed snakes. The sea people would have mountains and forests and deserts and plains; they would have adventures and beauty and fish song and wildness and peace. I wanted to dive headlong into the ocean, calling the eerie water song that would convince them that I belonged with them, I too was a sea person, and never mind the legs. I felt no doubt that I could sink down to the sea cities without harming myself, but I didn’t know about Michael--and his bloodsong was stronger than that of the world beneath the waves.

“It’s amazing!” I breathed. “Just look at it…it’s so pretty….”

He took my hand and quietly stood beside me, soaking it in with me. It looked so dark in the moonlight; the crests shone silver, and as the moonlight washed over the water I could see the ripples further out, see the gentle heaving and the pure-white tide lines. The beach shone an iridescent off-white, spreading for miles and miles and miles in either direction, interrupted only by the small dark lumps of shells and driftwood and abandoned sandcastles.

The horizon seemed like it was right in front of me, so close, so very attainable, and the sky was enormous--it stretched unbroken from the rooftops of the city behind us across in every direction until it kissed the edge of the sea. It stole my breath; I couldn’t stop staring at the sight. It was like living in Rafael’s paintings, the colors were too rich and beautiful to belong to ordinary life.

Michael let me look for a little while before he stepped forward, tugging me gently along with him. We were carrying our shoes; our bare feet slid and sunk in the dry, coarse sand. The beach was oddly pleasant to walk on--I loved the feeling of the sand beneath my toes.

He took me all the way to the water’s edge, encouraging me silently with his soft, warm eyes when I hesitated at the tide line. His eyes glittered in the moonlight, entrancing and safe and blissful.

I stepped with him into the water, which was freezing, true, but not as much as I had expected. It felt heavy, somehow, and very different from normal tap water or stream water. It pulled me in, the waves a succubus kiss, deeper and deeper until we were surprisingly far away from the shore, though the water was not yet to our knees.

“We’re standing on a sandbar,” Michael explained to me. “I imagine it goes on for a few more yards before dropping off into deep water. Careful, now.”

But I did not want to be careful. I wanted to dive headlong into the water. I peeled off my white sweater and tossed it onto the sand, the moonlight glowing on the tank top underneath--white as well, one of the few colors I loved, white and gold and silver--feeling the starlight on my bare arms and shoulders.

Michael watched me with soft interest, his eyes following the top’s curves, though at the same time he did not want his eyes to leave my face. I smiled at him, taking his hand. “Let’s swim.”

“It’s cold, though,” he reminded me.

I laughed. “So?”

“But our swimming things--”

I didn’t have the patience for them, and if there was nowhere to change anyway, what was the point? My only answer was to strip off my tank top as well and crumple it into a ball, throwing it to land beside my sweater. Then I stepped carefully out of the water and peeled off my rolled-up jeans, one leg then the other, and tossed them away as well, standing before Michael in my underwear, unashamed, calf-deep in the sea.

I considered tossing aside even those, but then I looked up and saw the expression on Michael’s face. And it was clear to me, in that one frozen moment, that he had never seen a woman like this before. Despite all the women he must have seen in his life, all the ones who must have wanted him, all the temptation in the world heaped upon him, he had never seen anything like me: a girl or a young woman, whatever I was now that I had changed so, all blonde curls and hazy eyes and porcelain skin that looked smooth and white as bone in the moonlight, my underclothes just as pure-white, everything bare and smooth and soft.

Instead of tearing them off, or diving into the sea, I turned to face him, smiling at him, letting him look. I thought that he would never blink; his eyes were wide at the sight of me, like I scared him, a siren on the rocks with a mouth poised for song. I took his hands in mine, stepping closer to him, wet sand caving away beneath my feet, making small ripples against his skin. Silently, my heart pouring into him through my eyes, I raised his warm, damp hands to my breasts.

He shuddered slightly, eyes widening even further; he wouldn’t keep them there, though I knew he wanted to, but almost instantly slid them down my stomach and around to the small of my back, pulling my hips closer to his. The rest of me followed, pressed against him.

I slid my hands beneath his shirt; he reached up and grabbed the neck of it behind his head, pulling it off and throwing it ashore. I unbuttoned his jeans; he hesitated, then pulled them off with neat, careful movements, and they landed beside mine, spread-eagled and creased and dark in the electrically clear night. He pulled me even closer, folding me against his heart. My own skipped a beat, racing feverishly at the feel of it, and I wanted so many things at once--I wanted to bask in this warmth like a flower soaking in the sun, and I wanted him to rip off my clothes while I peeled off his, and I wanted to see him naked in the water, suspended in the deep clear blue like a lithe, powerful fish. I wanted all of these things with equally powerful lust, and at once.

In the end, the salty tang of the sea, the song in my blood, became too irresistible, and I led Michael further into the water, until the sea lapped with beautiful coolness against the tops of my legs. I saw Michael’s eyes following the ripples around my thin white underwear, and I wondered what he was thinking, if he wished that he were the sea. I knew that I did--I could see the waves tugging against the legs of his blue checkerboard boxers and wished that I could gently pull on him, wrap around his legs and waist and chest and arms and face, permeate his every cell with long, slender fingers of water.

I tugged gently on Michael’s hand, smiling at him, then let go and bent my knees, sinking slowly into the water. The coldness was a refreshing caress, and I savored it while it lasted, knowing that once my head was submerged I would quickly become immune to it. I waited until my eyes were hovering just over the water, almost level with it, watching out over infinity. Then I closed them and sank under.

I heard a muted splash as Michael joined me and swam blindly forward and down, the temperature dropping with every stroke of my arms. When I had touched the bottom of the ocean, I opened my eyes cautiously and looked around. The water didn’t burn me, as I had expected; it was very dark, more so than I had thought, and cloudier than I had wished, but I could still see through a dark aqua halo of clarity all around me. The sand was smooth and dark golden beneath my toes, which made little swirling eddies along the surface like a desert storm. I could see dark splashes against it: shells, sleeping hermit crabs, plants, ocean life of every sort. I stared at these, carefully sinking closer, aching for a closer look. But there was not enough light; the moonlight barely touched the sand through the haze of salt.

I remembered tales of jellyfish and eels and sea monsters and looked eagerly around, but all I could find was Michael, swimming quickly and gracefully toward me. Without a word--I couldn’t have heard him anyway--he wrapped an arm around my waist and began to kick hard, bringing us back to the surface, which was farther up than I remembered. I considered fighting him, confused, until I realized that he might want to tell me something and needed to bring me up into the air; I kicked with him then, eager enough to join him above the surface.

The strangest and most wonderful sense of relief flooded through me when I took the first breath. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d needed air. Michael was gasping for breath, refusing to let go of me.

“Are you suicidal?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry?” I replied, confused.

“You were under for far too long…how on earth can you hold your breath for that long?”

“Hold my breath?” I repeated, confused. “Oh,” I then realized. “That’s what was bothering you. I‘d forgotten.”

“Forgotten?” he echoed, as if afraid for my sanity. He gingerly released me, watching me as I floated with ease. “Where did you learn how to swim?” he wanted to know.

I wasn’t sure about this. Had my light taught me? I floated on my back. “Books,” I said simply. Michael continued to stare at me, reaching out to take me in his arms again, as if afraid that I would sink under like a stone and drown. And then he started and blushed; his fingers had accidentally pressed against the back of my panties. I slipped my arms around his waist and playfully tugged at the waistband of his boxers, strengthening the blush in his cheeks. He quickly took my hand and began to swim back toward the shore with me in tow.

“Let’s get closer in,” he said. “I don’t want you to drown.”

“I won’t drown,” I tried to reassure him, but he wouldn’t let go, and I didn’t try to stop him. When his feet could touch the bottom again, he took me into his arms and held me above the surface. I was happy enough there, with his embrace like a warm tongue against my skin, and closed my eyes, softly kissing his neck. He hugged me even more tightly, his cheek pressed against my hair.

“You look lovely wet,” he whispered in my ear, and I knew he could see how closely my underclothes clung to my skin. His, too, wrapped tightly around the shape of him like his skin had been darkened and dappled by the water, leaving little to the imagination.

“So do you.” I spread my hands against his chest, surprisingly lean and muscular. “Like a god of the sea, riding the waves like a chariot.”

He smiled, tilting his face closer to mine. “A siren,” he breathed. “The irresistible beauty from the depths of the ocean, precious and beautiful as a pearl.”

I smiled and kicked my legs, bringing myself closer so I could kiss him, my legs wrapping around his waist. His lips tasted of salt, but he was too nervous at my embrace, he had to quickly pull away. I understood, and smiled, laughing. “Catch me if you can,” I challenged, and dived headlong into the sea.

He gave chase, his body thin and flexible like an eel underwater, his strokes clumsy but powerful. I darted through the water like a fish, letting myself sink and rise, twirling and dancing through the light, cool sea. Michael caught me several times; he grew desperate every minute or so, and it gave him strength enough to ensnare me and pull me to the surface with him. Half the time I broke the surface coughing up seawater, and every time the relief reminded me once again that I needed to remember to come up. I was only human after all.

After each capture, Michael would kiss me, then let me go so he could resume the chase. He seemed to like the way I knifed through the water, contorted and curved, just as much as I loved the sight of him. His boxers’ hems trailed behind him like the pennant atop the mast of a ghost ship. I wondered excitedly if we would find any here, discover sunken treasure, explore the belly of a haunted wreck.

But Michael, too, was only human, and after perhaps minutes, perhaps hours of this game, we began to tire. He followed me back to shore, which was barely visible, a faint silver thread on the horizon; but it wasn’t as far as it seemed, and after a rest or two where we floated flat on our backs, drifting, as peaceful as the stars above us, we finally reached the point where Michael could touch the bottom. He scooped me up into his arms, wading with me toward the shore, hugging me tightly and warmly to his chest. I curled up obligingly and held onto his neck, watching the ocean sink and recede over his shoulder with a strange combination of relief and remorse--like the end of a long and happy day.

Michael came ashore a few feet to the left of our clothing, and immediately fell to his knees on the wet, smooth, hard-packed sand, still cradling me to his chest. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to try,” he whispered to me, and with my consent lay me flat along the beach, straddling me and leaning forward to kiss me. Our heads were above the tide line, but cool waves broke every few seconds over our bodies, pressed softly together beneath the moonlight. The kiss was long and deeply passionate, more so than any other kiss between us had been. I found that I craved more, I needed him, I would die without him, like a person lost in the desert, drinking from a bottomless well, the only one for miles and miles. He felt the same way, his breaths whispering against my skin, his tongue searching me like he craved my taste, his lust swelling and rising like a sweet, rich dessert, his hands responding to it, gently cradling my breasts.

I had no idea how long it went on or would have continued, though my memory held sweet daydreams about all the wonderful things we could have done; in the end, we had to stop, as both of us were shivering with cold. Michael dressed me with tender and delicate care, slipping on his own jeans but letting me pull his shirt over his head. We would have kissed, I could tell that he wanted to as well, but we were both so thirsty and gritty and tired that we knew that we had to move on, and quickly. I asked if we were going to camp by a stream, but Michael suggested a motel instead. We shared a bottle of water as we hiked half-asleep back into the small coastal town, searching for the lights of the little motel Michael had spotted while driving in, luckily with the Vacancy sign still illuminated. I held his hand as we walked in, staring around at the lights, never feeling so real in all my life.

~

We stepped in and Michael talked to a tired woman behind a low Formica counter, paying cash for one room and collecting the card that was our key. I looked about, fascinated; I had read about motels, but never seen one. The inside smelled like cheap soap and cigarettes; the carpet was thin and speckled; the walls looked whitewashed; the lobby was small and bare but for one worn armchair by the single window. It was well-lit, but shabby; however, its unattractiveness only endeared it even more to me. I felt that the place was calling, I am ugly, but love me anyway! Please? I’m so very tired--though perhaps the real message was, Everything in this room was the cheapest that we could find; it doesn’t matter, there’s nowhere else to go. And that, oddly, was entirely true.

Michael led me back into the brine-laced open air, leading me up a flight of metal stairs and to a door marked 202. The entire place smelled like cigarettes, chewing gum, and gasoline, and I had expected more of the same in our room, but not so: it smelled vaguely of air freshener and carpet shampoo, cold and clean in a way that made it utterly lifeless. There was only another armchair, a double bed, a night table, and a dresser bearing an old television, all in the same off-white and dull blue color scheme, just like the cream walls and carpeted floor. An inoffensive door in the corner, slightly ajar, led to the bathroom, which seemed to me more like a plaster mold than a room, everything covered in white tile.

Michael dumped our things onto the floor, chuckling at my expression. “It’s not the Waldorf Astoria, I’ll admit,” he said.

I blinked. “The what?” But he only laughed at me. I shrugged, peeking into the bathroom and the small closet, pressing the buttons on the television with fascination. Michael laughed again, but oddly, as if fearing for her sanity. He leaned forward, one hand on the corner of the bed, and touched a button which caused the television screen to explode with light and color. I jumped, then sank to the floor, fascinated. A woman with a purple dress suit and a fluffy perm was talking right at me, something about car wrecks. I stared at her, jumping again when the screen abruptly changed, now showing a man in a suit sitting in front of a small picture of some kind of devastation. I could feel my eyes widening as a video clip of a flaming car crash played over the screen. The horror of it didn’t register, just the newness; it was all fictional to me, as fake as the girl pictured on the front of a magazine laying by the television.

Michael waved a hand in front of my eyes, then stared at me. “Are you all right?” he asked, concerned.

“Yes,” I said fervently, turning my attention back to the screen. A different video was playing, a dark-skinned woman sitting in a chair, talking into a microphone.

Michael slid down beside me. “Are you sure you’re all right? It’s just the news, sweetheart.”

I blinked, frowning at him. “The what?”

He frowned right back. “The news program. Haven’t you ever watched the news before?”

I wasn’t quite sure what he was asking, so I tapped the screen with my finger and told him, “I didn’t know that this was how it worked.”

“How what worked?”

“The television. This is a television, right?”

He stared at me, open-mouthed, for what felt like a long time. “You’ve never seen a television before?” he finally rasped.

I shrugged. “I think I own one. I just never knew how to turn it on. None of the stories ever said.” I pointed at the screen again. “So this is the 6 o’clock news?”

“No,” he corrected me vaguely. “It’s a rerun of the 11 o’clock news. It’s nearly one in the morning now.” He pointed to the night table, and I saw the red numbers of a digital alarm clock glowing there, reading 12:47 A.M. I scrambled to my feet in delight, moving closer to it and staring.

“Fascinating,” I whispered. “It works even in the nighttime!” I was fairly certain that I owned one of these too, but mine had never glowed with little numbers; it had always stayed resolutely black. This one was larger, too, and was connected to the wall behind it with a black cord.

Michael seemed seriously worried about my mental health at this point. He stood behind me, gently touching my hand. “Haven’t you ever been in a motel room before?” he asked me uncertainly.

I shook my head. “Never. It’s incredible!”

He laughed uncertainly. “You are so odd,” he told me. “Have you really never seen any of this before?”

“Oh, I’ve seen it all,” I said absently, looking around the room. “Just not like this. But then, I never really looked at it all.”

“Why do you have it, then?” he asked, amused now, as if I were joking.

“My house came fully furnished,” I told him, flipping through the magazine and staring at the pictures. “Oh,” I murmured. “These people are lovely.”

“It’s not real, though,” he said, coming to stand behind me, one hand resting on the small of my back. My attention was immediately captured by that hand, so soft and warm; I found it hard to think of anything else. “They color it and edit it to make them look that way. Really, they look just like normal people…though not half as pretty as you,” he added in a whisper, pulling my hair back and bending down to kiss my neck. My heart began to race; I reached up and wound my fingers through his wet, sandy hair, closing my eyes. I could smell the salt of the beach on us, and if I let my mind wander, I could still remember the taste of his lips on mine.

I could hear his breaths stutter, and his other arm reached around me, pressing against the front of my waist and pushing me gently against him. I could feel the tension in his fingers; I could hear the pounding of his heart; I could almost read his mind, see written there the barely-constrained desires pulsing through him, the longing to allow his gently twitching fingers to slip into my waistband, unbutton my jeans, pull them down, leave me naked and bare before him. The fingers slid upward slightly, away from temptation, but still on my bare skin, and I knew he wanted to take my shirt off too, see me without it, feel me, skin to skin.

He sucked in a shaky breath, then hastily moved the hand away from me altogether, reaching around me to turn off the television. But the small distraction didn’t help; the room was now silence but for our racing hearts, following the same heady rhythm, and his soft, labored breathing--I was holding my own breath now, waiting to see what he would do.

After a long pause, in which I could feel him internally wrestling with himself, he finally, and with a great effort, took a step back from me. I let my hand fall, slightly disappointed, but feeling no rejection--he couldn’t hide his true thoughts from me.

“We’d better take our showers,” he whispered. “And get some sleep.”

I turned to face him, determined not to let this stop me. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held him tightly. “Come take a bath with me,” I said, smiling up at him. I felt his heart beating wildly, his breathing stopping altogether.

He blinked slowly for a second, then murmured, “I’d better not,” in a voice balancing on the utmost edge of composure. My smile widened; I couldn’t help it, he was so adorable.

“At least come in and keep me company,” I urged him. “Please? It’ll get so boring otherwise.”

He looked confused at this, but said cautiously, “All right,” and let me lead him into the bathroom. I locked the door and poked around for shampoo and a towel, gazing around the bathroom with interest as Michael sat on the lid of the toilet, his ankle resting on his knee as he watched me with emotions so confused that I was surprised that his face could even settle on an expression--lightly amused and quietly thoughtful. I was smiling to myself as I peeled off my sweater again, and then my top, my movements tantalizing, silently teasing him. He tried to be polite and turn his eyes away, but he couldn’t, and I wouldn’t let him.

I rested my hands on his knees and leaned forward, kissing him softly but passionately, my hips pressed against his leg. He stiffened, then relaxed, his hands moving automatically to my bare back, falling to the fastening of my bra. He jumped slightly and quickly slid his hands away, but forward, so that now his thumbs were pressed against my breasts. Still kissing me, he slowly let his fingers drift farther forward, cupping my breasts, the thumbs gently rubbing them where my nipples poked through. His leg unfolded and braced against the ground, and he slid forward, pulling me between his knees. I could feel his muscles tensing beneath my hands as I slid them further up his legs to keep my balance, moaning with whisper softness against his lips.

Michael caught his breath, then let his hands fall, pulling back from me and catching my hands in his. “I-I’m sorry,” he stammered, breathing heavily. “I c-c-can’t…I’m so sorry, I swear it won’t happen again….”

I frowned. “What are you apologizing for?”

He shook his head a little, as if to clear it, and forced his eyes to look up at mine instead of at the floor, where they usually might have strayed, or at my breasts. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he muttered. “We shouldn’t be doing things like that…I’m sorry…I s-swear, I would never take advantage of you,” he told me fervently, though his voice shook. “I…you mean too much to me…for me to use you like that.” I could barely hear his final words, his voice dropped so low.

My head fell to one side for a moment as I thought, but then I understood. I squeezed his hands, leaning closer as I pressed them to my chest. I slid myself even further between his knees, my face now an inch from his. “But Michael,” I murmured, “what if I want to be taken advantage of?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “No,” he protested. “No, I can’t, it’s not right. We…we really should…it would be more proper…to wait. That’s all.”

“But if we both want to,” I breathed, “then why is it wrong?”

He shook his head again, repeating the gesture firmly but wildly, as if afraid that my words, and my desire, would worm their way into his brain if he didn’t keep his head in motion. Then he took another deep breath and turned his face away from mine, speaking to my knees. “It would be…wrong…to do all of this…until we were sure that this was…was meant to be. Otherwise…it might turn into something that you regret. I…would hate for that to happen,” he whispered.

I leaned away, letting go. Meant to be. I had heard that before. For some reason, though it had brought me joy when I had read it or heard it in stories, the phrase weighed heavily on my heart now, threatening to pull me under. “All right,” I said evenly, and pulled away from him; he let me go, biting his lip and averting his eyes, looking dejected and miserable. I couldn’t stand it, so I lifted his chin with my fingers and kissed first his throat, then his forehead. “You’re very considerate, Michael,” I told him, with utter sincerity. “Thank you.”

He swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said, his voice small and broken. Poor Michael, his confidence shattered by some former heartbreak. I smiled at him.

“You didn’t,” I assured him, running a hand softly through his hair. “Don’t worry about things like that, sweetheart.”

His lips and fingers twitched a little at the word; he didn’t seem to know what to say. I kissed his forehead again and climbed into the bathtub, slipping out of my jeans, my bra, and my panties, folding the underclothes into the jeans and setting them neatly outside of the drawn shower curtain. I had wound my hair into a messy knot after swimming to keep it out of my eyes; now I set it free, watching with interest as a shower of thick white sand rained down on my feet.

“I never realized that the beach would be so messy,” I told Michael, inspecting a congealed and gritty lock of my hair--no longer blonde, but deep brown now.

“Yes,” he agreed, his voice still much quieter and lower than usual. “It’s always that way. Have you really never been to the beach before?”

“No,” I told him, letting the water run from the faucet over my feet until it was steaming hot. “But I’ve always wanted to see the ocean. Thank you so much for taking me, Michael.” I tapped down the lever that made the water hiss down from the showerhead. “I don’t believe that I’ve ever enjoyed myself more.”

There was a small pause, and then he said, “I’m glad.” His voice was loud enough now to reach my ears through the shower’s artificial rain.

I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, drinking in a few mouthfuls of the sweet water to erase the salty tang from my mouth. I swished and spat lightly, freeing my teeth of some grit that had inexplicably settled into my mouth. “Did you enjoy yourself as well?” I asked him, rinsing the sand and salt out of my hair.

Another short pause; I think he might have laughed. “Yes,” he told me firmly. “I really did. Thank you for a wonderful time.”

“Oh, I could have never done any of this without you. You have no idea how much you’re helping me, Michael.”

“Really?” He sounded like he was frowning. “What exactly am I helping you with?”

“It’s a very long story. Suffice it to say that I grew very, very tired of my old life--I needed to get out of town for awhile. This was just what I needed.”

“I’m happy to oblige…anything for you,” he said softly. I froze for a moment, my heart swelling again. A new feeling rose in my chest, one that was not desire or the shallow want for company. It was similar to the feeling I had gotten when watching him sleep, only much, much stronger. I felt my heart flutter and didn’t quite know what to say, though there were many thoughts in my mind that longed to be free.

“Do you travel often?” I asked him, clumsily trying to cover up the silence. “You seem to know a lot about it. You certainly know a lot about motels….”

He laughed. “There’s not much to know, they’re all the same. Have you really never been in one before?”

“Never. Nor a hotel. It’s fascinating.”

“I suppose so,” he said doubtfully. “You are really very strange.”

“Perhaps I am,” I said with a shrug, massaging shampoo into my hair. “But you never said, do you travel often?”

He laughed again. “I’ll say. I’ve been moving around since before I was born.”

“Really?” I paused again, intrigued. “Where were you born?”

“Beijing.”

“Really? Wow…where did you go afterward?”

“I was baptized in the Philippines. I lost track after that, I have it written down somewhere. My father was an ambassador, you see, he had to move around all the time, and he brought my mother along. They didn’t really…want me…but they had no choice in the end to take me with them too. They kept a journal of where they went and what happened there, that’s how I know all I do now.”

“Will you tell me all about it?”

I could hear a smile in his voice. “Of course. Ask me anything.”

I thought for a moment, methodically scrubbing my hair. “Where was the last place you visited?”

He chuckled. “Your town.”

“Really? You mean you don’t really live there?”

“Oh, I do, I have a house and everything. But I’m renting it, it’s not anything permanent. I just got so tired of roaming around…it was exhausting, like you wouldn’t believe. Your town was so peaceful…so small and safe…I had to rest for a little while, and it seemed like the perfect place to stay. I actually want to go back eventually…and I don’t want to leave it again.”

My heart skipped a beat, jolting violently. It was not a pleasant feeling--I was a train that had been derailed, a tram with its cable snipped, careening uncontrollably for one agonizing moment with nothing to stop me or catch me. I swallowed.

“Then don’t,” I said simply, but I meant it. Please don’t.

He sighed. “I don’t know…I can’t stay in one place for long, I just can’t do it. I tried once…but in the end I felt trapped, I had to leave again. This is more my style, what we’re doing now…backpacking and moving around…I feel much better like this.”

Don’t go without me, I wanted to plead. Take me with you when you go for good. But I bit my tongue; he didn’t need that. Instead, I changed the subject.

“Hey, Michael…I was wondering: on the day we met, why did you look so sad?”

There was a long silence that he did not fill; I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. Troubled by this, I continued talking, trying to convince him to speak.

“Actually, it wasn’t just that day…I saw you all over town, in a restaurant, on the sidewalk, and you always looked…not just sad, but lonely…almost scared. What was wrong? Are you going to be all right?” He could try to tell me that it was just a phase, he could try to tell me that it was over now, but I knew. When he was alone, he would go right back to the way he was, maybe even immediately--I knew it was true, I could hear it in the silence, taste the distress in the air.

After a long and tense silence, I heard Michael rise to his feet. “Yes, I’m fine,” he said, his voice significantly strained and low. “I’m going to leave you alone and let you get dressed now--”

“Don’t go, Michael, please,” I said quickly, and turned off the water, poking my head out of the shower curtain. His back was to me; he was twisting the lock on the door. I grabbed hastily for my towel, turning myself sideways to reach it, but my fingers couldn’t find it. I gritted my teeth when I heard the doorknob turn, hissing a swear word under my breath, half-rising to jump out and chase after him, towel or no towel--but then rough cloth rubbed against my wrist, and when I grasped at it I realized that Michael had handed my towel to me.

“Thank you,” I said, swiftly wrapping it around myself. I stepped out and held his wrist as he was turning away. I looked up at him, right into his eyes, and saw pain there; my heart twisted and ached with sorrow.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He shook his head, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t be. Just…don’t worry about it.” He squeezed my hand, but then let go, turning away again. “I’ll let you dress.”

But I wouldn’t let him leave. I fell against him, linking my arms around his waist and pressing myself tightly to him. I breathed in the smell of salt from his shirt, my cheek throbbing with the pulse of his heart.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” I told him. “Not even for a minute.”

Surprised and confused, he tried weakly to pull away. “I’m fine,” he reassured me, “honestly, there’s nothing wrong with me at all. I’m not going anywhere, honey, I promise--”

“I’m still not leaving,” I said stubbornly, frowning, easily recognizing the lie in his words. “You shower, I’ll get dressed.” I gave him a little shove in the direction of the bathtub, then sat firmly down on the thin white rug on the floor, with my back to him and my hands clutching the towel to my chest.

He sighed heavily, then, to my surprise, knelt down and hugged me from behind, kissing my cheek. “You are so strange,” he murmured, his nose skimming lightly down my neck and to my shoulder as he kissed my clean, soft skin. Then he draw away, resisting me when I tried to pull him back. “I’m getting you dirty,” he apologized, and it was true; he had dusted small clumps of sand across the front of my white towel, and there were little drifts of sand, like miniature beach dunes, scattered across the tiles on the floor. I laughed as I dusted myself off, still keeping my back to him, listening with a strange surge of heart-pounding pleasure as I heard him slip out of his close and climb into the shower. Only when I heard the shower’s steady, hissing rain did I dare to sit up a little straighter, resting on my heels, and remove my towel from around my torso, shaking the sand out of it before beginning to rub myself dry.

I would learn later that, though I thought at the time that Michael was busy showering, he was really watching me from a small crack in the shower curtain as I dried myself off, stroked the towel along my hair. He would confess to me that he truly couldn’t help himself, though he had automatically closed his eyes and drawn back whenever I had turned his way and had turned away entirely when I rose to slip into my clothes. Had I known that I had had an audience, I might have tried to seem more interesting to my secret voyeur, but as I hadn’t, all I did was methodically and unexcitingly toweled the water from my skin and hair and slid into my underclothes, not having bothered to bring pajamas in with me. As I did all of this, I possessed a secret thrill or two of my own as I listened to his feet on the floor of the bathtub, the changes in the water sounds as he moved, the soft sound of soap and cloth on bare skin, the small breathless sounds that he made throughout--sounds I attributed to the need to hold his breath as he turned his face to the water. I felt scandalous, but could not bring myself to regret it--or to stop.

When Michael finally emerged from the shower, a towel draped around his waist, he found the bathroom door open and me sitting on the countertop just outside of it, watching myself absently in the mirror as I brushed my hair smooth, the towel draped across my lap. Watching from the corners of my eyes, I was pleased and a little excited to see his mouth fall wide open as he caught sight of me. I hadn’t tried to be flirtatious--I didn’t think it was possible, as I was wet and wearing only plain, white underwear and a damp towel--but had felt a strange longing to be discovered like this, a girl at her nightstand before she retired to bed. My mind had been full of mermaids curled up on rocks, old paintings of women at their vanities, brides in the mirrored dressing room seconds before their music began to play. Michael would later say that I looked like a siren, but pure of heart, bewitching in a way that was not shallow or malicious in the least.

I glanced at him as he paused in the doorway; he reddened and looked away, his gaze falling to his feet, murmuring something about leaving his clothes in this room. I watched him in the mirror as he rummaged through his bag for clean shorts, smiling as he ducked around the corner, out of sight, to pull them and his pajama pants on. I was disappointed, thinking that he would go all the way and put on a shirt as well, but he didn’t; his bare chest was skinny but lean and toned in the mirror as he approached me, cautiously slipping his arms around my waist.

“Didn’t you pack your pajamas?” he teased me lightly. I rested my hand on his, and he leaned his head against my shoulder.

I smiled at his reflection. “No,” I replied. “I never wear them.” The truth was that I was not even sure that I owned any; I had never needed them before, and had not imagined that I would need them on this trip when I had packed. On warm nights I had often curled up on my bed after my shower just like this, or wearing even less, while I cupped my light in my hands. I missed my light as I remembered this, but it was impossible to feel upset or melancholy with Michael beside me.

He laughed and kissed my arm. “I like it.”

I turned to him--he quickly moved away from my chest, keeping a safe distance between us, and traced my hand down his chest, making him shiver. I was eye level with him like this, my toes dangling inches above the ground. When I crossed my legs, the towel fell quietly to the floor. “I like yours, too.”

He smiled and brought my palm to his mouth, kissing it gently before holding it to his heart. I smiled back at him, playfully tugging the brush through his hair. He let me, stepping in a little closer to make it easier for me.

“I never really brush my hair,” he chuckled. “I don’t know what it will do to it.”

“You can always fluff it out again.” I ran my fingers through, then pulled him closer to me and kissed him. He kissed back with soft, smoldering passion, one hand pressed against the small of my back, the other resting lightly on my leg.

How long we stayed like that, I can’t say, but eventually I noticed that my foot had fallen asleep; I shook it lightly, trying to revive it, and Michael seemed to remember that I was in an uncomfortable place. “Let’s get to bed,” he whispered in my ear, and without warning scooped me into his arms, holding me close to his chest and spinning me around once, his mouth locking with mine again, before jerking back the blankets on the bed and laying me down with speed but gentleness, as though I were made of glass. I laughed as he bent over the side of the bed to kiss me, pulling him down beside me, his fingers slowly exploring my skin in a long line down my waist and across my hip to the side of my knee, curling around my calf and slipping my leg along his, my knee against his waist. His other hand wound into my hair as he kissed me with his mouth wide open, gasping for breath, as if he were as thirsty for me as I was for him, my hands pushing against his shoulders, pressing him firmly to me.

Then, very suddenly, he had to pull away. His face was flushed; he looked as though he could not breathe. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, but then I kissed his throat and he caught his breath and changed his mind, his hand curved tightly around my leg. “No, I’m not,” he amended, “but I have to…I should sleep on the floor. You need your rest.”

I laughed at this. “Of course you’re not,” I told him. “There’s room enough for both of us.”

He looked away from me, swallowing. “I shouldn’t….”

I took his hands in mine, laying my head on his chest. His heart was racing madly. “No one is stopping you,” I said softly. “Especially not me. You don’t have to abide by anyone’s morality code but your own.”

He gave a short, rough laugh. “With that mindset, the world would fall to anarchy.”

“Obedience to a common code is for the common masses,” I quoted from one of my light’s stories. I kissed the corner of his jaw. “And you, Michael, are anything but common.”

He looked as though he hardly knew what to say to that. Instead of attempting it, he chose to pull the blankets over me, covering me gently and smoothing my hair back out of my eyes. I was touched by his tenderness and immediately pulled free, hugging him tightly.

“Stay with me,” I pleaded. “Won’t you, Michael?”

He sighed quietly, closing his eyes. “If it makes you happy,” he finally said.

I beamed at him, pulling the covers over us both and curling up against his chest. He started slightly at the contact but didn’t pull away; instead, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, holding me close.

“You don’t snore, do you?” he teased. I frowned a little.

“I don’t know.” Did I? I had never thought to worry about that.

But he only laughed. “I don’t mind.” He rolled onto his back, letting me settle against him with my head resting on his chest. I was very warm there, and unbelievably comfortable. No pillow or doll could imitate the wonderful feeling of resting against living, breathing flesh, especially the smooth, hard-muscled, yet relaxingly soft chest of a man.

I remembered my vow that I would never fall asleep when Michael was with me, and, feeling slightly guilty for my bone-deep exhaustion, I quickly asked him, “Would it bother you if we watched a little television?”

He blinked down at me, his eyes already half-closed from tiredness. “Really?”

“Yes.” Television was fascinating--and it would keep me awake.

He arched an eyebrow at me, but nonetheless reached for the small flat remote control and pressed a button, causing the television to blink with blinding brightness into life, the static screaming against my ears until the sound rushed in, flooding the room with words. Michael asked me what channel I wanted to watch, but I didn’t know what he meant, so I told him that I had no preference. He flipped through them lazily, too tired to even register what the pictures showed him. After awhile he handed the little flat square to me, and I amused myself with pressing the buttons to see what each one did.

“You’ve really never watched television before?” Michael asked me sleepily.

I shook my head, pushing random numbers on the remote. A sitcom, a documentary, and a cooking show flashed by in quick succession.

“Why not?”

“I never thought about it.”

He chuckled. “I suppose that makes sense. You don’t seem the type.”

I paused, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“Television is all right, but it gets tiresome--it’s for people who can’t create their own stories, not for people like you.” He softly kissed my hair. “Your mind is too full of beautiful things to need something like that.”

I blushed faintly at the compliment.

“Why do you have a TV, if you don’t even know how to work it?” he asked me curiously.

“My house came fully furnished,” I explained. “It was already there.”

“Did it? Who did you buy it from?”

“I don’t remember.”

He paused for a minute, then sighed. “You are so strange,” he said, but he was stroking my hair as he said it, softening the criticism in his voice.

I smiled and snuggled closer to him, loving the smell and feel of him, warm and clean and soft as he was. For all those years that I had had my light, I had known all about romance, had known all the facts, but had never imagined that it would feel this way. I had read and written a hundred passages describing the feel of human touch, of human affection, and had thought that I had known what it was really like, to be held and touched like this. But I had had no idea. And now that I did, I knew that I would never want to go back. Nothing else on the earth could compare to this.

I mused about this as I lay in Michael’s arms, both of us staring absently at the television screen, not really seeing it. My light had given my life meaning for so long, feeding me with endless stories, keeping me happy. But soon it had become everything; I had become dependent on it; the sun and the beauty and people of the world had become colorless and grey to me, hollow and worthless. My light had become all that mattered. Was this its fault, or my own? It couldn’t help what it was.

Without it, I could see the ocean and marvel at its beauty; I could look at the sun and think, How beautiful it all is. My light had given me endless and wonderful but insubstantial worlds to live in, but now I knew that my own world was just as infinite--I could not see all of it in my lifetime, even if I never rested for even a minute. Even with airplanes and ships and cars, it would take me hundreds of thousands of years just to see the world--and to understand it, I would need thrice as much time. It was a wonderful, beautiful world, even the ordinary, boring, monotonous parts of it, and it was all REAL…all so tangible…I did not have to close my eyes and imagine the feel of sand or the taste of the sea now, all I had to do was keep my eyes wide open. Memory would become my new imagination.

Though I still felt the loss of my light, I was becoming more elated by the hour--it had been ripped out of me, true, and painfully, but it had been heavy, and now I was weightless and free. I had Michael; I would not fall, no ill fate would befall me. A new part of my life had begun, all thanks to Michael, and I was determined to live it.

Sometime during my reverie, Michael had gently taken the remote control from me and pressed the button that turned the television off. Then he had put it aside, wrapping his arms around me again, ascertaining that I would remain safe and warm all night. I blinked, realizing that I had had my eyes closed for a very long time.

“What did you turn it off for?” I whispered to him, and he started slightly.

“Oh…I’m sorry,” he whispered back. “I thought you were sleeping.” He reached for the remote control again, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“It’s all right. I like this better.” Once I had stopped paying attention to the television, it had become bothersome, a glare of light and rush of meaningless noise that distracted me from my thoughts…and from Michael. He had been right, television really wasn’t that special, and now that it was gone, I could devote my attention entirely to him.

He pulled his arm back, resting his hand lightly on the back of my head. “I do, too,” he murmured.

I smiled and closed my eyes, lightly kissing his chest over his heart. “I don’t ever want to go to sleep.”

He chuckled. “I would if I were you. You don’t know when you’ll be able to sleep in a warm, soft bed again.”

“I don’t mind. I don’t want to go to sleep anyway, it doesn’t matter where I am.”

“You need sleep, sweetheart,” he sighed. “We have a lot of hiking to do tomorrow.”

“But we have all the time in the world,” I reminded him, tracing the planes of his chest with one finger. “We can do whatever we want.”

He smiled as he kissed the top of my head. “That’s true,” he breathed. “But aren’t you tired?”

“Tired?” I had forgotten what it was supposed to feel like. Heavy and peaceful, or dead-on-your-feet? Now that I thought about it, I did feel a bit of the former sinking in. “A little….”

His fingers softly stroked my hair, again and again. “Go to sleep,” he whispered soothingly. “There’s plenty of time to do everything when you’re rested again.”

It felt so nice that I didn’t even consider arguing; I felt like a big, sleepy cat, purring and arching its back as it was petted. I rested one hand right beside his head on the pillow, spreading the other over his chest. He turned his head and kissed my palm.

“Goodnight,” he murmured.

“I love you,” I replied softly.

It seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to say, though it had been difficult to open my mouth widely enough to get it out. I knew as I heard myself saying those words that it was true. I did love him. The warm, soft brightness in my heart could not be anything but love, and it was all for him, every bit of it.

In stories, this would always be the point where the other person said it back, and both would have an enormous revelation of some sort and immediately do something they never had before--kiss, make love, cry. But this didn’t happen now. Michael was silent for so long, barely even breathing, that I worried that I had hurt him, or even offended him. The silence dragged on, and only then, after more than a minute, did I begin to be afraid. What if he didn’t love me back? What would that mean? Had I ruined everything with just three little words? I hadn’t realized the enormity of what I had said until it was too late to reconsider.

And suddenly I remembered the not-so-happy stories…the ones with unrequited love. People had wrapped their arms around a man or a woman just like Michael and I were doing now and said those three powerful little words…but the other person had not been able to say it back. They were in love with Romeo Montague, with Rebecca de Winter, with Edmund Dantes…with someone else. Or they were not in love at all. I had never had my heart broken. Would I now?

But I had nothing to fear.

After the long silence, Michael suddenly began to breathe again, relaxing, hugging me closer and gently kissing my hair. “I love you, too,” he whispered.

It is…completely impossible to describe how I felt when I heard these words. At first I could not comprehend them at all; it didn’t make sense, it was too much, too unexpected. I had imagined him saying the words, just for a moment, but naïve as I had been, I had not realized just how potent and meaningful they would be. But once I understood, felt a thrill of something very like fear, an electric shock to my nerves--and then almost instantly an overwhelming sense of relief, as though my heart had been twisting with a burning agony that was now gone, leaving only a memory behind. It felt right, undeniably so. And, for the first time in my life, I felt utterly and entirely whole, joyfully serene, so peaceful that my entire body automatically relaxed in response, just as Michael’s had.

I kissed Michael’s neck, my breaths shallow and unsteady, and pressed myself close to him, attempting with my silence to convey a message no words on earth could describe. He seemed breathless as well, as if he had to remind himself to inhale, exhale, inhale again, as if his mind was so full and so confused that he had to fight to remember to breathe. I felt the same; he loves me, I love him, he loves me too, the words were chanting in my head, again and again, bringing waves of sweetness flooding through me with their irresistible pull. His voice whispered “I love you too” once more in my mind, as though he had said it aloud, the beautiful tones reverberating through me like singing chapel bells. It was all so lovely that I couldn’t even feel my body, lost as I was in the wonder if it all; warmth soaked through me, through him, through both of us, and I could feel our connection now, could almost touch it and taste it, sweet as honey, as it bound us together, a golden thread vibrating sweetly as it wrapped around us both, enveloping us in the sign of infinity.

The love I felt for him rose blissfully through my chest, lifting me up, helping me to breathe again--like the first breath, miraculous and deep, filling me through with life. I felt intoxicated; suddenly my eyes were open, suddenly the darkness was gone, dead, even the shadows, and all around me, for miles and miles, the world was filled with sunshine.

~

When I woke up the next morning, the sweetness of the night before still lingered in my mouth. In the aftermath, the morning seemed too bright to be of this earth, surreal in its brilliance. Every dust mote, every thread in the bedspread, was illuminated in golden light, each square inch in the room a thing of immeasurable beauty and worth. The sun was bright, but it was pale; that singing golden thread between us was the source of the radiance, bathing us and the air around us with pure light from within.

Michael was still sleeping; his breaths were light and steady, the peaceful respiration of those deeply asleep. I knew that he would be sleeping for awhile; we had gone to sleep at two in the morning and it was barely past nine. But I didn’t mind; I was fully awake, and was overjoyed at the chance to watch Michael as he slept and be alone to think.

I carefully disentangled myself from Michael’s grasp and rested my head on the pillow beside him, my face only a few inches from his. I held his hands in mine, pressed to my heart. I could see that Michael was not a deep sleeper, not in the least the sort that could sleep through a gunfight or an earthquake, but also not the sort to jump up at every sound. I could imagine him easily as a small child of five or six, curled up in someone’s arms as he was carried upstairs, his sleep uninterrupted by gentle touches and soft-spoken words. I wondered if I could kiss him without wakening him, but I didn’t want to try until enough time had passed for him to get his rest.

For the longest time I did nothing save nap beside him, basking in the warmth of the sun and his body. The world had never seemed better than this, and I knew that this was the best day of my life so far.

Michael loved me. He loved me. He loved me. Who had ever loved me before? Just thinking about it filled me with warmth and light. And I loved him in return…somehow, my love or his love on its own would have been miserable, pointless, the lost puzzle piece…but together, it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of what would happen now. We could run away…live together, visit foreign lands…my mind raced far ahead of itself, losing all logic completely. We could elope, live in Asia somewhere, be together for the rest of our lives…maybe we would have children, it didn’t seem likely, but who knew? We could do anything we wanted. Yesterday I hadn’t even known that our love existed, but today I felt empowered by it, as if I could do anything, anything at all, if only Michael were with me.

How could I not have noticed before? I loved him so much that my heart ached with it, my every thought pulsed with it. Now that I had admitted it, now that I had set it free, it was overwhelming, all-consuming, it refused to be ignored. I smiled as I basked in it like a turtle in the sun. Finally, I was in the good part of my life’s story--the part where the main character found true love and said farewell to misery, continuing her story with adventures and excitement, or with a simple ‘happily ever after.’ I didn’t know what would happen now, but I knew that it would be good, and I would be happier than I had ever been.

I lay beside Michael, gently stroking his hands with my thumbs and watching him sleep, for a couple of hours; I had allotted him nine hours of sleep, but was impatient for him to awaken, especially as he had been so determined to get as early a start as possible. When the clock said that it was past eleven, I took the risk that I had been wanting to take for hours, and folded myself closer to him, our ankles crossed, holding his hands to the hollow of my throat. I leaned in and closed my eyes, kissing his sleeping lips as gently as I could, my hand entwined in his hair.

When I pressed my lips to his, his breath caught slightly, and his lips opened a little beneath mine, but that was all he did; he didn’t move at all while I kissed him slowly and softly, my eyes closed as my lips found his again and again. Eventually I became bolder, wrapping myself around him, one hand pressing against the back of his waist; I began to use my tongue, moving a little faster, a little rougher. I was experimenting, seeing how far he would let me go, how much I could get away with.

To my surprise, when he finally did awaken, he didn’t pull away; instead his lips, quite suddenly, started to move in sync with mine, and his eyes flickered open before closing once again; he pulled me closer with fierce possessiveness, one hand remaining at the small of my back, the other moving to the side of my chest, his thumb pressing against my breast. He kissed me hard, with passion that seemed to have never known rest or fatigue--so hard, in fact, that before long I was breathless.

Finally, after what felt like several blissful hours, we broke apart; he gently pushed against the back of my head until I was resting against his shoulder, holding me close, our bodies warm and our hearts racing.

“What did I do to earn that?” he whispered in my ear. “Tell me so I can do it again.”

I smiled, kissing his bare chest, absently tracing the tip of my tongue along his skin. “I was just curious,” I murmured. “You liked it?”

He laughed. “You have no idea,” he breathed. “I’ve never woken up this happy before….” He kissed the top of my head, hugging me tightly, his knee slipping between mine. “I love you,” he told me.

“And I love you,” I replied, closing my eyes and breathing in his warm, comforting smell.

He laughed at this, softly and happily, and hesitated before resting his hand against my cheek and carefully lifting my chin until our lips met. He kissed me more powerfully than ever, his passion smoldering, his lips and tongue searching me thirstily, always hungry for more. When I responded just as enthusiastically, his passion flared and burned even stronger; it took him a long, long time to calm down properly, and even then he wouldn’t let me go, he wouldn’t stop kissing me, every once in awhile pulling back just a little, opening his eyes for a moment or two, and once I had felt his eyes on me and opened my own, they met, and we shared a glance into the other’s soul, a secret heart-deep embrace, a moment of purest truth.

The light had changed during this, the curtain glowing less brightly from the sunlight, and when a tiny cloud passed over the sun Michael and I, both attuned so deeply to light, noticed at once; he grudgingly, carefully pulled away from me and reached across me to the curtain, pulling it aside. A chunk of light so vividly yellow that I believed it to be solid washed over my lap; I dipped my hand into it, smiling dreamily at the way it made the skin of my fingers shine.

“The sun is so beautiful,” I whispered, glancing outside, directly into the glare. Michael noticed; he leaned forward and kissed my neck, resting his head on my shoulder, watching the patterns of light play over our legs.

“Yes,” he murmured back, fingering one of my now-shimmering curls. “It is.” Again, he touched his lips very softly to my throat. “But not as much as you.”

I smiled, blushing a little in spite of myself. I tugged the curtain a bit further back, letting in another inch or two of brilliance, and took his hand as he shifted to sit up beside me, holding it into the light, tracing each of his fingers in turn. He had the most beautiful hands on earth; I craved their touch, savored their taste, loved to watch them at work with small, delicate things, pieces to a puzzle that only he could solve.

“This, to me,” I said slowly, trying to get it right, “is the most beautiful thing in the world.”

And, I thought, as Michael blushed and kissed me, as the sunlight poured over us like waves and waves of sweet, warm water, as we remembered once again that we were alone together and had the whole world ahead of us, to do with it what we pleased…I thought to myself that I was absolutely right--nothing could be more beautiful than this.

~

A relationship moves as quickly as you let it. Lucy and Michael have no boundaries; they don't need to. Also, they're adults, not high school or college kids

chillax. that was the point, yes, but Michael is too noble.

Yesssss.

that settles it. This really is theeee best thing I've written so far.

heart I love you guys.