She
absorbed light like a black hole. In the pale, flickering candlelight she
seemed to him some type of ravenous beast, searching, hunting. She looked out
into the night with cold, dead eyes. They sat in silence save for the
persistent whispering of the wind through the skeleton trees. Perhaps they
feigned sleep, but their deceptions were betrayed by their breath which rose in
plumes from their wordless lips. He watched her sallow face reflected in a
darkened window, motionless save for the tiny twitches of muscle beneath the
fragile, porcelain skin. Forever watching and waiting was he, waiting for
something to emerge from the dark, some lost memory wandering alone in the
night. Patiently, silently he waited for a familiar face to appear in the fog.
An endless parade of empty nights rewarded his efforts.
They
clung together tonight in desperation just as a hundred nights before, hoping
to ward off the piercing chill which prowled outside, forever circling, forever
gaining confidence. Each night his hardened arms enveloped her ever thinning
frame. Each night he held her firmly. Held but never touched. As an owl spies
down for prey from high above so every tendon in his body waited in
anticipation; waiting for some sign of recipricosity. He prayed for warmth. He
prayed for the sleep which eluded his exhausted mind.
Wordlessly,
he reached out and extinguished the flame between his forefinger and thumb.
Darkness, having been temporarily satiated, returned once again and claimed its
place. Pulling her closer in what might have been a tender embrace, he paused
to feel the beat of her heart: strong, rhythmic, hypnotic, and he was briefly
filled with something like optimism. Optimism akin to a kind that, though
surrounded by the bleakness and the dark, still longs for the coming of day;
still yearns for the brightness. Yet his respite is brief for he held in his
arms not the warmth of a lover but the cold indifference of a former acquaintance.
Someone once known; once loved.
They
each stared out into the blackness of the night and he prayed deep and nameless
things. Forever the wind passed through leafless trees.
