A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY
Abel could tell her how not to be afraid. He would say: expect the worst. He would say: give up, go along, bend your head like a reed in a storm and the storm will pass in time. But he would know at the same time that it might not help, in the end; hadn’t the last storms flattened everything, hadn’t they ripped the roots from the soil and baptized them in saltwater?
He can see the dried tear-tracks that gleam on her cheeks; he remembers their trails from his own. The little paths they carved, the taste of salt at the corner of your mouth, so that when you licked your lips later you had a memory of weeping.
Now his eyes are dry as sand. Now his mouth is a canyon carved in rock.
There is something strange about her. He has learned the desert night is cool, here on the cusp of autumn, but when he comes near to her the temperature dips, a kiss of winter. Yet Abel does not shiver, only blinks, slow, and pictures himself home, a trembling dawn, the first frost of winter on the grass. His body leans toward her, unbidden; stiff-legged he steps away.
Dreaming, she says, and he wants to ask Why? Of what?
Instead he bends his head away from the cool breath of her whisper, which makes him think too much of Denocte. They are alone on the streets; moonlight cools the cobblestones, makes the stark walls of the city softer. Lamplight trembles, caught in glass. Abel knows there is harm in dreaming.
“It is not dreams that walk the desert tonight,” he answers at last, and his voice is tight and grim, and that is how he knows he feels sorry for her. The boy shakes his head without looking up at the stars, constellations telling stories of dead heroes and dead monsters. “Yes. For as long as it takes me to escort you home.”
Escort. Like they might be courting, just a boy and a girl walking together beneath the starlight on a desert night. Just dreaming.
Here is where he should show his teeth, or press the hard ridge of his nose to her shoulder and push. But Abel does not touch her; he still hovers just out of reach, eyes pale and pitted as the moon. Shadow and light and dead barren ground. “Let’s go.”
@Evangelina
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