H
e has missed her.Michael doesn't see this first off; to start he is wrapped up in his drink and her face reflected in it, warping along with the scenery as she bobs with each word. She is so graceful, and warm, and open, he thinks, in a way he himself has never quite captured. Elena says his name like the sun and his heart sings and then melts and then turns cold as river water when their eyes finally meet.
He sees it, now. Michael is not Elena's reflection and she is not his. If she is anything she is a star to shoot for, hung above the horizon where he cannot hope to reach. He tells himself what a gift it would be, to mirror Elena. He does not say it but it is there nonetheless.
Michael tips the drink back and swallows the whole of it, gritting his teeth. It's sweet but not sweet enough. As are most things. "You sure about that?" he asks with a smile, one of those precious few calm ones that lulls along with the loping violin in the background. "It's heavy. Very heavy." His hair, and his tolerance, are a gift from his father-- the only gifts, or at least the only ones that matter and do no harm.
Here they are, strangers in strange lands, still lonely in each other's company. Michael cannot remember much (except for a girl like Elena but with skin like fat storm clouds and eyes like cornflower, that promised him nothing more than to stay and live and be and didn't keep any of them. She was tempestuous and jealous, and not much like Elena at all, but still when he sees her he aches in places he forgot he had).
He wants just the one thing that doesn't hurt. Just the one. She gestures to the sun on her shoulder and Michael agrees that it's nice, setting his glass on the table and looking away. Michael sees when she cringes, just barely, because it is familiar. He feels a pang of loss for her, about her, in spite of her, or anything. Sometimes he thinks he is just loss and loss and loss all piled on top of itself until there is nothing else left.
He is almost right. Almost.
Do you dance? Elena asks, and Michael turns back with a grin on his face and an uncommon fire in his eyes. There is a growing crowd funneling into the field, leaving a wake of flattened grass and laughter. One of them hands Michael a drink that he takes without thinking. "You wound me." He says, taking a sip. "While I am a sinner, my crime isn't dancing-- or not dancing, as it were."
Still grinning, Michael inclines his head in a melodramatic bow, and gestures to the crowd with his glass. "Lead the way."
I am soft again.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.
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