Spun
It was something in the air, or in the water. It was something in his breath, on her skin. It was something, and now she was something else, something lighter and softer and more fragile, yet more edged and defined. Her fingertips grazed her sides, she felt velvet skin, slightly furred, felt the whorls of her fingertips and each plane of muscle, and each tendon in her legs. She felt finer and stronger and magnificently… complete. Whole.
And it was cold.
It had never been cold before, she had never felt that kiss of ice in the mist, nor seen the leaves glow with that inward fire. She had seen mornings, young with light, when the sun dallied in its rising, but nothing like the seamless dark where candles flickered and star bursts danced behind her eyes. She had seen the tiny yellow leaves, crinkling into full green. She had seen the young grain, first the blade, then the ear, then the corn erupted into fertility, but never the drying stalks, never the razed stubble, never the cinders, smoking, black. Never the swooping bats nor the sweetness of decayed fruit, never the cider and the wine. All her life she had bloomed.
And then, then he had touched her. And something inside had recoiled, turned like a worm in the sun, squirmed, fecund, heavy, disturbing. The pomegranate seeds she had pressed against her lips to stop their trembling, staining them, marking herself with his gift. And in so doing, she had crossed from above to below, not forever, they said, but for now.
He was coming, now.
He would show her how to draw up a bath, and he would wait for her, should she want him.
Did she want him?
“Seph?”
She shuddered at his voice, and the cobweb gown she wore slipped down her shoulders.
It was so dark. She was cold and trembling and everything within her sparkled like ice in starlight.
So. The picture (entitled Ghosts Invade the Bathtub) that inspired this week’s Flicktioning was taken by Flickr photographers Danny & Nina, who are as cute as they wanna be, and will likely be Ficktionated by the usual suspects at Ficktion.ning.