[seasonal event] to find a soul somewhere

amalia chandrakant there is a color that shines through your skin Like the moon on the wind He relinquishes the fabric, but she is still caught, a captive to the magnetism that is everything the man exudes. A planet in orbit around her sun, she is anchored, marooned, left to crash upon his surface and smell the sweet salt in his sweat. A twitch of her fingers, a single step and she would be flush against his body, his skin on hers, enraptured and entwined, and oh, they would be lost. How he could want her remains a mystery, but he must - he must - because otherwise how could he be there, still staring, still warming himself on the fire of her lust? For a moment they are frozen, both pinnacles of ice, an unspoken challenge strung between them as each one pretends that they shall not melt. (But oh, beneath that thin sheen of ice, what molten metal boils in her breast!-) She stumbles, and he laughs, and she can move again, her hands dropping to her chest, an awkward smile stretching over her lips. "How many?" she whispers, because again she does not know how to have a conversation, how to express any of the things she feels, the longing demands and quiet pleas which ripple beneath her tongue. The shirt is a shield, cold and damp, the only thing standing between her and ruin. She clings to it, feeling the lump of stone beneath the fabric, remembering that she has a bigger purpose, a prize to conceal, a goal to achieve. It keeps her fingers from drifting too close, dancing across those silver scars, tracing each one in turn to its end and kissing the spaces between them. Her eyes have dropped again, trying to gaze upon things they should not. She raises them back up to his face, swallowing the knot in her throat, trying not to let him see each ravenous crack in her self control. Oh, but she is hungry, starved of a food she has never tasted, emaciated and wasting and gluttonous for him. She licks her lips, an unconscious action, her hands wringing anxiously through the strands of silver cloth, her toes pushing eagerly into the warm sand. Through the haze of it all her brain strains to work, to build a series of coherent thoughts, an escape route which will lead her to safety and away from this dangerous undertow. With a shuddering breath the girl steps back, and the reluctance is nearly palpable, painful in her quivering body, the hair which rises on her skin. "Wait a moment." She cannot say who the instruction is for- him? Her? Both together? Another step, and another, toward the waiting stone, her back never to him, her eyes always up. Until she reaches her destination, and the distance between them is at last enough that she can pull away, slip out of his orbit. Bending, she makes a show of hanging the shirt out, letting the treasure roll into her pack. The pack, from which she produces a blanket, woolen and soft, spun from the fleece of Rory's goats. She lays it out upon the sand and lowers herself cross-legged onto a corner, smiling shyly up at Deimos, gesturing for the man to join. "Will you tell me the story of your scars, Mr. Shade?" Will you let me know every thing about you, whet my hunger until we cannot stand? the night is full on behalf or your evaded mask And the rings round your eyes

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