#bride

the sound went up your spine. lost in the confusion of your machinations, you had neglected to account for the noise that warned of an arrival. the thing that was you turned quickly, by no will of your own, to scrutinize that which was like you, recognized upon instant.

matted and soiled cotton clothing this muse wore, leaned against the doorway as though its strength had abated it, or you had wounded it by acknowledgement. a mess of dark and curling hair laid atop, strands stuck to a damp forehead and nape, wet with perspiration. the thing was troubled by the sight of your unexpected awareness, and yet! frantic brown eyes, which missed not an inch of the physical material that made you, retained a fraction of their warmth in their assessment. 

was this you? surely not! it must be something related, another of the same design. even if, upon initial, wondrous estimation, you concluded it differed in all ways you differed from it, and that what you shared was only that you were of something which was the same. 

it released a sound. a strange one, of the lungs. the look it fashioned shifted to something which reduced the anxious quiver felt below your throat. it hastened away from where it stood mute with admiration and drew closer – warmth, then, you truly met, warmth which lived threaded in the iris now impressed upon your elbow. it turned your limb to run a finger down the middle to the pulsepoint by your wrist. a gentle examination and pause.

“you’re alive.”

the statement rippled through your substance, not with meaning but with a distant, miraculous familiarity. the other’s keen appraisal inspired you. you took to your own arm and looked very closely to locate exactly what so bewitched. you could identify no thing, thus it must have been the sum of things if sums were things which could be counted.

“can you understand me?” it inquired in a cadence softer than before, and earnestly did it search your features for a clue. wildly impotent, you found no way to answer or to decipher what was being requested, only that you had the capacity to do both. here, the first appearance of frustration fouled your temper and shook you into inaction, and no longer did you excavate it or yourself for sensations which would serve as explanations of the architecture of this world.

it was perceptive, or you, unschooled, too conspicuous. how many expressions could it make! your capacity must have been just as much or greater, but this particular one cooled your spirits, or better yet, disarmed them completely – you had learned of light and warmth, and both, you found, existed twice forever in a smile. 

“you can, perhaps in your own way, but you can. i see it in your eyes. clear and intelligent, with no foul yellow ring to obscure their intention. wonderfully mundane, but all the more impressive for it. i know of people who possess not half the awareness of an animal, and some even less than that, and here you sit,” it directed its gaze downward. you spotted shattered glass and combusted contraptions laid askew, glimmering when the morning sunlight caught against them; soot-spilled walls, as though from a great fire that never existed, and ruined pages of detailed symbols, mesmerising but incomprehensible. “you should not,” it tacked on quietly, “but you are. you are. day and night you are so different, day and night.”

you sensed it approved of you, somehow, by some measurement. you did not yet know that this was a human-being that cradled you so carefully, nor the folly of all human-beings, displayed yet unrecognizable to your untrained eye. you did not know of comparison, the thief of joy, and you did not know that all things of conscious thought could exist in no other way than to think of things in terms of familiar and not. good and evil, truth and lie – these terrible binaries dictated their conduct, but they would never admit to it. the one which loved you would not admit to it as well; and would not teach you of these laws of their nature, either. 

at present, this sliver of what you did know – a room with a view, and a thing like you which was so partial to you – pleased you immensely. how quickly did you change, from frightened to irked to pacified! you wished to return this gentle sentiment. you hoped to witness its smile which so quickly vanished, trounced by a deeper, complicated emotion you could not comprehend. guilt, you would learn, you would learn so much.

you freed your wrist from its grasp, though it was reluctant to release you, momentarily confused by your sudden retreat. and still, it read your intentions perhaps quicker than you could understand them yourself. it unfurled its sleeve and presented its arm for your curious fingers. this, you thought – in parallels and corporeal sensations –, was a custom, or a greeting, or something of equal importance, for it was the first thing it inflicted upon your person. 

the appendage was much different, as was it to you: the skin coarser, older, but not unappealing in its presentation. you could see the webbing of its interior, blue lines in the crook of the elbow and the wrist, by the pulse which you found hammering. you, it watched enraptured, and made no further sound. you looked to your hand to compare, and how much of a human-being did you then seem! what a terrible thing you were performing, fixing to their inexhaustible pairs without encouragement, going against your unnatural objective disposition! oh, but were you to blame, naive and benevolent, that which learned from sight and touch? 

the width of the palm was larger, a map of carved rivers that you traced with your nail. your lines did not match. next, you inspected its long, trembling fingers, bony but warm. you turned the hand, and found the knuckles split and scabbed over, veins and tendons popped, buoyant when pressed. what did all of this mean? 

you aligned your palm to its, and how much hotter it burned than you! such was a concept which perplexed, and which seemed to draw to the other something withering like old, sunburned branches from the life still dormant within, but by whose instruction you knew not, and this was a dilemma for another time. in the present, you felt a resounding comfort, and once that had settled into the whole of you, the joy of the unknown took over.

a good start, this one seemed to be, not a waste of your energies or a pointless endeavour you should have otherwise staved from. a shared bond. you decided you liked this feeling.

you liked it when it laughed, too, low and tempered and breathy from an ache. the smile returned, a gentle quirk of the lips, and you hoped that the sight of yours would elicit a similar reaction, of good faith and fondness.