In the centre of the room, she lit the candles in the shape of a circle. One by one, as the wicks caught and trembled, she felt the chill in her heart melt a little. Twenty-seven tiny flames flickered, each one for a year in the brief life that had been extinguished. Lithely, she stepped into the middle of the ring of candlelight and moved to the wooden box in the middle. She knelt down and touched its surface, her fingertips barely touching the scarred wood, charred black on one side, silky brown on the other.
Images started flashing in her mind.
She found the jewellery box in the tucked-away corner of an antiques shop. 'Perfect', she thought. 'She'll love it.'
... The wide smile she gave as she ripped open the gift-paper. "Thank you..." Her warm, sweet scent enveloping them as she threw her arms around her lover, delighted. "It's beautiful." The box had survived.
She
hadn't.
She opened the box, unlocking it with its tiny key and carefully took out the letters. They were colourful, written on flirty stationery, bound with a red ribbon. Full of life, just as
she
had been. In contrast, her own letters to her lover were starkly black and white.
She didn't open the ribbon binding the letters. She knew word for word what was in there. She had lain awake nights, tracing the nonliving words. She needed to touch the relics tonight, ground herself with them, let their energy flow through her and take her back in time; not that she needed them for that, but touching these lifeless things was all she had. This was all she had left of
her
.
A lazy afternoon when she had been cleaning and found the letters...
"Wow. These are old. You still have them?"
"I like reading them. Your words are beautiful."
"I can give you words whenever you want, love. Come here, I'll make you new ones." She hugged Shauna from behind, arms around her waist and started whispering into her ear. "You're what I live for. You give me meaning, make my life worth living. With you I realise my hopes and live my dreams. You're with me every moment, as essential to me as my heartbeat. You're my guiding light, my refuge, my saviour. And being with you here, in moments like this, I can't ever thank all the deities in this world enough for your presence in my life." There, her voice turned husky with emotion. "And I want to spend an eternity wrapped around you like this. A whole eternity, Love, and beyond..."
The letters were laid on the floor as she dipped her hand into the box again for the next object -- sheer yellow panties edged with white lace.
"You know, you look too virginal in them."
She struck a pose, peeking from behind her eyelashes, her eyes brimming with laughter. "So?"
"You're so
not innocent!"
"Oh? Just because I know how to make you scream with ecstasy when I bathe your nipple with my tongue and bury my fingers in your..."
Her words stopped as she dissolved into laughter seeing Shaunna's blush.
"Those were not
the words of an innocent! I rest my case."
She took Shaunna into her arms then, murmuring, "God, I love you! Now, are you interested in taking these panties off?" Shaunna sniffed the cloth in her hands, hoping for a lingering scent of her essence, but there was nothing. It had been too long. "I miss you so much," she whispered. She laid it on the floor next to the letters.
A paper napkin with their initials inside a heart, drawn by her in a restaurant as they waited for their salads to arrive -- that was next. Shaunna took it out and fingered it. It was so soft. Her fingertips felt like they were being indulged. These days she didn't really pay attention to how things felt in her hands. A lot of their lovemaking had been simple touches.
She
had loved touching. Sometimes Shaunna was embarrassed by it. Like that day in the restaurant...
It started innocently enough, with the stroking of a bare arm, smiling into each others' eyes and the clasping of hands. Then Shaunna saw her eyes light up.
She slipped her hand under the table and caressed a bare thigh. Flitting fingers from the outside of her thigh to the soft skin inside made her squirm in her seat. Shaunna could only look at her, eyes widening. She smiled in response -- that impish smile. The hand swept up, stroking warm skin, melting her insides and making her nipples hard.
Shaunna dipped her head, wishing fervently that no one else could see what was happening. Surely her glazed eyes broadcast her peaked desire to the world.
Under the table, slender fingers found Shaunna's centre. A light brush, and it took Shaunna all of her self-control not to jump out of the chair and cry out. She wrapped her fingers around a fork tightly.
"Look at me."
The command was incredulous. She couldn't. But she did. Shaunna lifted her face to her, naked under her gaze, giving all of herself through her eyes, stripping herself bare. She flinched as she felt fingers slipping past the barrier of her panties and then exploring the soft flesh beyond. She felt buttery wetness slip out of her.
The fingers spread it around, slipping slickly into her folds, finding her nub, circling it, then slipping down lower, inside her. She grasped the edge of the table with her other hand, trying to contain the frenzy building up within her. She wanted to thrash about, throw her head from side to side and moan, beg, plead for more. Instead, she arched her back slightly and bit the inside of her lip to keep from making her pleasure known to the people around them.
Shaunna moved her hips forward so the fingers could connect more thoroughly to her core. The massage continued. Feelings curled inside her belly, spiralled, higher and higher, out of control. Shaunna shut her eyes reflexively, tightly in an effort to contain what was happening within her. The pleasure heightened and she exploded then, waves of pleasure rippling through her blood, carried to every part in her body, bursting in tiny points along each nerve ending. She felt herself lift, float, plunge and soar all at once as she clenched and unclenched around the fingers buried inside her, still caressing her over each wave, slowing and letting her down gently.
As Shaunna tried to gather her scattered senses, she felt her juices spilling out of her, soaking her panties, her thighs and running down to her seat. Anxiety flared in the eyes that flew open urgently, and she panicked a little. There was a restraining hand on her arm then, and an understanding smile on her
face.
'Relax.' Her lips formed the words as she scooped up the liquid with her fingers and extracted them. Shaunna's amazement reached its height as she saw her lover bringing her glistening fingers to her lips, licking them off slowly and thoroughly. She winked then, making Shaunna blush furiously and fumble for a tissue to wipe the rest of her off discreetly before she walked on trembling legs to the washroom. All those memories...
Shaunna was crying now. Dry, breathless sobs sucked air out of her lungs and burnt her insides. How she missed the touching. Those delicate but strong hands that could transport her to another world in a few minutes, haunted her. She ached to press her lips to the faint blue nerves on the back of that hand. She yearned for just one more touch of that palm against her cheek as she fell asleep, for running her thumb over the life-giving veins in that delicate wrist. There was nothing she desired more at that moment than that finger to touch her core and transform her universe into uneven breaths and trembling muscles. But it wasn't there.
Her sobs turned into hiccups as her body surged and thrummed with the intensity of her wanting. She turned her head towards the candle in the window, willing the soul to find her way home. She crawled over to the window, touching the candle, trailing one fingertip down its length. "Come home. Please. It's so hard... so hard without you." She stared at the flame and spoke in the hope that some of what she was saying could reach her in the other world.
"I need you so much. I thought I'd be okay... but I cannot live like this any more. I miss you... every moment of every day. Everything around me reminds me of you... everything in my life has been touched by your presence, and without you, it's just a pale reflection. It can never be the same again." The flame of the candle filled her vision while she talked, and as she looked into its depths, she felt herself going to a safe place -- a place removed from where she was, separate from her grief.
"There's just this darkness. All around me, choking me. I don't know how I'm alive... why I'm alive. I'm broken, Love, and I'm tired of fighting the darkness. And if you can't join me from wherever you are... I have no choice..."
She blanked then, leached of all emotion, her words turning too soft and finally dying down. She slowly got to her feet and made her way to the bathroom. The packet of double edged razor blades lay open, three of the blades left.
