For Cinner
The flowers were a stark contrast to the world she has so recently left. They were gaily colored and scented the air of sweetness and wilderness. Their very existence seemed to drive the gray world outside into the shadows, rendering it a memory, an impotent force behind the walls of delicate, colorful petals. How he had come by these flowers was a mystery but one she accepted happily and without question. So many times things had happened between them where she could find no way to rationally explain what he had done or how he had done it. As with her trust in him, she learned to accept these things as they happened, to accept them without question and to revel in them as a private gift for her alone as if bestowed by some secret house faeries.
It took her several moments of smiling at the myriad colors about her to realize that he had removed her shoes while she slept, as well as her jacket, and the light woolen cap that had so feebly encapsulated her hair against the wind outside. The room was already warmer though it would never be as warm as it was during the summer days. That was one of the sacrifices to have the solitude of their refuge. She knew plenty of warmth would be generated in other ways and that the cold did magical, delicious things to her body when properly applied.
The sky outside that had been dull gray upon their arrival now loomed as inky blackness beyond the window panes, night having fallen swiftly and silently as it did in this place at this time of year. Along with the walls of flower petals that kept the darkness and cold at bay a brace of candles and oil hurricane lamps doused the room in soft yellow light. She could still hear the jazz playing from the old radio and the sounds of her man puttering about outside the bedroom. She did not want to leave the comfort of her quilted flower cocoon but her appetites had grown while she slept and so, with a little sigh, she pushed the blankets from atop her and swung her feet to the ground. A pair of fur-lined house shoes waited and she slipped her dainty feet into them, enjoying their snug softness, capturing the heat left in her toes and socks. Though a woolen house coat hung from the back of the bedroom door, she was warm enough in her jeans and sweater to brave the other rooms without it.
The main room of the cottage doubled as both a common living area and a dining area. A small table sat with four chairs before the double windows that opened upon the deck outside the front door. Opposite the windows, door, and table was an old but terribly comfortable sofa, draped with a white knitted throw and decorated with several small pillows. An end table at one end held another hurricane lamp and a small collection of books. She giggled to herself at the sight of these books. There as precious little time to read while they took their refuge but on those occasions that presented themselves, the books always played a delicious part in their time alone.
She leaned against the frame of the bedroom door, watching him as he worked in the small kitchen opposite the bedroom on the other side of the common living and dining area. A pot on the stove steamed merrily away while a small saucepan simmered the scent of warmed butter through the air. A bottle of white wine sat uncorked at the edge of the counter and two glasses stood dutiful sentry, waiting to fulfill their purpose in existence. She cast a quick glance to her left down the one impossibly small hallway the led to the second of three small bedrooms and the small bathroom. This area of the cottage was still dark but she knew that he had been through these areas already while she slept, preparing them as with each room so that the entire cottage would be lived and loved in before their time here was up.
"Did you rest well?" he asked as he stopped working in the kitchen to watch her. His smile and voice filled her with warmth and stirred her appetites more.
