I stood and watched the fire as the night wore on. Doug was on watch out by the edge of the clearing and Jan was in her tent, asleep, with my partner's tent not five paces away, looming larger in the orange tinged gloom. Life felt good for the first time in many weeks, at the end of many battles, many confrontations: it was just nice to rest.
I looked down at the straight-blade I had across my lap, oilstone poised a hairsbreadth above the steel, catching the distorted blur of movement in the reflections of the sword. My fingers caressed the familiar leather of the weapon hilt, the strength in my forearm more than enough to easily and quietly slide the sword back into it's scabbard and put it down, heedless of its weight.
The hand on my shoulder did not startle me, (the game had been up the moment I saw the move) I just placed my hand on top of it, feeling the delicate fingers, running it up the back of strong knuckles, feeling the many old, tiny scars there. Turning to face my partner, I couldn't help but stifle a gasp, this time as so many times before. Before me stood what I had come to describe as some of the finest living geography in the land: Bella, my partner and my affianced.
Her parents had named her with the hope of her turning into a pretty maid, a courtesan to some rich noble or a courtier herself perhaps. In my eyes she was more beautiful than any court harlot, or swooning waif, although perhaps not in the manner her parents had predicted.
In the glimmering half-dark of the firelight, my eyes traced a beloved and familiar route across her form. Her hands were feminine and slender, surprisingly so for a woman so powerful, but the skin of her digits bore the marks of many cuts and scraps, ridges of vein and tendon knotting and flowing across the back of her hand, over and around her knuckles. These vascular footpaths wended their way into and over the astounding ranges of her forearms, bathed in rich, chiaroscuro shadows and glinting orange highlights, the muscles under her bronzed skin writhing as she turned her hand to caress my jaw, heavy striations cut into the flesh seeking to bely the staggering sweep of her form, the sheer scale of her. The swells and dales of muscle led upwards into the high peaks, even when relaxed swathed in vascular outcroppings, towering massively and filled with strength beyond reckoning; I swear on my grave that her upper arm could have fitted mine three times within it and I was by no means a small man. Still, there was no part of those towering peaks which had been left untouched by my questing lips beforehand, no part that didn't seem to burst with power, wearing her skin like it was tissue of silk.
Thankfully, her garments were worn haphazardly, a strap undone allowing the journey to continue unabated up towards the summit of the experience, my gaze stopping to wander over her massive shoulders, the forms of muscles dovetailing seamlessly into one another, rippling with power, twisting as she brought her arm back to flex, sending the limb into sharp relief, no softness left to allow pleading or casual acceptance. No, this was a bold statement of her power, that familiar rolling landscape condensed, exaggerated and exploded into a living monument to her strength, stripped back to the living rock, fingers tracing lightly over a hard, angular bicep, veins thrumming at maximum flex. Still, the voyage carried on, around a cape this time and onto the deeply scoured plains of her chest muscles, inches thick and meeting in the middle at a deep dark cleavage, two boulders in equipoise, twitching occasionally with barely concealed power as she breathes, or shifts position. Her top washes diagonally across these outcrops like the white surf in a rocky bay, dropping down across her torso until it passes under the agrarian swell of a heavy breast, magically enhanced but filled with the same primal energy and delightful mystery as a tor, the softness contrasting and complimenting her physique.
Travelling back up across her chest and her breasts my amorous stare began the final ascent up the exceptional slopes of her neck, the muscle bulging up thickly to cocoon her pretty throat in a cliff of hard muscle which rose massively up to caress a pair of golden earrings, the hoops resting almost flat, their glistering glow a contrast to the warm earth-tones of her skin in the flickering light. The travails of the wanderer would have all been in vain however should his eyes fail to continue on across the graceful sweep of her jaw, a tiny mark jogging his attention up to a pair of lush, smiling lips, the ivory glint of even teeth shining from between those bee-stung, coral pink gates to seduction. A delicate, elegant and finely proportioned nose sits atop the wonder of her lips, slightly out of true from an old break, but having all the charm and sexuality of a truly perfect imperfection balanced beautifully by two high, strong cheekbones, showing the merest hint of the gauntness one would expect from such a well honed figure of a woman.
Finally, the eyes, and what eyes they are!
Cornflower blue, steady, open and confident in the light of the fire, these must surely be a promise of heaven if the mouth is a promise of delightful sin. Shaped finely, their orbit is a handsome counterpart to the majestic beauty of long lashes and the seductively feline aspect of them as she returns my longing gaze with added interest, a lock of her long, curly auburn hair dropping coquettishly over one eye.
Her voice when it comes is like silk, "Back to bed, lover. We've all night left and I don't want to waste a minute."
As she turned back to the tents, I couldn't but marvel: knowing that even with the greatest talent and the finest of marbles, the best sculptors could never hope to create a work of art to match my Amazonian woman of living stone, Bella.
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