In less than three hours, I had broken a dozen rules. So hey if I'm going to burn why not throw caution to the wind. And on top of that, I don't know if I would have had the courage to be on my own. I took his hand to rise only because it felt like the right thing to do, not because I was so frail. And he sat beside his body on the bench and I laid down facing the room on the pillows next to him and place my head on his thighs. It felt natural and intimate, one of the most intimate or power filled acts in the universe. His body tensed like cording on a bow. I took a deep breath and our body's relaxed as one. It was as thought someone cut the cording in my brain and the fear and tension just wasn't there anymore. Before he touched me, I could feel his fingertips. Each one warm silk touching the fine hairs invisible on my cheek, my skin straining for contact, in complete rebellion against the single driving thought, do not ruin this. Dread in anticipation of Father's return danced with unspoiled delight in this moment around the inside of my skull. One thought, a pair of feet soft as falling mist and graceful as a leopard while the other thundering hoofs scraping against bone and gouging nerves.
A hand coming to rest on my forehead parted and confusion inside me stopped completely. My need for that touch swallowed and used my determination against me, turning it into a monstrous drive. Every cell reached out to him and I could feel the air around me move like a second skin up and over the whorls and swirls and tightly trimmed nails. I clung to each knuckle with their ripples of flesh. The lines worked into the almond brown skin down to where they met sharp tendons and lushes veins and arteries. Together we reached out, his touch warm mature, liquid comforting eternal and mine hot timorous starved. There we resided maybe for days.
I woke, I suppose, almost but not quite alone. I lay on my back aware of another presence much to near, and held with whatever sole I had been born with frozen; not with panic or fear but out of respect. The assistant priest was only here to check the Drapa's body and leave. I could only spy upon him on the peripheral the way the way I once watched an old woman gathering mushrooms was resting against a rock when a snow leopard walked by without a glance. She stood there as I lay, knowing we are out of our element though our kind are higher on the evolutionary ladder. Because we ourselves were not the most impresses of our pool, and would cause more pain than anything if we were to make our presents know. So I disappeared into myself to wait, to be alone again, and not be alone again.
The priest's robes stirred the air near my bare legs, I wanted to withdraw or kick at the fabric. He hovered between the Drapa's body and me until I was just about to do something to rid ourselves of him. Though I had no idea what that would be, maybe my new found ability for irritation rippled out into the room, because his spine stiffed ever so and he quickly gathered the cooling wash rags and lighted more resin.
I realized even with my eyes closed that I was propped up against a warm body, that we were both stretched out, slightly reclining. My body cradled by his robed his legs on either side. His arms resting on my shoulders hands on my arms and all I wanted was for him to move them up to rest on my painfully youthful looking chest. The thought caught me like lighting flashing in the darkest night's sky. He gently removed his hands from me and placed them on his thighs.
