Passengers
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She stood atop the towering precipice.
The wind grappled all around her, enclosing her body within torrents of gusting and billowing force. The chilly air was like a wraith's breath as it caressed her face, and stole its flushed color, making her seem wan and pale. Her hair, flaxen and fair, flew up all around her, like the branches of a tree in a tempest — her body was unmoving and grave,— but her locks, turned grey and glister-gone by the darkened sky, danced freakishly around her.
The shadows clinging to the craggy stone, which she stood up so high above, seemed to slither eagerly up to consume her,— and it was but one step of her foot that prevented their harsh repast, one step from her precarious perch, and the cold stone cliff would remember never more her gentle feet, or softly gasping breath.
And she did struggle to breathe now, atop the rocks, and placing a hand to her chest, she could feel her heart swell and fall beneath the cold sweat gathered on her skin. Small fingers, turned white by the cold tongue of the billowing wind, closed slowly as if they wished to grasp some unseeable thought.
She was not scared. No; sometimes when she would stand here, feet bare against the stony cliff; she welcomed this cruel, harsh darkness,— the sight of the moors stretching out before her, ever in a long, ceaseless shadow. The sky, gathered ever in tumult, grumbled low above her, like to express the indifference in her heart at the gaping drop beneath her feet, and her inability to quake at the fall beneath the stony summit, and the fate which awaited in the shadows.
If the wind wished to thrum a strange melody in her ears, she would not know it, for her attention was fixed inwardly, and there was no greater storm than that which tossed in her sky-pooled eyes, greater even than that which ever threatened to rage across the moors, on that day, or any other.
The rocks and pebbles pierced the tender flesh of her soles, but it was a small thing, a rain drop in a storm, to be noticed, as her black lashes swept over and over across a tumultuous gaze, which seemed to merge with the restless sky, and make its owner as unreachable as the grey eddying canvas above.
A rain drop in a storm—she narrowed her eyes at the thought, and her heart thudded with quiet consent, as her breath took a sharp intake, like the precursor of her own storm raging inside, —it was a shrill gust of wind before the water tumbles down.
Her feet seemed to move of their own accord. Pale porcelain against the cold onyx of the ground, and she moved so the tips of her feet dangled loosely over the edge of the cruel cliffside drop.
But she paid no heed to the way the wind seemed to push her gently, seemed to so unnoticeably sway her, her lithe body sporadically pulsed in the direction of the black-engorged drop. But she liked the way it would press so softly,— like it were helping her, wanting her to gain some peace of mind amidst the stormy wickedness outside, an unrest which perpetually plagued her.
She was almost hypnotized by it, by the screeching wind which rumbled around her, it was so loud, that it was silent, and when she closed her eyes, she could hear nothing except the low and ancient thrum of the thunder— or was that her heart?— inside her mind.
She reached a hand out, and fancied she could grip the whipping tendrils of air that writhed in front of her, and her face was perfect but from the tight frown that held her lips, like she knew whether she stood there or not, all would remain quiet, eternally, on the cliff.
But it was tantalizing, and the curling wind seemed like a lover's caress, one which beckoned her fore, tempting her to taste the cool calm of oblivion — a deep black without threat of nightmare or the bellow of a haunted mind.
She began to hum, and it was a strange melody that came up from inside her, and her eyes searched farther into the darkness below. Looking for anything different, perhaps, or admitting to the absence of it.
Suddenly, there was a quick warm grasp upon her shoulder, and startled, she whipped about, and yelped. Her shocked exclamation cutting across the entire moor from her high vantage point, a sharp screech to combat the howling of the wind.
Before she could make a faltered step, in her disorientation, she was gathered up, tighter than she'd ever been, in what could not have been called an embrace, but a clutch, a covetous sort of clutch, frozen not with cold, but with the heat of fear.
It was in silence they stood, pressed against one another, two bodies pulsing until calm.
She did not speak for a long moment, and it must have seemed strange, strange and purposeless, to the storm above that a second should join the first, that two fading passengers should stand up against it, and not just one, as if it would make some difference in the immensity of the battle now that they were together.
She knew that he would take her back now, that someone had been looking for her, and they had sent him out to bring her home.
"Heathcliff," her voice seemed to blow through them, not knowing what it wished to say.
He did not speak, did not reprimand her, did nothing but stand, his arms keeping her. He only waited, and she realized that he knew her darkest thoughts, and had found her most secret place.
And if she hadn't thought something could be before, it was a far greater comfort than the cold wind and the rocks.