The day is beautiful, the sun is shining, the birds are singing in the clean air. I am laying in the grass not really seeing anything else than Gabriel.
How the sun kisses his skin, how the soft wind caresses his hair and how his brown eyes sparkes with gold flicks.
So full of life.
We lay beside one another close enough to touch, close enough to smell.
Not one of us saying a word, we just just stay here looking at each other, looking deep in each others eyes. Seeing each other for the for the first time, in a long time.
Gabriel looks like he always do, beautiful and perfect with that smile. It does things to my heart.
"You've been away a long time. Were you lost?" Gabriel asks. I had been away, drifted around in my animal form for far to long before returning home to find Gabriel lying looking at the clouds drifting slowly over the sky.
"I was wounded, not lost." I answer, lying. I had been lost. However he didn't need to know that. Not now anyway, I would talk about that later. There is no need to ruin the moment with worrying him.
It has been many moons since we have been this tranquill in a single moment. The trick is to stay in the present, get lost in the detail of him and enjoy the time we have together.
"I like me better when I'm with you Gabriel." I say, what I really mean is that I have missed him and don't want to be without him. I look at the ring on his finger, my father's ring, the ring with the promise of forever.
Gabriel leans closer and closer, very slowly and gently, he kisses me, on the lips, with infinite tenderness, so that our skin is barely touching. And the spell is broken, the reality hits me in the face. I don't feel his hand on my neck or his lip on mine more than that of a memory, because Gabriel isn't really here.
As a cloud hides the sun he disappears.
—{~$~}—
We are running, laughing. Being happy in the present.
I chase him and even though I am faster than him, he escapes me. It is like he jumps from sun patch to sun patch, that fall down between the treetops.
I barely hear his footsteps on the forest floor.
I think he have improved much since the war. I doud I would hear him if he sneaked up on me now.
I look at him as he is running, he is smiling. He looks healthy, so full of life. The only thing I hear clearly is the leaves rustling, the birds chipping and my breath.
I feel the the forest floor as my feet accelerate and my heartbeat pounds faster.
The trick is to stay in the present, get lost in the detail of him and enjoy the time we have together.
I don't think of the war, I gotta stay positive. Got to stay in the presents or else I'm gonna lose him in the forest. I run faster to catch up to him. I will chase him, follow him forever if that's what it's gonna take.
"Are you coming?" He yell over his shoulder. "You will have to keep up or you are gonna get lost."
He is right, I have to keep up or I'm lost without him.
"For fucks sake, can you wait for me!" I yell back as I speed up again. I feel like I'm flying.
"Then you wouldn't have to chase me!" He teases, as he keep running just out of arm's reach. I tackle him and end up on the brown needles and leaves that is the forest floor. He must have gotten out of my grib as we fell, I look around for him, laughing, but find he is nowhere and the shaking of laughter becomes crying. I sub like a little child, deep in the forest alone, because he is not there. Then I remember that he is dead, and he never was here to begin with.
I want to disappear, to run, to become the animal. To be numb, to forget him just for a moment and yet I want to be human; I want to be thinking of him because then I feel he is alive somewhere, if only in my head.
—{~$~}—
I'm picking blueberries, it is fall, the wind has picked up, most days it rains, but today is a sunny day. Even if the sun don't warm me to the bone I still feel it on my skin.
"You look good." He says from the apple tree, he is sitting in. "Who thought Britain's most dangerous Black witch would do something as ordinary as pick blueberries?" He have become very good at sneaking up on me. I didn't hear him at all this time.
"Fuck off." I tell him, but my voice is soft and full of affection. I love him, I really do, but the words don't leave my lips.
He smiles and his eyes hold so much joy. Just like that, I know he knows. I thought a blueberry at him, I miss, that is od. My aim is good and we are at a short range, it must have missed him by millimeters.
"Are you gonna join Celia tonight for dinner?" He asks. I don't understand and ask him. "Why do you think that?"
"You are picking blueberries and last time I checked, you don't eat them."
"Oh" I say. "They are for you, I know how much you love them." I smile at him and he returns it with a look mixed of sorrow and pity. Suddenly I am angry.
"Maybe I should join her for dinner, then you can pick your own damn berries." I leave him there in the apple tree. I don't look back, I hope he follows me, but know he won't. The thought of leaving him makes me want to hurl, but looking back and seeing he isn't there is worse than the anger and the guilty feeling in my stomach. I carefully creadel the berries as I find my way to the small capin.
"Nathan!?" Celia jumps when she sees me.
"Here." I offer her the berries, without looking her in the eyes. I didn't want to see pity in her eyes too.
She has been trying to cleave firewood, she always has been a strong woman. But I see that she is struggling with the big amount she needs to get through before the Winter.
She takes the berries I offer and I pick up the acks, starting to cleave the wood.
When we eat, she asks, why I brought her the berries, she like Gabriel know that I don't eat them. Not after mistakenly eating a Corn Lily's and becoming violently ill on one of my alone trips to Wales, as a child.
"Gabriel didn't want them after I had picked them for him, so I thought you might like them." I forgot not to look at her as I say it.
Which means I see it in her eyes.
The pity.
She doesn't say anything about the subject, she just look down at the berries and thank me before eating them.
The first chapter of at least 4 maybe more it depends on how fast I can get the timeline right with what I'm wrigting