"Frost to-night—so clear and dead-still. Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill."
-Edith M. Thompson
Riza, the letter reads. No salutation, and no apology.
I hope this finds you well. It's been a while.
And it has been. But if she closes her eyes, he is again inches away on the couch, reaching out to touch her face. A sudden October frost has only just settled outside, hard enough to shatter the window panes.
The work is what you would expect. Very little fighting. A lot of shoveling. I don't know why we bother.
The last several hours have been full of laughter, of exasperation and apples. When he kisses her, he tastes like cider, sweet and pungent and hot. If it were only one the three, she could resist, but not all these, not all at once. So much she has forsaken, and for so long.
I've taken up smoking. A filthy habit, I know, but up here you do what you can to get warm.
In her memory, they crawl toward each other, around each other. As she steals over him, she thinks briefly of orchards and ivy gripping smooth, brown trunks like legs. He thinks of nothing, but sinks back into the threadbare cushions of the couch and pulls her in with him.
There's not much for us up here except talk, or cards. Stare at the snow, wonder what the hell we're accomplishing.
Their skin is mutually pale, and the heavy amber light does not so much burnish as hover over their flesh. She bites his neck eagerly, sucks on the shadow that lurks between the tendons, and when he groans her laughter emerges breathless. He draws a teasing circle in the hollow of her back, just above her hips, and his lips follow the curve of her ear down. When he drags his teeth across the lobe, she forgets that there has ever been such a thing as laughter.
Some of the guys run a little skit and comedy team. It's better than Breda's puns. Not that that's saying much.
Sitting on that same couch, three months later, she is remembering the gentle press of his fingertips between her thighs. Her breath staggers and hearing it she curses them both in a voice that is tear-deafened.
Roy, he signs it, and on the other side of the glass, of October and January, he wonders if she'll read between the lines.