Some Emotions Don't Make a Sound
He watched the sun rise over the trees. The giant windows provided him with the perfect view. It lit the sky on fire as a flock of birds alighted from the trees of the surrounding forest. His ears picked up rushing water behind the house. Weeks of rain had overflowed the banks and even now, with the water already receded, the river still thundered in his sensitive ears.
He uncoiled his lean form from the chair he had been sitting in. He slowly, cautiously, walked to the window, touching it with awe as the sun rose higher and higher while he watched. He pressed his angelic face and a hand to the glass, as if to get closer to the sun and watched the morning dew glisten under its dancing rays. He let out a deep breath, one he hadn't even needed to take. The glass remained unchanged by it.
He sighed and stepped away. He had long forgotten what it was like to frost glass surfaces with one's breath. He knew the glass beneath his fingers must have been cold but he felt nothing. His sensation of warmth had been the first thing he felt he had lost; it all felt the same now. He mourned it in secret. He stepped away from the glass before the sun could reach him. Instead he focused on his reflection. He glared at it with loathing.
"He's speechless," the words echoed like twinkling wind chimes.
Still. Even after all these years he could hear it. The reflection in the glass quickly changed before his eyes. Lucy. Her skin remained as white as snow, her perfect face framed by fair hair. Just like the night he first laid eyes on her and she spoke those very words.
Her reflection grew hazy and once again he saw only himself. His golden hair flopped over his brow. It fluttered each time he opened and closed his eyes. He looked at his eyes; their amber colour calmed him. He tried to remember what colour they used to be….Blue. He remembered blue.
He remembered her then. Her chestnut hair and slim sixteen year old frame smothered beneath lace and petticoats and stockings. They had lain beneath the stars the entire night, in the morning he had enlisted. She had told him they were the colour of the sky before a summer storm before he left her. She had loved his eyes. She would push back his golden hair and stand on the balls of her feet to stare into them, to tell him what shade they were at that moment. When they lay on their sides together she would gently nudge the hair away and plant feathery kisses on his eyelids. He had thought he loved her.
It had been a hundred and forty some odd years since he last saw her. He couldn't for the life of him even remember her name. He had told her he'd return to her as soon as was humanly possible. He laughed bitterly at the ironic sentiment and thought of the savagery he had been a part of after he left her. War was his constant companion, before and after his humanity had abandoned him. He had become a monster. He had thirsted. He had fed. In the process he had lost himself.
He remembered the years of wandering, the dark moments of depression and despair, the climate of hate and vengeance. His shoulders slumped visibly as his dark thoughts swirled and he remembered the blood lust.
He hadn't heard her silent footsteps, so lost was he in his thoughts, but he felt it then, her presence. He didn't turn around immediately and she didn't intrude on him. The room however, was suddenly infused with her calm. The darkness that had been threatening moments earlier began to recede. A different type of warmth filled him. He felt serene again, at peace with himself as the last few pictures flew from his mind; the last life he took and the other's fear that had almost choked him during. He had torn trees out by their roots afterwards, filled with such hate for himself.
"You've kept me waiting a long time."
This second familiar echo in his head replaced the dark forests and pools of blood. He unclenched the fists that he hadn't even felt himself clenching. He began to feel something else then, something familiar, his constant companion when she was around. It had been crowded by the dark and then the calm before, for his benefit he was sure. Now however it was the loudest in the room. Love. He turned his amber eyes, with their thick fringe of dark lashes, on her.
She didn't just see it in his eyes; she felt his love for her then. She held out her delicate hand to him. He took it just like the first time. Just like the first time, without stopping to make sense of what he was doing. Like every time before this one, like every time since the first, he felt hope again. He squeezed her slim hand in his and raised it to his marble lips, brushing them languidly across each knuckle.
Alice had made all the difference.