Regarding Updating: I feel compelled to warn readers that this story is unfinished; at present, I have two and a half of five vignettes written. While the other two vignettes have been plotted and extensively ruminated upon, my incredibly busy academic life is such that I cannot promise a series of consistent updates. Despite the fact that I do have more written than what I'm posting now, I'm not ready to lay all of my aces on the table just yet, but I've been deliberating upon this particular vignette for so long that I can't keep it to myself any longer. I'll try my best to write often and will have far more time on my hands at the conclusion of the academic year, but my writing occurs far more sporadically than I'd like in correspondance with my workload, and as such, there will be neither consistency, rhyme, nor reason to when I update.
Regarding As Constant As A Northern Star: Of all my impressions of the S/U relationship extrapolated from the film, the thing that struck me most was the constancy of their love; the absolute reliability, the amiable comfort, the unswerving steadiness. I've sought to portray my interpretation of that throughout this story. The title comes from Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You," particularly from the lyric, "just before our love got lost to sea, I am as constant as a northern star." For those that enjoy listening to what the writer listened to as the story was written, Michael Giacchino's spectacular "Rose & Bernard's Theme" gave birth to much of this fic.
A writer starves for nothing more than to know that his/her work is noticed, and as such, I cannot thank you enough for reading. I hope that you'll stick through me throughout the complex process that is publishing a cohesive story.
As Constant As A Northern Star
--Neelakurinji--
She was not one to waste her days envisioning quixotic domestic fantasies of an improbable nature, but with a seemingly halcyon future blossoming before them as extensively and enigmatically as the interminable inky canvas of stardust at their behest, she was helpless not to fall victim to her oft-understimulated imagination. She conjured an illusory child so as to pass the time on sleepless nights encumbered by swelteringly heated sheets and a lithe, smoldering body pressed hotly against her back, envisioning their combined genetic contributions in infinite permutations.
Their child was all sunshine and without flaw, fathomlessly dark eyes peeking coquettishly from beneath thick lashes and heavy brows sculpted in an otherworldly fashion that bespoke volumes of an arid red desert, of scorched terra-cotta sands and an unearthly sun that rose from scarlet plateaus like a slow, steadfast burn along the warm watercolor horizon. In her mind's eye, the child's appearance was decisively androgynous, uninhibited by something so trivial as gender, carved from unblemished caramel with hair spun of ebony silk. Its delighted giggle was like the sweetest conceivable honey poured into clear sunlit water, its shyly enchanting grin every bit as dazzlingly pure as the identical but disappointingly rare smiles of its father. Their child was dark and delicate, beautifully exquisite and flawlessly formed, loveliness, charm, and faultlessness amalgamated into one infinitely perfect being.
When she learned of her pregnancy, that beautifully cherubic apparition previously confined to her wandering mind transitioned from wishful thinking to an angelic possibility. Upon being informed, his face instantaneously curved into a rare, brilliant smile of unrestrained exuberance, an incandescently jubilant expression of the utmost genuine sincerity that buoyed her heart not unlike the manner in which a candle gratefully illuminates a rain-lashed room made dark by a power outage. When his arms came around her back, sinewy and firmly muscled, his uncharacteristic liveliness was enough to lift her from her feet, her legs coiling about his narrow waist and her nose pressing into the flawless column of his neck to smell that spicy aroma of intimate familiarity, that unfailingly constant tang of trust and companionship denoted by clean soap and sandalwood.
She had imagined that having a child would be marvelously extraordinary and transcendently wondrous. She knew all too heartbreakingly well that losing one was anything but.
She had vowed under substantial pressure and great duress to confine her duties to her station so as to eliminate the physical threats to their unborn child that so often accompanied her dangerous profession, but her efforts proved hollowly sacrificial, as the perceived danger did not originate from such a source. Two months into her term, she accompanied her colleagues to a secluded bar on a planet currently engaged in diplomatic negations for which they were reluctant emissaries.
The bar could be termed as none other than a hole-in-the-wall, characterized by claustrophobically cramped space and antiquated technology, stale air thick with noxious cigar smoke and other such pernicious odors. The insidious smoke loomed within the air not unlike a phantom menace, visible as a sultry, low-lying cloud of dark, toxic gas that settled pervasively across the sticky tabletops and infiltrated the thick fabric of her uniform. It penetrated her throat and arrested her breath, fused inflexibly to her esophagus and churned her persistently aching stomach in such a way that it began to resemble a rocky shore, lashed by a choppy sea and torrential rain.
"I need to get some air," she fairly yelled in his general direction, scarcely audible for the dense thump of deafening techno music that seemed to penetrate her very being as it shook the earth like an enraged Olympian. She nudged her ginger ale away from her and levered herself unsteadily to her feet to push through the compact crowd, one hand pressed firmly against the polymerized fabric of her uniform and the subtle swell of a distended womb that it so forgivingly disguised, uncaring as to the concerned onyx eyes that followed her.
She blindly navigated to the establishment's back door and cast it aside, immediately dropping to her knees so as to miserably empty her stomach onto the scuffed tarmac of a brick alley illuminated by the striking iridescence of three preternatural moons. When what little she had consumed throughout the course of the day had vacated her digestive tract, she wiped her mouth with a trembling hand, distastefully remarking upon the fact that morning sickness grew no more palatable despite her continuing experience and familiarization with it.
She stood and wilted against the brick exterior of the bar like an unwatered flower, inhaling deeply of the intoxicating drought of crisp night air, head tilted back in utter exhaustion and one arm slung low around her abdomen so as to assuage the dull ache wrought by the sharp cramping that so often accompanied morning (and sometimes evening) illness.
She intended to collect her bearings and calm her insubordinate stomach before returning to her companions, but her wishes were preempted when the door swung open and he entered the alley. His characteristically stony appearance was tinged with an eccentrically flattering expression of utmost concern, one that softened the uncompromisingly angular structure of his features and evoked genuinely apprehensive warmth within his profound umber eyes, upswept brows and bow-shaped lips drawn down in the facsimile of acute concentration that she had come to love. Ever wary of danger, his shoulders were thrown back in a confident pose that would command authority even of the pavement, one elegant hand hovering proximally to his phaser.
"Nyota, are you well?" he called as he approached, but his willowy stride came to a jarringly abrupt halt when he laid eyes upon her, the pleasant flush of chartreuse that had previously shaded his handsome features dissipating to the chalk-white bloodlessness of a specter, the warmth that so often existed within his dark eyes when trained upon her suffusing into a cold rigidity that she was tentative to label as fright, for she had never before seen such an emotion upon him.
"What?" she said nervously with a sick sense of dread, her stomach bottoming out with apprehension, head spinning dizzily due to the panicked trepidation accompanying an occurrence so horrific as to give rise to such an uncharacteristically vehement emotional response within him. She felt a sudden nausea that could not be blamed upon the unborn child nestled within her, a pervasive weakness that could only be attributed to witnessing the figurative rock of her husband's fortitude crumble before her very eyes.
"I believe that you may be experiencing a spontaneous miscarriage," he stated gravely, eyes hard and ominously solemn, elegantly lissome hands coiling into spasmodic fists at his side. For the briefest horrendous moment, he looked almost threateningly otherworldly in the stark incandescence of eerie moonlight, his face painted with an austere glow that harshly emphasized the severe sweep of his brows, the ascetic curvature of his ears, the preternatural flush of jade beneath chalky ivory skin. He appeared almost wraithlike in the bleak darkness, painted as the foreign, unfathomably alien creature that he truly was, and it terrified her.
Her heart coiled like a vise with pervasive dread, she glanced unwillingly downward, only to find the smooth expanse of her thigh marred by a terrifying trickle of crimson blood. She reached beneath her skirt with a hand that trembled frantically as though it belonged to a palsied widow, pressing apprehensive fingers to the delicate cloth of her underwear that only just that morning he had approvingly remarked upon, only to find the silk slick with a deep scarlet that came away terrifyingly garish in the desolate moonlight.
She tore her brokenhearted eyes away so as to lock her frenetic gaze with his astonishingly terrified stare, a bloodied hand and a dying infant occupying what felt like the interminable gulf of emotional transference between them. Something passed from his mind to her own during that moment suspended and prolonged by the pervasive terror that arrested her very being, something that wasn't remotely telepathic but rawly and intimately soulful, something composed of panicked horror, of frantic alarm, of mutually destructive sorrow that felt not unlike a formidable tsunami come to sweep them away.
And then the breathless immobilization faltered, the astonishing hush of indrawn breath petrified by circumstance resumed with tremulous exhalation, the penultimate, unearthly silence shattered into a dissonance of autonomous action. He stepped from the starkly luminescent moonlight and into the abysmal penumbra of unruly melancholy that arrested and apprehended her very being, his characteristically poised posture wracked with urgency.
She was powerless to do naught more than dependently acquiesce as he extended a wiry arm behind her back, unquestionably aware of the manner in which she trembled like a leaf in a tempestuous gale, his boundlessly intelligent eyes darkened by obscure shadow and the burden of knowing far too much. As he effortlessly lifted her from the pavement, the strong arm that wrapped beneath her progressively bloodied knees shook like a frightened dog, and it terrified her. He was so characteristically composed of unswerving strength, of steadfast will, of unwavering intelligence and resolute fearlessness, his being every bit as fervently solid and rock-steady as stone. She pressed her cheek into the azure of his tunic as they collectively trembled as though electrocuted by a live wire, and she cried brokenly into an unyielding chest that heaved deceptively as though it were crying too, cried into the starry, refracted ink of deepest night for her loss, for their bereavement, for their child.
In the ensuing week, there was a pronounced change in her, one that felt overwhelming and stifling and oppressive, almost as though it were determined to permeate her dark heart, to coalesce into a magnificently bleak silhouette regardless of her lackadaisical will. It was a haunting, preternatural wretchedness, an evocatively poignant sorrow, a heartrending grief as sad as a bouquet of lilies and as turbulent as the most tumultuous thunderstorm. She felt stagnant and trapped, her existence as heavy and lifelessly solid as a rock, so helplessly weighted by heartbroken longing that she felt as though she was sinking into the unsteady ground of the ship, disintegrating into ghostly stardust.
Grief became something that she built her life around. She felt as though she was born into it, as though she had been brokenhearted for an infinite and tragic lifetime when it had truly been no more than seven days. She felt sick from the inconsolable yearning and wanted to be somebody, anybody else, ached from the heartsick bereavement that was as much her constantly agonizing companion as the throbbing accompanying an infected wound inundated with saltwater, she wanted the circumstances to be different, she wanted their exquisite and spellbindingly mysterious child back, whole and hale and safe, and she wanted and she wanted and she wanted.
She was in the process of a directionless, elegiac wandering about the ship not unlike that of a widowed and melancholy specter, so waiflike and ethereal that it seemed as though a gossamer gown should have billowed from behind her as though blown by a sorrowful, preternatural graveyard wind, when she encountered Christine Chapel, who seemed astonishingly unsurprised to see her. "When was the last time you talked to your husband, Nyota?" she posed with an all too knowing and uncomfortably sympathetic gaze, her tone soft and intimately concerned.
She considered the query. Upon awakening under medical observation, the heartrending, earth-shattering occurrences of the day had become not unlike a landmine, a volatile, hot-tempered explosive concealed tenuously beneath a medicated miasma and the ever-shifting sands of emotional repression. The characteristically harsh and sterile lights of the infirmary were dimmed to a diffused burn, the bay devoid of the prying presences of its emblematic occupants, save the serene night staff and the ever-devoted figure at her side.
She suspected that he had been moved from his silent vigil only to dispose of the shirt liberally inundated in her blood, his all-too sensitive hands tenderly cradling one of her own, his characteristically immaculate hair tousled in a manner that might have been comical, had the circumstances not been so grave, his angular cheekbones stained by an unknown source that may frighteningly well have been tears. His dark, fathomless eyes were not unlike shards of multi-faceted onyx in their depth and complexity, heartbreakingly composed of raging anger and excruciating sorrow, but most of all a tumultuous, horrifyingly uninhibited lack of understanding for his wild, unchecked heart.
"I am… sorry, Nyota," he posed tentatively, almost as though he were unsure of how to convey what he felt, how to weave into spoken reality what for a lifetime he had been educated to repress.
She squeezed his hand, reaching up with her free one to brush a lock of unkempt charcoal hair from his temple. "Me too," she whispered as though it were some darkly dreamed nonreality, some horrifying secret unfit for spoken address, something to be furtively squirreled away and allowed to fester within their bleak hearts.
Perhaps it was.
There was something terrifying about her husband in the ensuing week, something bleakly wraithlike and frighteningly unpredictable. Throughout the course of a lastingly tranquil relationship as mild-manneredly placid as the calmest of oceans, she had known him to be naught but unswervingly resolute, unshakably constant, stanch in his scientific convictions and steadfast in his devoted, utmost faithfulness, as unfailingly, consistently steady as a lighthouse lashed by even the most tempestuous of stormy seas. His work performance was characteristically admirable, but his emotions were as terrifyingly subject to fluctuation as the ephemeral earthly wind. He seemed for the first time to her pervasively indecisive, faltering and vacillating, volatile and hesitantly unsure, decisively, terrifyingly unsteady.
They spoke without talking, communicated without meaningful discourse, coexisted without existing together. She yearned for an opportunity to allow him a release of his torturous repressed grief, but she was in neither the emotional nor the physical condition to permit such an outcome, and so it festered like an infected wound, built and surmounted like a time-bomb ticking progressively toward cataclysmic detonation. She wanted to talk, but she feared that discussion of the occurrence that they tiptoed around like a horrid taboo would be the match to his fuse, and she couldn't stand the thought of anyone else seeing him so undone.
When she lay next to him at night, it was something akin to slow, suffocating, excruciating torture. If he did not lay with his back to her, a gesture that she was logically certain was not intended to feel heartlessly cold and yet was nonetheless impossible to interpret otherwise, he lay on his back, head turned away and vulnerable face hidden from view. She wanted nothing more than to talk, burned for his feverish touch, no matter how fleeting or transitory, yearned to erect a bridge that could cross the gapingly abysmal, ever-augmenting fissure of crushing silence between them. She wanted to reach across the rift in the darkness like a knife through butter and grab him, hold him, hold him and not let him go, but her efforts were met with such heartbroken declarations of "Nyota, please" that she stopped trying altogether, his existence so stringently sharp and fragile that she feared her touch would shatter him.
"We've talked," she responded to Christine's query defensively.
"Talked or discussed?" Christine countered, her clear blue eyes constricted with sympathy, kindhearted facial features composed into an expression of knowing. "You need to discuss it, Nyota. Get it off your chest. He does, too."
She bristled. "I've tried to discuss it with him, believe me. If he wanted to, he would tell me. I would know."
"You and I both know that's not true," Christine stated, her voice suddenly and uncomfortably firm, her eyes gravely determined. "He won't address it, so you have to be the one that does."
"Do you say this as my friend or as a medical professional?" she questioned, peripherally sickened by the hard tone to her otherwise mellifluous voice, by the bitter bile of bereavement that laced her tongue, pervaded her conscience, infested her life.
"Both," Christine answered simply, giving a warm, shy smile that illuminated her compassionate face like sunshine after a summer rainshower. "I think it's time you let him in, Nyota. Let him understand. He misses you."
And so she found herself sequestered within their quarters not long after, morosely delving into a rare jar of authentic peanut butter reserved only for the most dreadful of potential catastrophes, lying in patient wait for her husband not unlike an enraged wife sitting up idly at night in anticipation of the disgraceful return of a dishonorable spouse. She briefly hemmed and hawed around a mental manifestation of the conversation soon to transpire, nervously transforming into a glutton in her rapid consumption of the precious peanut butter as she crafted diplomatic phrases to establish a sure conversational footing, played out extended scenarios of his various reactions, contemplated how best to express what they may well not have understood, but closer than their own hearts, they knew.
She was in the process of chiding herself for considering her husband as something not unlike a lab rat when the subject in question entered the room, seemingly astonished at her waiting presence. His immaculate hair was disheveled, lithe body concealed by loose clothing and painted with a clement patina of sweat that led her to believe that he had come from a hard workout. She knew what he had been attempting to accomplish in his oh-so painstakingly logical way, and her heart ached for it- too many nights had she lain vulnerable and lonesome at his side not to understand his desire to drain his energy, to exhaust himself to the point of collapse so as to ensure that he would not have to endure the newfound uneasiness, the uncomfortable awkwardness, the lonely sensation of being horrifically out of one's depth.
"Come sit," she instructed far more cheerfully than she felt for her rolling stomach and shaking hands, cursing herself for behaving not unlike a neurotic schoolgirl as she patted the cushion at her side.
He appeared hesitant, lips slightly parted in what others would consider an expressionless visage, but what she knew full well to be the physical manifestation of the wavering, shaky indecision, like a dilapidated building swaying before collapse, that so frightened her. He obeyed dutifully, ever the good soldier, and took his place at her side, coiling long legs beneath him in an endearingly childlike manner. And oh, how she ached to close the cavernous fissure between them, to mend the gaping holes, to reach out and grab him, hold him, hold him and not let him go, but the crevice was too wide, the fracture within the terra-cotta earth too deep, and she remained every bit as forlornly clueless as she had started, running in perpetual circles of indecision.
He glanced slyly at the jar within her hands. "I assume you fully understand that overindulging in unhealthy provisions with little to no nutritional value is illogical by nature and will by no means sate your emotional distress," he stated.
She gave a small smile. How so many could assume that a relatively humorless man could fail to amuse her was utterly baffling. "Of course I understand," she responded. "But being illogical doesn't make it any less enjoyable."
He pursed his lips in the expression of defeated fastidiousness that she so loved. The dry, nearly imperceptible levity that often seemed invisible to the untrained spectator vanished from his countenance, replaced by a sudden onset of seriousness when he turned dark, somber eyes to her. "I promised to protect you, Nyota, and protect you I shall," he avowed solemnly. "Even if that which I must protect you from is yourself."
The smile fell from her face upon the advent of his grave behavior, her eyes locked unwaveringly upon his, observing with equal solemnity the humorlessly level, impassively stolid, lovingly poignant sparkle to his conflicted umber gaze. "It's your job to protect me from my own dietary carelessness?" she posed teasingly, scrambling unexpectedly backward into shallow pleasantries so as to alleviate the peculiar, profound weightiness to his behavior, to recede from the impulsive emotional sincerity that, despite how she had burned for it, felt astonishingly and terrifyingly as though it would eviscerate her if he cut any deeper.
"Among other things," he responded cryptically. He shifted to face her while she remained adamantly in a perpendicular direction, helplessly rooted to the fabric of the sofa as he took her hands with cherished tenderness, a familiar metaphysical spark blossoming between them not unlike the ember that gave way to an inferno. His brows and mouth were set with a strikingly profound, contemplatively pensive thoughtfulness, coffee-colored eyes soft and apologetic.
"You are well aware that I am not prone to displays of emotional affectation," he began mellifluously, his soft palms pressed affectionately to hers, dexterous thumbs rubbing lovingly across her overworked fingers as she turned to him hesitantly, folding her legs beneath herself to face him fully. "However, I feel as though I owe you a multitude of apologies. I have been plagued by an illogical… anger throughout the course of the past week. I do not expect you to forgive me for my emotional distance, nor for my refusal to discuss how to proceed in light of recent occurrences, but I regret them nonetheless."
"It's okay," she insisted tentatively, tracing a lazy, absentminded figure-eight on the soft skin at the underside of his slender wrist, her chest swelling buoyantly at the sweet, utterly heartwarming smile of satisfaction that graced his features and in doing so allowed a shred of intimate familiarity to come incrementally back. "Neither of us have been in a place to talk, I know. But I'm willing to try if you are."
"Very well," he murmured before clearing his throat. "It is by no means my intention to be insensitive or hasten you into undesirable circumstances, but I cannot explicate clearly enough how insignificant this unfortunate occurrence is, from a physiological standpoint. Miscarriages often occur without logical biological reasoning and need not prevent you from future procreation."
"You're saying that this child was insignificant?" she questioned indignantly, a sharp, hard edge surfacing within her voice. She was well aware that he did not feel as she did, that his emotional compass was tumultuous and conflicted, clouded by the stark harshness of intimately primitive, deeply rooted passions as it warred with the cloudy, restrictive deterrent of years of emotional repression, yet for all the times she had thusly dismissed his behavior, she could no longer do so.
He appeared to flounder, but only briefly. "Not at all. Merely that this occurrence was inconsequential in the greater scheme of childbearing. One miscarriage is an unfortunate tragedy, but it by no means jeopardizes your chances of successfully bearing an infant to term."
"You want to try again," she ventured uncertainly, voice constricted with doubt, apprehension, uncertainty.
"Precisely," he stated, but he was nothing if not a supremely perceptive creature, and was quick to make amends so as to prevent further indignance. "But, as aforementioned, there is no imminent need, as we are both in the prime of our fertility and have numerous years of potential child-bearing before us."
She was unsure of what to say, staring morosely at the long-abandoned jar of peanut butter clutched in a vice-like grip between her slender fingers, peripherally aware of the cold sensation of an unwelcome tear sliding past her nose as she ran an unexpectedly trembling hand through her hair. "I don't want to do this to another baby, Spock," she whispered, voice faltering and tremulous, her breath hitched and stuttering. "I loved this one, and look what my love did to it. It killed it. What if this was my fault? I can't do that to another child."
And there was the heart of it. It was a notion that had blackened her mind like a restrictive manacle throughout the course of the tumultuously hellish week, ensnared her wild heart as easily as one would captivate an impressionable child, tainted and blemished her conscience with crushing grief and immeasurable insecurity. She was tormented by the idea that the death of their child occurred as a result of some horrifying, monstrous, unnatural physical deformity about which she should have been more vigilant, should have been more aware, should have known. What if it had been an ill-considered meal, a step taken too quickly, a foolish slip in the shower? What if it could have been prevented?
"Nyota, have you heard of the Strobilanthes kunthiana, better known as the Neelakurinji plant?" he posed abruptly, dark eyes again eerily profound, preternaturally poignant.
"I've not," she sniffed, wiping a tear from her lashes as she wondered where he could possibly be going with binomial nomenclature in the wake of her emotional confession.
"It is in fact quite a fascinating plant; its genus encompasses over two hundred and fifty species, forty-six of which are commonly found in rural portions of the Indian subcontinent-"
"Get to the point," she interrupted, his dull recollection of biology serving to lessen the waver in her voice, to cause an ebb in the tide of tempestuous grief.
His lips quirked becomingly before pursuing with the loveable fussiness that so often came about as a result of the curtailing of his digressions. "Very well. The Neelakurinji plant blossoms only once every twelve years and is considered otherwise unremarkable during its hiatus from full flowering bloom."
He pressed a hand as firmly gentle as pouring summer rain and as warm as the shifting desert sands of lost worlds to her vacant belly, rubbing tenderly across the smooth, dreadfully unoccupied, entirely too empty surface. "The Neelakurinji plant may be considered dead for twelve years, but it consistently returns, each time more beautiful than before. Even through time, harsh weather, unfortunate circumstances… it is still a living thing."
She bit her lip, laying one slender hand above his own, above where their child should rightfully have been, whole and safe and sound.
He shifted closer until his oppressive heat overwhelmed her like the balmy rush of stuffy, sweltering summer air accompanied by the failure of the air-conditioning unit, his dark eyes positively luminous, sparkling with otherworldly affection, wholehearted empathy, absolute veneration. "Just because the Neelakurinji plant does not blossom often does not mean that it will never blossom again," he murmured. "You cannot possibly have known that a miscarriage would occur, Nyota, and even if such a circumstance were possible, no action you could have taken would have prevented such an occurrence. There is no logic in dwelling upon what we cannot conceivably endeavor to successfully change."
She smiled halfheartedly, swallowing against the treacle-thick lump obstinant within her throat before pressing closer to lay her tear-streaked face against his lean shoulder. "So, because I can't do anything, I'm just supposed to forget about it?"
"Of course not," he purred lowly, his chest vibrating against her ear. "But a flower cannot live as though it will never blossom, and you cannot protect yourself from sadness without precluding yourself from happiness. I do not expect you to let go of our unfortunately terminated child or consign to oblivion its existence, but rather to cease dwelling upon it, to understand that you are in no way culpable in what occurred."
She stroked the lingering hand splayed across her abdomen thoughtfully. "On our next leave, will you take me to India?" she posed quietly.
"What is there in India that captivates your interest?" he questioned.
"I'd like to see this flower," she grinned shyly.
"What if our leave does not coincide with the flower's period of bloom?" he ventured.
"All the same," she murmured, leaning more heavily against his chest until it seemed as though her weight melted against him in a puddle of affection. "It's enough to know that someday it will."
As a girl, she had nurtured grand ideas of love. Tragic, extraordinary, disorderly love- the kind of love that moved mountains, shook the very floors of dusky, primordial oceans, caused violent elements to coalesce into nascent suns, drove one person to follow another into a screaming black hole. Growing up had illuminated the fact that love was not the act of moving or shaking the pillars of the earth, but rather of upholding them, ensuring that they were so unbendingly, unswervingly, steadfastly fortified that they would not so much as tremble, the act of being steady and unshaken so as to deflect the slings and arrows that would buffet devotion. Love was neither dramatic nor spectacular, neither earth-shattering nor heart-stopping, but rather something quiet and intimate, tender and absolute, the utter absence of pride that caused lovers to reach across unbelievable, insurmountable, impossible distances and lead one another, as if by the hand, toward ever-solid, ever-steady, immovable ground.
She folded her arms firmly around him and held on for an interval considerably longer than what was deemed socially necessary, trying to judge from the round solidarity of his rib cage and the wet thump of his heart if he loved her still. He responded in kind, pressing his cheek to the top of her head, inhaling deeply of the honeysuckle shampoo that he had attested on numerous occurrences to find inexplicably intoxicating.
When he pulled away, his eyes were affectionate and adoring, steady and resolute, clear and sharp and unwavering. "Does this signify your readiness to conceive another child?" he posed, expression trapped somewhere between hope and hesitance. As she considered his query, she was struck as if blindsided by the hushed privacy and intimate honor of his doting love, how the tender strength of his hands would cup around a child, how his rare, privileged smiles were an exceptional reward, how those reverential dark eyes would look on a child's face.
"Not tonight," she answered, falling forward to pull him close, hold him tight and never let him wander into dark crevices or shaky ground again. "And not tomorrow night. But I'll be ready, I promise. Soon."
--
A/N: My immense gratitude for the time devoted to reading this. As always, any feedback is greatly appreciated and constructive criticism is diligently considered.