This has been kicking around on my hard drive for a while. I edited it over the summer and finally have enough internet to put it up. Enjoy!
"I could brush your hair... curl it... set you on my hobby horse."
Those words echoed in his mind the entire time, along with her almost, but not quite, forced laugh, and flashes of her bare feet, her legs.
"Good night, Ilse."
"Good night?" He could hear the sadness, the stress in her voice.
"Virgil, the equations, remember?" He looked at her feet, saw those legs, muscled from all the running she did when she played games.
"Just for an hour." Pleading.
"I can't." He was scared. Scared to look up.
"Well, walk me at least." Desperate. So terrified.
"Honestly, I wish I could." He was going to loose his nerve. God, did she have nice legs, so bare. The shirt she wore barely covered that place where his dream ended. He liked those legs, the way her hands hung next to them, carrying that bouquet of wildflowers that so perfectly reflected who she was.
"You know, by the time you wake up, I'll be lying on some trash heap." He could hear her tears, then her feet running away.
"WAIT!"
The footsteps stopped. He ran to catch up.
"Yes?" Small. Timid.
"I'll come." He looked up. Saw her fantastic eyes, wildly colorful, brightly shining, but with such sadness in their depths.
So many times they had played, but never in this way. There had always been Melchior and Wendla. Who knew what those two were up to at the moment? But here they were safe. They pretended to blaze trails to save the princess until the sun started to set.
The light played with the shadows on her face, creating funny highlights on her it, and setting her hair into a blaze of different colors. He saw all her beauty, all the sadness and the fright and the courage and the strength in her.
And she saw the wind gently ruffling his messy hair, messier now from their play. The sunset made the planes of his face more distinct, more handsome. So unlike her father, so unlike the men in Preopia. She didn't know better, she didn't know anything else.
But maybe, perhaps, she could know him.
Sheepishly, she took his hand and intertwined her fingers with his. She wasn't sure what this meant, but she liked the way his fingers fit with hers.
He wasn't sure what to think. No one ever, ever, held his hand. Not his mother, not his father. Holding hands was something that people who loved each other did. Something that lovers did.
Could this be love?
Could this be some way for them to find safety? Because here, with each other, they had never felt more safe.
"Goodnight, Moritz." Despite the safety she was still scared.
"No. Not goodnight. Follow me."
They went back to the wigwam, the same that they had played in long ago, and still, not long ago at all.
"Stay here."
She did.
When he returned, some time later, he had a suitcase with him .
"Let's go." Determined.
"Where to?" Scared, but in a way that she hadn't been scared before, a way she was unfamiliar with.
"Anywhere. There must be a somewhere, a place for us. For us." Strong, scared, determined. All those emotions and more. Specifically one more. Love? "Coming?"
She didn't say anything. She just got up, took his hand again, and followed him, no idea where they were going, not that she cared. They could have been going to the moon and she would have followed him.
Because having each other would be all that would matter.
I guess I write an awful lot of fluffy drabbles, but it helps me to write short things because it's an exercise in plot, right? Anyways, R&R, as I always want to be a better writer (and anyone who reads this has probably never read anything by me!)
Flowers and notebooks,
far from the home i love