Chapter Seven
On Valentine's Day, I was sitting on the floor in front of my bed with a dark green trunk open that sat at the end of my four poster frame. Inside were most of my potion ingredients, which I was meticulously reorganizing. It was a clear and cold day, with snow merrily falling in big, puffy snowflakes. My father was away on a business trip, and my mother was downstairs entertaining her book club, so the third floor was quiet. Peaceful even, I thought, with no one to barrage me on how I spent my free time or when I would start an occupation and subsequently take a wife.
I looked up in time to see a pair of legs sliding over the railing of my balcony, and soon Narcissa was flat against the surface. With a flick of her wand, the balcony doors burst open. Snow swirled inside, sticking to the floor, and floating to my bedspread.
"You couldn't have sent a letter?" I asked her, as she shut the doors, "Just a bit of notice before you cleaved your way up the side of my house?"
"I don't cleave," she argued, dusting the snow from her shoulders, "It's certainly more of a 'shimmy' than a 'cleave', I'm not a brute."
"Mmm," I murmured, rolling my eyes.
Narcissa was wearing a black wool trench coat with the collar turned up against her cheek and buttoned partially, stopping before her knees, so that it would allow her to climb effectively. She pulled the heavy coat off and draped it over the back of the chair in front of my drafting table.
"Do make yourself at home," I retorted.
She was wearing slim fitted trousers that tapered at the ankle in a grey gingham pattern and an indigo sweater several sizes too large for her, draped over her frame so bulky that her right shoulder was exposed, and wingtip boots that stopped above the ankle. The heel of which fell heavy against the floor as she walked up to the raised platform and heaved herself across the middle of my bed.
The reasoning behind her impromptu visit, I knew, would be revealed on her own time, so I didn't bother launching into it just yet.
"So, we had dinner at the Nott's house in Lyme last week," she announced.
She rolled over on her side, propping her herself up by the elbow as she looked over at me.
"I'm sure that was delightful," I said, looking away from her and back to my potion ingredients.
She laughed. "Oh, it was quite illuminating. I had no idea you were so well-liked."
"I'm sure I have no idea what you are talking about," I replied, peering at a tiny vial of crushed…lavender, I determined, and moved it to its alphabetical placement.
I heard her shift across the bed and the ends of her hair dusted the edges of the trunk lid as she leaned over to inspect my work.
"Marianne is quite taken with you, did you know that?" she asked, "I spent most of my time there with her at my side. She talked of nothing but you."
I stole a glance at her. She was smiling wolfishly down at me. She loved this, this element of chaos. I sighed heavily.
"She's a child," I responded, as I closed the lid of the trunk. I unfolded my legs and stood up. "Behaving like a child."
"If you ask me," she said, "I think you really sealed the deal with the whole saving her bit. You know she admitted to making herself trip down the steps? She just fell much harder than intended."
I glared at her. That entire experience had been exhausting to deal with. Of course, no gentleman with good sense would have let Marianne lie there in peril, so it was of natural inclinations that I took her home and fetched a Healer. There is nothing heroic in doing one's civic duty, in my opinion.
Narcissa pulled herself off of the bed and trailed after me as I stepped off the platform toward the other side of the room. I picked up her coat from the chair and walked toward the small wardrobe closet I had by the door. Neatly, I put her coat into it and closed the door.
"Theodore is still handsome," she commented lightly, running her fingers along the edge of my desk.
"I don't think he's changed much since last time you called him that," I muttered, mostly to myself.
I walked across the room toward the closet, but stopped. She scattered some of the items on the desk, plucking up my botany journals and depositing them on top of a stack of letters and books. She sat on top of the table in front of me and folded her arms.
I frowned at the mess she was making, but didn't comment upon it because I knew that was likely what she wanted me to do.
"I still don't think that's a good reason to have him join the society," I said, "He's not…he's not creative. He's very pragmatic, intelligent, no doubt but…limited."
"You being handsome was largely the reason we let you in, and we thought you were severely limited," Narcissa retorted, raising an eyebrow coolly.
My hand wrapped around the doorknob leading to my closet, but I stopped short of opening the door. She was smiling at me, innocent seeming enough, but her eyes always gave away her mischief.
"I'm glad you think I'm handsome," I replied, "Honestly, really flattered by it."
I opened the closet door and swept inside. The chandelier lit automatically as I stepped into the threshold, setting a soft glow about the room. I heard her move off of the table, and with the clatter that came after, I had no doubt she took the rest of the things on my desk to the floor with her. She followed me into the closet and I heard her inhale.
"Merlin, this is the size of my room," she remarked.
"Yes, it was the bedroom next door," I said, "Repurposed. We don't use the third floor. Or we didn't, until I moved up here."
Narcissa let her hands drift along the tie rack I had upon one of the sets of drawers. She opened them and found a black velvet box, which she brought to the table in the centre of the room. She opened the small latch and raised her eyebrows. This box was where I kept my watches. Unlike my father and grandfather, I moved away from the small hand watches attached to their side pockets and wore ones at the wrist.
She tried several watches before she selected one that was silver with sapphires encrusted on the watch face. I said nothing as I watched her drift her sleeve over it. She needn't steal, which I think she knew, but liked the notion that she could.
"I have something to show you," I said, turning around.
I pushed aside the various hangars holding plain black cloaks and tapped the wall. I copied my mother's hidden bookshelf design, but extended it from the top of the panel to the bottom, so that each panel had seven shelves. My collection was already placed in one panel, taking up three shelves.
"Oh," she breathed, "This is brilliant. You know I just have rare editions stacked in the attic in a trunk? We could properly store them in here. Is this all you've got?"
"For now, soon the entire room will have a false backing with a shelf," I explained, "And the shelves in the main room, they'll have two sides as well."
She ran her fingers down the spines of my books. My mother's copy of Frankenstein was still in there; she hadn't asked for it yet, but I intended to return it to her.
She suddenly turned around and left the room. I heard the wardrobe closet creak open and then she returned with a slender paperback, less than one hundred pages long.
"Medea," she explained, tossing the book to me, "It's a Greek tragedy play by Euripedes."
"Are we acting?" I asked, flipping through the pages idly.
My bedroom door flew open, unceremoniously, and my mother rushed in. She found us both in my closet with the panels exposed. She stopped and turned, eyeing the journals and papers fluttered onto the floor and the general chaotic state Narcissa left my desk in, and then she turned back to us.
"Hello, Narcissa," she remarked breezily, then turned away from her, "Lucius, I need willow bark. Mrs. Zabini's wrist is aching again and I do not have any in stock."
Nodding, I slipped away from Narcissa and walked out of the closet. "I still have some laudanum and willow bark drops she can use."
I fetched the small bottle from my end table drawer and handed it to my mother, who twisted her fingers around it and pocketed it. With a nod of her head, she swept out of the room. Mrs. Zabini's wrist was perhaps in a real state.
As soon as the door closed, Narcissa laughed lightly. I looked over; she was leaning in the doorframe of the closet.
"'Hello, Narcissa' she says, as if I'm an acceptable piece of furniture in your closet," she remarked.
I smiled. "She thinks too fast, it takes some time for her observations to catch up with her."
I imagined around dinner time, she would suddenly realize my desk was in disarray and Narcissa Black was in my bedroom unattended, but for the moment her focus was elsewhere. I also accepted the idea that she may not be bothered by it at all; we were in a secret society, after all. It only made sense that we would interact in secret too.
"Back to our former discussion," I said, slipping my hands into my pockets, "I'll ask Theo around. See what he thinks."
She opened her mouth to retort, thought better of it, and simply nodded her head with a small smile.
"No."
Theodore plunked plentiful amounts of sugar into his tea and stirred firmly with the small silver spoon. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and glared at me over the rising steam of his cup.
"You're just saying no, you haven't given a proper reason," I protested, albeit not with any specific fever.
As much as I liked Theo, I knew this wasn't his idea of time well spent. It just wasn't practical; he would lose sleep, it would interfere with his Arithmancy studies, the books were fiction…
"It's just nonsense," Theo replied primly, "Running about in the woods in the middle of the night, ruining one's chance at proper rest, interrupting my personal academic endeavours…all to read Muggle literature designed to torment the minds of women?"
I paused for a moment as I squeezed lemon over the top of my cup. "It's uncanny how predictable you are," I said.
We were in the tearoom in Lyme, with the highly decorated workers and swaying ivy. Theo didn't say it, but he must have been enamoured with the place, as the witches behind the counter knew him. His order was on the table he must have taken each time he came here before we could place our order.
"You'll be surrounded by unmarried women?" I suggested, half-heartedly.
That seemed to trouble him more than anything; perhaps as much as it had me upon my discovery.
I sighed. I understood that Narcissa, for whatever reason, wished to collect him. Perhaps it was as simple as her finding him attractive, or perhaps she wanted to marry him….the thought was strange, but not out of the question. Theodore was cautious and capable. She would never worry about him gambling, stepping out of their marriage, or being rash.
He moved at a glacier pace in comparison to other men.
There was another angle, I thought. Perhaps this was an attempt to change the course of history; to modify and liberate men from the shackles of our society. It wasn't that farfetched for me to believe Narcissa would attempt such a thing.
"Okay," I said, folding my hands together onto the table, "Follow my logic here, if you can. You should join me because it's fun. Not 'I danced with every woman who wanted me to and now I can get drunk' fun, legitimate, unfiltered fun. The kind you've probably never experienced in your life."
"Lucius," Theo replied, "There is nothing fun about breaking rules."
He was so stoic I laughed despite my attempt to bury the urge. However, this was not the argument that was going to win him over, so I contemplated a moment, watching him drink his tea, brooding, while he glared out of the window. I had one more chance, I think, to convince him before he rejected the idea on simple principle and forgot the matter entirely, no matter how hard I pressed him.
"Consider this," I said, resting my palms flat against the table, "These books were written by women, yes, and Muggle women at that. But the majority of these women wrote to make a name for themselves; they may or may not have come from money. They were self-made women, who used their intellect to make a living. Pure effort. Real work. All real, not simply illusions of wealth and grandeur. Real."
It took him precisely two minutes before he acquiesced. And how could he not, I thought? Theodore loathed old money, despite being surrounded by it. Because he knew that for as long as he lived, he would forever be an "other" in our society. His family's brush with wealth, their luck by our society's standards, was too new. Such wealth could fade or be squandered in a single generation.
On the first Saturday in March, his family came to stay with mine for six weeks. This coincided with the next Moonflower society meeting, and so at midnight, a reluctant Theodore followed me out of the south garden gate into the thicket of forest beyond my house. It had snowed for nearly three days in a row, a little late in the season, but it was not impossible to navigate. I pushed the snow in front of me to the sides with my wand as I walked; Theo, with a light bobbing above his head, leafed through our book choice for March (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) with his eyebrows deeply furrowed.
"There are no obvious bits of magic," Theo commented amidst the soft howling of the wind and the fluttering cracks of tree limbs.
I pulled my hair over to one shoulder and ducked a low hanging branch that had broken off under the weight of snow.
"Yes, well, that's because the authoress is a Muggle, remember?" I responded lightly.
I heard Theo hit the branch with full force and groan. He fell over and the book flew into a bank of snow I had created with my wand. I collected the book first, dusting the cover off, and then helped him to his feet.
"You call this fun, Malfoy?" Theo snapped, taking my arm.
Shrugging, I said, "It's not my fault you don't look where you are going."
There was a loud rustle issuing to our right. I heard Theo gasp and step behind me. No particularly threatening beasts roamed our woods that I was aware of, so it must have been one of the Moonflowers taking a different path to our meeting spot.
From the darkness, a figure burst through the brambles and snow. Illuminated under the soft glow of Theodore's hovering light, Narcissa Black pushed back the hood of her silver cloak and stood in front of us.
"Hello, Lucius," she greeted cheerfully, "I thought I heard you. Did you know you have a patch of wild elderberry plants growing just a bit away from your gate?"
They weren't wild, I planted them, but I didn't correct her. I could see the inside of her cloak pocket was stuffed full of leaves; used mostly for abating the symptoms of a cold.
Theo blinked. "Your cloaks match."
"Yes," she replied, taking my elbow with her arm, "Welcome, Theodore. You're going to have so much fun."
"Fun," he intoned behind us.
When we reached our meeting spot, the moon was high and full. It broke through the bare tree limbs and bathed the stones in the clearing bone white. A blue fire was alight in the centre, and a cauldron full of soup bubbled on top of it. I watched as Mara Parkinson wound her way around the groups of women, pouring boiling water from the kettle in her hand into outstretched mugs for tea.
"Is that my sister's maid?" Theo exclaimed.
I followed his eyes to Louisa Greyback, who was standing on the east perimeter of the clearing, conversing with Meredith Travers.
"We have no formal caste system here, gentlemen," Narcissa replied, "The structures of maid and lady vanish in our society. It's inherently detrimental to our process, you see."
"No, I don't see," he said.
She stopped, and since she was still holding onto my arm, I had no other option than to stop as well.
"Let me explain," she replied evenly, "Hypothetically speaking, let's say that your sister is a Moonflower member. She joins, only to discover Louisa is a member as well. If we allow the same conditions in our real life to permeate our literary one, do you think Louisa would feel like an equal member? Do you think she would feel confident to speak her thoughts, to ruminate, relate to, and connect with what she is reading? Or would Marianne's mere presence silence her?"
He didn't reply. Silence never stopped Narcissa from educating, however, and thus she continued.
She said, "If we didn't bend the rules, Theodore, the only one here that would have a right to do anything would be Lucius."
It seemed she too saw the chink in his armour, the one way force him to recognize the argument in front of him, to savour it, to consider it. He nodded thickly and with a comforting smile from Narcissa, we moved into the foray of the Moonflowers.
My initiation granted warmth from them that I did not expect. I was a silent spectator before, and now they greeted me as their own. It was the equivalent sweeping winter away to reveal a tiny, blossoming spring.
Narcissa sat upon the large stone at the head of the circle of bodies, though most of the effort was concentrated on being closer to the warmth of the fire. I sat to Narcissa's right, draping my cloak onto the ground, with enough space to seat myself and Theo, who paused for a moment before he curled his legs and sat down.
"This is a women's book club then," Theodore said, sighing, as he watched the last of the group lope across the clearing to the centre and take their seats. "My mum has these in your parlour."
"Yes, and she might have been a Moonflower," I remarked breezily, "We're the second generation."
"My mum? Frolicking about in the woods in the middle of the night?" Theo retorted, sceptically, "She won't even leave Lyme now."
Forcing down the urge to smile, I said, "There is a bookstore in Lyme. That's where we purchase most of our volumes each month. All she has to do is go down the hill to access the restricted material."
If he even could respond to me, he wasn't given the chance, as Narcissa began the meeting by reading.
"'When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstance for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce the contrary result.'"
Theodore bristled next to me as she finished the last line. "This book suggests women should not be married then!" he exclaimed loudly.
I watched their eyes turn toward him. There were many different faces in the circle. Some eyes were blue or grey, some green or brown or in between, some were fair skinned and light haired, and some were bronze and ebony-haired. But they all had the same affixed coldness, a silent reprimand.
"Consider the context," I said, a vain attempt at smoothing the situation over. "The protagonist married a man steeped in debauchery. He's an alcoholic. Helen flees with her son to escape the life of misery he has caused her. She married him because she loved him, but never considered the reality of her life with him."
"Yes," Meredith said, nodding her head, "Thus, I think we should interpret this as Helen saying that one should marry with head and heart."
"Though personally, she thinks marriage brings unhappiness either way," Louisa finished, shrugging her shoulders.
Narcissa folded one leg over the other and brought her wand up into the air. From her position above us, she sent a shock of flames to rekindle the fire and turn it silver instead of blue.
"Marriage is a real issue for all of us," she finally said, "It dictates politics, defines alliances between family—let's not pretend these are friendships, they are business deals, an exchange of investments and money—so marriage is a matter that we have no control over, it's a strategy of our father's. How many of us are now engaged?"
Four hands shot up in the air.
"And how many of you chose your husband?"
Every single hand dropped.
"So, you see," she said, "Marriage has little to do with love in our situation. We don't marry for love. We married for property. Title. Wealth. Marriage therefore becomes a great equalizer because none of us have a choice."
The topic shifted then from marriage to independent wealth. Helen made a small living from her artwork, which most of the women in the group were quite enthused over. Many described their own artwork, their vain desire to have a proper showing, to have collections of works the way their fathers did. To produce much of the famous artworks, a canon of which was dominated by men and excluded them regardless of technique or skill.
My particular favourite lines of the novel was simple, had no major philosophical argument behind it: "Although I maintain that if she were more perfect, she would be less interesting."
And, following that, my second was, "I would rather have your friendship than the love of any other woman in the world."
I am aware of why. Helen's strength and resilience reminded me so solidly of Narcissa that reading it was like finding an old friend. I looked for her in every book I read, whether I did so consciously or not. What I found was that she was often there because her book choices modelled pieces of herself. I saw her in Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Eyre, and Helen Graham. There was a strength in them I was passionately drawn to.
As the analysis part of the meeting closed, Narcissa withheld dismissal. We anticipated this, as she always announced the novel for the next month.
"Before we leave," she said, "I would like to suggest that our next book be chosen by Lucius. Historically, our mothers alternated months."
I paused for a moment, glancing across the group. If their eyes met mine with coldness as they had Theo, I would decline, and shift the task to another who wished to have it. However, I was mostly met with encouragement.
"Sure," I remarked, and then as an afterthought, I said, "I've read a bit of A Picture of Dorian Gray, perhaps we can read that for the month of April?"
A swell of approval went through them and side conversations rose, excited chattering.
"Oscar Wilde is a favourite," Narcissa explained, leaning off the rock toward me. "We read this two years ago, so some of us had read it before, but the newer members have not. Dorian Gray it is then, ladies and gentlemen."
With the meeting adjourned, the ladies went back to their social circles about the fire. Some were still discussing the contents of the novel, comparing it to the other Brontë sisters.
Narcissa slipped off the rock as Theodore and I stood up. With a quick flick of my wand, I syphoned anything off the bottom side of my cloak and fastened it back around my shoulders.
"So, your thoughts, Theodore?" Narcissa asked.
"This is…sort of an abomination, don't you think?" Theodore said, "Don't you think that what you are doing is misleading? These women don't have options. I understand that they should; I'm not arguing that the fairer sex haven't always been given sleight of hand by men, Miss Black, but don't you think instilling hope in them is a fruitless endeavour considering you can't give them the liberty they so desire?"
She paused, a mangled mix of surprise and anger on her face. This only seemed to spur Theodore on.
"Secondly," he remarked, "You talk of removing hierarchy in this society while these women have to go home and return to normalcy. One maid argues with her lady here and she's punished for it when she returns home. Such things cause mayhem, disaster. The Moonflower Society is dangerous—women in our generation outnumber men. How many of these women are you leading to ruin?"
"I don't lead these women toward anything, Mr. Nott, but I appreciate that you think I wield such power," she responded, and I watched as she coiled in on herself slowly. Like a snake, she seemed obscured and hidden until she needed to strike. "In response to your argument that these women are being led astray, I want to remind you that this is the second generation of the Moonflowers. Each person you see here tonight had a preceding member; their mother's joined first and so I extended an invitation to them. None of the women that came before us ended up in ruin."
Theodore glared at her. "No? Not a single one?"
"You, sir, are one of these," Narcissa shot back, "My primary ambition is merely to extend the work my mother started. However, my secondary agenda, which has become wildly apparent of its importance, is not to influence the minds of young women, Mr. Nott, for they already know what is at stake, but to change yours."
"My mind does not need to be amended," he snapped.
"Lucius did," she said, "He came here, just as you have albeit with a bit more grace and tact, and he listened. He read. He understood. His lineage is more important than yours, Mr. Nott, and far more influential. If his mind needed changing, I would argue that yours does too."
"This is ridiculous," he replied.
"It is," I said calmly, "You're ridiculous."
With a flash of astute anger, he shoved passed me and across the clearing into the woods. I watched him retreat into darkness, his tall and thin silhouette bleeding into the shadows until he was lost.
"I thought, given his academic inclinations, this would be rather easy for him," Narcissa remarked, and with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders she added, "I suppose I was wrong."
I knew there were limitations to Theodore Nott. Intelligent, to be sure, and quite adamant to argue in the defence of certain inequalities if they pertained to him, but he remained resolutely stubborn in his notions.
In truth, I think Theodore's anchor was himself. He alone could define philosophy, and there was not much one could to do sway him.
"The next on the list to recruit are the Zabini's," Narcissa announced, "Candra and his older sisters, Lucia and Clementina. I believe the sisters will be an easy addition. Candra, however…"
"He would hardly do the required reading in school," I replied, "his focus has always been on Quidditch."
She nodded her head. "But now that his injury prohibits him from playing..."
I had little doubt that Candra would decline. If, I thought, he would even bother to humour me in seeing the Moonflowers at work.
"I'll see what I can do about Candra," I decided, though I was of little faith.
Narcissa flashed me a bright smile. "And I will contact Lucia and Clementina."
Once the rest of the party had left, Narcissa walked with me to the south garden, though I knew she could only exit from the southern edge of the property. I wondered how long it took her to return home from these sorts of things.
The moon was still bright and high in the sky, so I imagined it was only one or two in the morning. The trek to the edge of the property was thirty minutes, so must have at least returned home by dawn.
"I imagine that did not go as you planned?" I asked her, "With Theodore, I mean. I am sorry his bad form did not match his good looks."
"Ah, well, one should not be bewitched by such things," she replied, though she still sounded disappointed by it nonetheless, "And I am not so easily bewitched by beauty, otherwise, I might have already been called Mrs. Malfoy."
I laughed, but it was hollow, and my cheeks flushed. I couldn't derive her exact meaning. Of course, she was not a stranger to remarking upon the fact that I was handsome to her, yet she was always quick to enforce that it meant nothing.
"I imagine there must be only a very, very few men in the world that I should like to marry," Narcissa said, "And of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should—"
I interjected, finishing the quote, "It is twenty to one he may not happen to be single, or to take a fancy to me."
We laughed, our breaths mingling in the cold air and dissipating above us.
"Is that your favourite line from the novel?" I asked.
"No," she said, and we stopped on the path as she flipped through her well-worn copy until she found what she was looking for. "My favourite is, 'I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself.'
"Because, of course, that's exactly what the Moonflower Society attempts to do. We're not revolutionizing women, as Theodore suggests, but giving them the tools they need to navigate society as they want to. Let them get married and have children, wear corsets and follow in step with what they are told. But I want their minds open, always."
"Is it an illusion then, as he suggested?" I questioned, "Are you giving them the illusion that they have a choice when you know they don't?"
She bit her lip. "Maybe, I suppose, but I don't see it that way. I'm not asking women to change their circumstance or take up the mantle and suffer for it. Perhaps it makes me weak that I do not. I just know that the path some women take leads to isolation, and most of these young women still love their family."
Though without saying it, I knew she meant her sister, Andromeda. By eloping, and with a Muggle no less, she severed the ties to her family forever.
Of course, I thought, the majority of these young women would be unlikely to make such a drastic change. It took a certain sort of person. Most people wanted to be happy and live with a modicum of comfort. Asking women borne to wealth and prestige to forsake that was easier said than done. The woman who had nothing to lose might become a revolutionary by necessity; the woman who had everything to lose might hesitate.
Narcissa meant to use the Moonflower Society, if nothing else, to teach people that our society could contain multitudes. There was more than one way to think.
"Was your sister influenced to leave because of what she read here?" I asked it quietly, meant to soothe rather than accuse her of something.
But she ignored me, as if she had not heard at all, and quickly changed the subject.
"My second favourite quote is, 'His heart is like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind,'" Narcissa said.
"Why?"
We came to a stop in front of the south garden gate. There was a light shimmering behind the curtain of one of my parents' windows, but none of the others were lit.
"Because I like the idea of men's hearts being something delicate," she responded, "Rather than hardened or cold."
I touched the door on the gate and slid the iron bolt back and pushed it open.
"I can assure you they often are," I replied.
"I know," Narcissa breathed.
She looked up at me with a sort of fierceness in her eyes and then, with a quick sweep of her hand, she pulled her hood over her face and turned away, melting away into the inky black darkness of the woods.
It was nothing and everything all at once, this charged tension between us that left me with the feeling that, without touching, we kissed one another.
Words, I thought, words climbed inside of me and lived there.