She shook her
head slowly, trying to let her body convey her words when they failed to become
real in the air between them. Still she could not apologise for the time so
long ago, there was nothing she could see that needed the words now choking
her.
His eyes watched in quiet understanding as he struggled with something similar,
asking for her forgiveness. Long ago he had made a promise that he was sure he
could keep, something that meant so much to both of them, meant everything to
her. He had not fallen into the trap of breaking his pledge, but he had hurt
her with words, sharp jagged iron, lost in the dark. Some wounds he could still
see, in shadow, in stillness, in silence.
But he reached out for her, arms wanting, welcoming, waiting.
And she went into them, needing him more than she could say because of those
words choking all sound from her. There was a silence, greater than could be
explained, reasoned, told to another without a loss of significance. And she
was held, safe and secure, in the arms of the one person whom she would forgive
as much as she would care. As much as she could.
"I
missed you."
"I missed you too."
The
words were irrelevant to the circumstances, yet full of meaning for them
for both. The three words changed form, becoming the gratitude for forgiveness,
the confession of feelings unable to be voiced. And that was only thing that
mattered, they knew what the other meant, they knew and they understood.
The words of a soldier, face emotionless with grief, words edged with warning,
repeated themselves in the quiet minds,
'Bright and burning and pure, but not meant to last. Never meant to last'.
That was what
they could share, nothing more, nothing less. Together they prayed it wasn't
true, knowing in their hearts that it was. Long ago they had decided to savour
the time they had together, however long that may be.
Fin