Well... I'm afraid the end is drawing near... the next chapter will be the last. In the meantime, enjoy!
VII. Writer
She had entered the room as a dancer, her gait fluid, her lean body coming to rest against his in one swift movement. But now, he realized, she'd stopped being a dancer, because dancers are part of a show, and this wasn't a show. They'd both agreed to leave the spotlight for this moment, to leave the stage behind. She wasn't here to dance, wasn't here to drag him onto the scene.
She was a writer, rather. She'd write a story tonight, she'd find the words and the plot, and they'd imagine worlds of their own. They would become legend; heroes of an unreachable universe. They would have their private tales, their magic instants, they would be the characters who evolve and share secrets together. They were forever bound now, in paintings, in poems, in a ballad he had composed on a peaceful night.
There were no dragons in the room and neither of them had brought a sword, and yet this was a quest, it involved testing the limits, finding the boundaries, discovering something new every time; it was a world that belonged to her, to him, to them, a world both familiar and mysterious. She was writing a story that had never been written before, because the truth was, he'd never touched her quite like that before. And that touch, though light enough to be meaningless, held something they both knew to mean a lot. It was soft, but determined, it required no words, and yet it said everything; it was casual, tender, almost−
She struggled for a moment, wanting to write a happy end, for once, a happy end where good triumphs over evil, where the princess stays with the prince, where the magic kingdom remains magic. She wanted to get rid of the witches who bewitched and the wizards who bewizarded. But she knew the end was near. She felt it in every word, every movement, heard it in his voice and saw it in his eyes. She knew, because she was the writer; because she'd invented the plot and lived all these adventures and battled against the unknown; because she'd found courage in the strangest of places and solace in the arms of a man she'd never thought she'd fall for. And somehow, sometime in the course of the last few months, she'd found a title and written a few words, and he'd given her enough substance to write an entire book.
Now she turns to look at him, trying to find a solution to their dilemma− because authors have to do exactly that; they have to put their heroes in intricate situations and have to have readers hold their breaths with every turn of the page; and then they have to give their characters a way to win, to triumph. But as he returns her glance, that stroke of genius doesn't manifest itself; and when she silently pleads for help, he doesn't come to rescue her. He can't help her, because he doesn't have a horse and a spear and because too much time has gone by since they began this tale.
As the author, as the writer, as the hero, she knows. It is time for a conclusion.
So she'll take a last word, a last look, and write their lives; she'll take a moment and make it last; she'll take this night, and steal a tiny fragment of eternity and keep it in her heart.