Hold - 4/5 for the Five Drabbles Competition at HPFC.
Exactly once, they caught each other.
"Alice?"
She nodded.
They held each other tightly. They kissed. They touched long-unfamiliar skin, ran fingers through hair that was white and thin from the curse, and made promises never to let go.
They held onto one another until the shouting and screaming from their empty bodies called mediwitches to pull them apart.
Sweaty, undulating bodies were separated, pallid skin painfully disconnecting. Their minds were too far gone to feel it. Their family was called in - the boy and the older woman - to inform them that the two adults were hurting each other. They were too unstable. They had to be moved.
The moment, when they would separately recall it some time following the event, had been perfection. It was an image they clung to with fervour and desperation. They wouldn't forget it, not for the rest of their agonizing existences.
Then they realized they were confined in solitary rooms.
No one was around to hear the screaming and nightmares that came from separation.
They were hardly aware of it, but being apart was sinful. They'd been through everything together, and it was a deep instability that was established in both their bodies which prevailed as they slowly forgot about that mysterious other person that had once shared a room with them.
Alice gave the boy candy wrappers, amazed over and over again about how he seemed to always know that she was going to do just that.
Frank stared blankly as the boy held his hand.
The question on the tip of their tongues, never to be verbalized: where is the third member of our family?
Silently, they longed for something they couldn't remember.