Snow drifted in lazy gusts, sticking to her eyelashes, and kissing her with coldness. There was something eerie, but strangely serene about an empty park.
Lonely. No children would come here to play, not in this weather. Aya sat limply on an old, rusted swing, pushing absently with numbed feet as the cold and snow soaked into her skin. It didn't touch the knot of ice that seemed to be growing in her gut.
Everywhere she looked she saw ghosts.
There, on the monkey bars. A towheaded little boy was begging a little girl to come down. He was face-down in the sand-box as she went shrieking away in laughter. He was...He was...
He was above her, eyes dark with love and lust, as his hands learned paths that were never meant to be his.
Aya twined her numb fingers through the rusted rings of the chain, and stared blankly as feeble sun sparkled on ice-crystals.
The veil of denial had lifted. That strange mental-separation that had kept her subconscious subdued for so long. It didn't bring clarity. Her body alternately ran cold and hot. A strange sensation of icy wind hitting flushed cheeks. She tilted her head to lean against her knuckles, her fingers prickling uncomfortably between the muted heat of her skin, and the freezing texture of the metal.
The snow seemed to blind a moment, so she closed her eyes and listened to the squeak of the weathered swing. Back-forth. Back-forth.
The night had been...strange. Like it had been many nights poured into one. And she had allowed herself to be curiously led by action and reaction. Many parts were hazy and indistinct in her mind, drowned by feeling and half-remembered like some deep dream.
And like a dream, the details were blurry, while the 'feelings' fell into some kind of sharper focus.
It didn't help that the sleep she had achieved was haunted by the same images and emotions, twisting everything around until she wondered if she had maybe dreamed it all...
Or if it was all real...
Some moments, however, were far too clear. But they were odd moments in the whole of the encounter.
The sound of his voice in her ear, the words lost in the tide of everything, but the sound, low, and breathy, and stretched thin with desire.
The taste of salt on his lips, his tongue, familiar, but unique. And oddly addictive.
And the sight of him sucking on her fingers, the care and reverence in which he held her hand. The wet heat of his mouth, the sensual movements of his tongue.
It was the little things that seemed to shine the brightest in her mind. Like they were in colour, while so much else fell into shades of grey.
She really, really did not know how to process this. And what's worse, her mind seemed completely unwilling to fully approach the matter. Like, if she sat there and stared blankly, the situation might fix itself in her moment of intense inattention.
Think, Aya. Think! You and Aki did all, but have out-right sex last night.
She took a hard breath, her mind clearing a little as it always did when she ordered her own thoughts as honestly and bluntly as possible. She wondered if others ordered their thoughts by shaking themselves up so ruthlessly.
I did. She answered. We did. Now what do I do?
Leaving wasn't an option, and she didn't even want to. This unease she felt-it didn't conquer the fact that he was Aki and she loved him.
How cruel, to be so very trapped by emotion and circumstances. I don't understand this situation. I don't even half-believe it's real.
And that's the problem, isn't it? I keep waiting to wake up.
He's awake by now...
Was it cowardly of her to sneak out while he was still asleep? In her defense, leaving had not been a conscious decision. Her mind had been blessedly empty, from the moment she woke up, until she found herself standing in the middle of the empty, snow-covered park.
And even now her thoughts were moving so slow, that it was like they weren't even moving at all sometimes.
I've felt like this before, she realized. When Ceres awoke within me. Like something just fell apart, and I'm staring at the pieces, trying to figure out what they had once looked like whole.
She opened her eyes, stared out at the world as it began to take on new shape under the falling snow.
If she had come here to be alone, to figure things out before she faced him again...She was failing miserably.
She hadn't figured anything out. She was even more confused than before.
tbc...