I took the feeling of knowing Alex was everywhere for granted, and he’d mellowed in my mind like an old dream, sometimes mellifluous, sometimes enigmatic, always present but warbled and fuzzy.
But here, standing beneath the wide-columned berth, the air around me had the vague, sweet spice of mystery, of him. I inhaled slowly, purposely, deeply, the ache of needing him seeping like a dark frost through me.
I’d forgotten the ache, so much like the wisps of a snuffed out flame, its invisible pungence hovering, reminding me that my blood was like ice though my fingers lost their sense of touch, reminding me of the trembling cold beneath my skin when I’d forgotten I had skin and I was too numb to realize I was shivering in the dark–a shapeless, frozen being.
And all of a sudden it burst upon me, an open flame rendering my skin, my veins, its heat piercing my fingers and thighs. It was all I could manage to purpose myself to breathe, my fingers to feel, my skin to find its shape.
The dark was gone. He was standing before me, his face cocked in a half-grin, his eyes crinkling in exhilaration. But I was trembling, resolved but cocooned in my sensibilities like a pillar of salt, speechless, unable to move.
