Ch. 1

She's immaculate.

Ch. 1

Condensation dripped down onto my wrist, and it stung a bit. I still hadn't learned that when one's arm gets stuck in a rose bush, the first thing one does isn't tug it out. I had the scars to prove. Taking another sip of iced tea, I sighed. I sat down, leather clad toes scraping the ground. Ah, to be tall, and not have these problems. The dust rose around my feet and formed a light layer onto the canvas body of my saddle shoes. I lazily kicked them off. I didn't like shoes anyway. Looking down, spine arched unhealthily and hair perched precariously on top of my head, secured only by a small butterfly clip, I sat, seeking comfort on the bench in the shade. Alone, as usual.

Hour long minutes passed.

White linen came flowing towards me and my eyes wandered up towards the goddess quickly advancing. To call her comely, pretty, would be wrong. She was beautiful. More than beautiful. She had stepped out of a Renaissance illumination, and made her way to the sculpture landscape where I had found myself. Her skin was porcelain, stretched tightly around high cheekbones. Her hair was hidden by a wide straw hat, but wisps of gold crowned her forehead and the front of her delicate ears.

Quickly, almost frantically, she sat down beside me and I moved over, startled.

"I'm sorry to bother you, really, but I love the dress." With long, elegant fingers, she gestured towards my costume. I was wearing a tan and yellow floral dress, cut to above my knee, with a v shaped collar front and back.

More important was her voice. It was the clinking of glass in the summer heat, water being poured into crystal. It was light, and airy, but it had substance, richness, and passion.

"It's very-" she began, fumbling for words.

"Turn of the last century?" I suggested distractedly. I glanced at my own shoes, laying lopsided in the dust. Anything to not look at her face.

She laughed, with the same pixie quality her voice possessed, and I smiled at a nearby birch in response. She crossed one leg over the other, revealing a foot strapped in leather sandals from underneath her long linen skirt. She slid in barely a centimeter closer, and I looked up.

Her eyes met mine.

They were a vivid blue, an unnatural radiance crowning dilated, expressive pupils. Her eyes were the same color throughout, save for one white striped that cut jagged through the center of her irises. Mesmerized, I could feel her looking through me, and I stared back into those crystal pools and saw another world.

I could hardly breathe, it was as if I had seen the face of God. I was convinced I had, at least.

"What brings you here?" I couldn't tell if the sound of her voice shook me from or made me fall deeper into my reverie.

"The pursuit of pleasure," I replied, dazed.

"You seem happy enough." Her fingers brushed against the side of my thigh, sending electrical currents pulsing through my whole body.

"Happiness and pleasure are two very different things," I replied, slipping back into my usual cynicism. I watched a bead of sweat form on her jaw, slowly sliding downwards where it was absorbed by the collar of her sheer blue button down shirt. "But I am very happy."

She inhaled deeply, stretching her head back and squinting her eyes shut.

"Are you alone?" she inquired.

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. I'm on a date."

"Wilde?"

"He's an idol of mine."

"You and yourself should come walk with myself and I, then. I don't usually come across people like you around here."

"There are no people like me," I muttered, a bit haughtily, but of course, willingly obliged.

She rose, and barefooted, I followed. She began to walk in long strides through the switch grass down the hill upon which we sat. She was oil on canvas, skirt billowing in the June breeze.

Reviews

[Silent Wolf]

You provide very good detail here, though I am slightly confused as to where this is going, for the mc seems as if this had happened before...