Violent Suplication

A Story by Rusty

He lay awake all night and tended the fire, his mind awash in worry guilt and fear. The one woman in his world that had matter most to him, the one who he wished to impress and give comfort to... was alone and desperate. He was unable to touch her, not that it would change the course of things, but if he could somehow, it might all make sense. It might mean something. But he had failed her. Now in her time of need he was in a distant place. Knowing that distance and seeing the chasm that separated him left him no ability to rest. Her struggle was indeed hers and hers alone but if only… his life was a series of if only’s.

Staring at the fire he tried closing his eyes and all around him he felt her presence. Her breath hot as it was in that cold night when their lips twined and her touch awakening the very sense of his being. Her eyes had vexed him as she had stared intently at him with her finger tracing each flake of snow that fell melting on his bare chest. Every moment since he had first taken her in rushed at him with the scream of a banshee, surrounded him, and his small room grew smaller.

They had said very few words before she left. Speaking instead with their hands and their eyes, lips and tounges. A dance of passion that seemed to have been perfected through thousands of years of practice. Each breath fell upon the other and every motion perfectly matched like a swan to the water. Day became night and night became day passing with little fanfare as any life ceased beyond their two hearts. Having lived in this dream state for weeks neither slept but merely dozed only to awaken to the supple touch of their lover. Nourishment was taken but simply as necessity while quietly they unfolded the parchment of each others soul. The fire was kept burning.

She said little in the weeks leading up to this note. He saw her determination failing. He tried to ignore it before it grew but he felt it all the same. He could only imagine what had transpired in her heart because she had started making mortar and very gently placed it between them. Her resolve so perfect in the pronouncements she had made, in the way they had loved, suddenly paled in comparison to the reality she found herself in. He could not reach her. He could not help. In fact he might have been the very cause of her predicament and that was the worst indictment of all. Perhaps he had been the cause… perhaps.

Could he have counseled her, been her confidant, he might have been able to ease the slope in which she had slid but his ranting had been his own... and the coucil he offered he did not want. His supplications purely a yearning that somehow she would deliver him from his place, the casting about searching for a hand-hold on which to pull himself from the edge of his abyss that love had left him in.

He could not consider that maybe turning away from him was anything but a trite act of self preservation on her part. Her words. Her words tonight, a verdict rendered. He had offered her nothing. Instead he had helped seal her fate. And now left wanting she reached out for something somewhere beyond what they were. And he sat, stunned, paralyzed, wanting nothing more than to listen, be a good companion, a friend. But even that was bullshit. He wanted to hold her. For her sake or his? At this point did it even matter?

Her note simply said:

Please stop. I love you.