The sun wheeled across the sky in its blazing chariot high above sleeping, bare bodies of Danica and Cale, making its way towards late afternoon. Warmth enveloped them, despite the lateness of the season, and the bard, with one arm curled beneath his head, the other draped across the young woman's side, shifted a little in his slumber. Wakefulness had left him with little reluctance, for the coupling had left him spent, exhausted; yet thoroughly satisfied. He'd remained awake long enough to trace the contours of Danica's face once they'd settled onto the moss on the west side of the rock, listen to her breathe for a few minutes, and then smile before dropping off...
He had not meant to do so, for he had wished to write his thoughts within his little book, to share the words that he could not speak with this young woman... his friend, his companion, his comfort in the middle of an aloof world... but he had not managed it, and now curled against her, eyes shut, lips parted.
Dream images chased their elusive tails 'round his head, of twisted ropes and gnarled winter trees, and for a moment, the shadow of a frown slipped across his features... fingers tightened in his own hair, and gently squeezed Danica's soft skin, before releasing once more.
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A soft sigh escaped Danica and she stirred. She had been enjoying the fuzzy coherence of her dream--she was naked in a poppy field, her back spread on soil, her face lifted to the drifting animal clouds...tears sliding soundlessly down her cheeks, streaming and melding into the ground beneath her, feeding seeds of trees yet to be born...a branch of a nearby tree was swaying gently in the wind, reached to her...PINCHED her?
Danica's eyes flew open, her sight full of sleep and blurry. Cale. It had been Cale. She let out her breath in a slow expulse of relief and shifted a little on her side. To be honest with herself, this was the first time that waking from a dream had been more pleasant than the dreams themselves. Cale was beside her, his breath solid and rhythmic, still induced in slumber. Danica watched his face, memorizing their contours...his beauty.
She had not turned before seeing the frown embedded in the expression of his sleeping face. She dragged her fingertip down his cheek gently, wondering the nature of his own dreams. Her eyes drifted to his exposed neck. A ragged, vicious scar marred the otherwise smooth length of his throat. She stared at it, feeling a tear moisten her cheek. She brushed at it absently and passed her fingers to the angry scar, running her soft fingertips across its ridge. The contact...it left her breathless. So much pain...Cale...
She took her hand back, the touch saddening her. She returned her now-alert gaze back to Cale's.
"What happened to you..?" Her voice was hushed to the point of nothing coherent.
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Daylight, frozen.... Winter... the cold did not quite filter through in his dream, and yet his breath still bore itself visibly upon the air in front of him. In front of him... until... the hood. They'd draped a hood over him, for propriety's sake, to keep the lusting crowd from seeing the fullness of his agony when he dropped. At least they'd given him that. He dreamed of himself standing upon the cart once more, the horses champing noisily at the bit behind him, unable to see, and yet somehow watching himself from the milling crowd at the same time, silent, unable to speak, mute to save himself...
His brows pulled tighter when Danica's finger delicately traced the lines of his cheek, to his chin... and onward to the scar that marred his throat. Reality and the dream clashed violently together, and he rose up on a sudden, gasping for air even as she spoke. Wild green eyes blinked in the autumn sun and for a painful, thundering heartbeat, he lifted a hand to ward her away...But quickly, his body relaxed. Taut, hard muscles untensed, relief sluicing through his limbs like water, and he sat up fully, offering up an apologetic look to Danica*
She, and not the rope. Here, and not... the hill...
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Danica’s body reflexively twitched backwards as Cale awoke with a startled bravado. In doing so, she almost flew off the edge of the rock and firmly set her hands against the gravel. Her chest heaved from the surprise, her cheeks filling with a ruddy complexion of guilty embarrassment.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”
She placed a hand against her thumping heartbeat, her expression rather flustered. His own apologetic look had come around the same time as her own exclamation and now she fell silent. A quick shake of her head and she then placed a trembling hand on his arm.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Her blue orbs found his and they flickered with curiosity, her pupils dilating.
“Are you alright?”
Her brow was furrowed with concern, her lower lip caught between the bone-white of her teeth.
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He nodded a little in response to her question, and smiled, albeit lopsidedly. How could he tell her of the dream? Experiencing it almost nightly was torture enough, but to write it down, to spill out the memories that locked him in their grip with a relentless fervor would be beyond his wishes.
Cale leaned forward, then, unable to keep from rolling a long, slow glance along her body, and touched the hand which touched him in hopes of reassuring her. Worry should not cross her brow, he mused... there was too much beauty there to be sullied by the likes of worldly cares and fretting.
He felt a surge of fondness for her, despite himself, and cast a quick gaze toward his clothing nearby. The harp lay upon them, beside his book, and he took a breath that expanded the girth of his chest. Time could trudge by, a thousand lifetimes, and he would never be able to tell her all that tangled his heart. Somehow, he knew this, and even had he the tongue again to sing of his pain, to extoll the history that had piled up around him.. she could not.. would not... be the one.
