Indigo

One day we were up in the attic and found a lot of dad's old school books, and you were looking through the exercise books from when he was eleven laughing at his spelling, and while I was listening to you I found a few other things, a bit of chalk and a bottle of ink and some dividers bent out of shape by carving into desk, I suppose. The chalk was mainly white but there were a few pieces of colour, and I drew lines and faces on the floor with those. I was getting bored, there was no sound but us breathing, and the lawn being mown two or three doors away: and there was nothing else here that we hadn't seen before. Idly I unscrewed the cap of the ink bottle and found it was half full.

I dipped my little finger in and the tip came out stained blue-black. I watched it, having nothing else to do, holding it carefully so as not to drip on my dress, but was surprised to find it soaked easily into the skin without running. As an experiment I tried my ring finger as well, and that also came out cleanly dyed blue after only a few seconds' drying. I held them up to my face and smelt them, a curiously pleasant smell redolent of old schoolrooms and much younger times. I could see the little boys of the class running around the playground and playing marbles, and I held that memory for a while.

My dress was a dark blue one that went past my knees, and I was wearing a white pullover, so my lower legs were the only convenient piece of exposed flesh, and were safely away from vulnerable clothes. I took another spot of ink and dabbed my ankle, took more and was about to make a long streak along my calf when I realized the absurdity of daubing myself where I could be seen: a couple of smutted fingers were no matter, but blue legs? So I hitched up my dress and made the smooth blue streak on the upper part of my leg. I liked the effect.

I made several more long marks like this from it, in a kind of fishbone or pine-tree pattern. You noticed that I had stopped responding and shuffled over to see what I had discovered. I smiled briefly at you and continued admiring my primitive art. You watched. Next I created a smooth coloured patch on my inner thigh, tugging my dress up further to expose my pants, not wanting to stain their delicate lacy pink. You moved closer, and I said "Smell. It's nice".

You bent down and smelled the patch of blue, brought your mouth almost close enough to touch, rested there a moment, then twisted to plant a kiss on my natural skin, closer in to my crotch, just where the pants touched my thigh. Then you rose back up and looked at me expectantly, and I wondered what other pleasing patterns I could make, and where.

With a tissue I rubbed my two stained fingers, but they were dry enough not to mark anything, so I took off my pullover and laid it carefully behind me on a cardboard box, away from the dust. How to approach the pale canvas of my midriff? I flexed muscles and drew myself in and out seeking a stable surface, and at last drew a long line from one hipbone to the other, mounting my navel in a loop upward. Then I laughed and saw how eagerly you were watching. "Do you want to try?"

You took the bottle of ink and on my left side up to the ribs drew leaves and flowers, then reached across to my right and made several tall strokes right up to the edge of my bra. I protested that you would dirty it. And naturally with your other hand -- now I saw why you had used your left in the ink -- you reached round and undid me. I felt my breath surge into my throat as I always did when you did this to me, prelude to so much else we could talk to no-one about. You held the bra high and lifted it over me and deposited it on my pullover: I could not quite look at you. Your returning hand made several companionable strokes over the side of my breast, knuckles against my skin, but you did not take me as directly as I had feared. With your inky finger re-wet, you drew a circle around the widest extent of my far breast, then another within it.

We both looked at that as it dried: I held it up and considered the soft, flat nipple. With another fingerful you turned this light pink thing into a dark unnatural blotch. At that moment I felt the wetness between my thighs take life, as if responding to a call from a distant kindred liquid. I had known you before to somehow hear or perhaps smell this as soon as it had happened, and change your behaviour to me to take advantage of it and increase it and make it irreversible; so I looked upon you with wonderment, but you were lost in contemplation of the two colours of my areolae, one so weak, one now so large and bold.

You made spirals on the one breast, then turned me around and did unknown markings on my back: I felt the cold moisture all over me, from shoulderblades over all my vertebrae down to the spotless flesh above my dress. What dragons and forest were they? Still the breast near you was naked.

You turned me back to face you, and we gazed into each other's eyes. Your clean hand came slowly closer and rested one finger on my clean nipple, a long time, then rubbed it very delicately, and the sunless rills within me felt their tides. I waited for you to take me in your mouth, but you retired and sat watching me. The air was chill by now as the afternoon waned and I began to feel goosepimples on the smoothness of my strange skin.

"More?" you said.

"More," I said faintly, awaiting. Even the lawn mower had ceased; there was nothing in the world but us, and no time save in the enchanted schoolroom and the hour we had. You felt for the clasp of my dress and I felt that in this awkward practicality we had done so many times before there was itself a sacramental nature, an acknowledgement that bonds and burdens of the flesh briefly confined us until the moment we drew away the veiling cloths and contemplated each other's inner heart. My pants followed the dress: you looked at my mountain vale a little and gestured me to turn. I thought it was your tongue, but it was your wet finger, tracing a midnight line between my cheeks, widening the pool of uncolour around my other depth, and continuing along that soft path to a part that belonged entirely to you.

When that was dry you moved me back and moved me around like a lay model, an arrangement, an artwork in progress: wide, wide were my legs, and clean my thighs where they had not yet been debruised by our sharing. You undressed and let all fall as you stood erect. I felt for the pot and dipped my finger into its dark water; you dipped yours into its dark water.