“What are you doing?”
“Just waiting.”
Waiting.
“Is there a problem?” Her face bore no look of concern.
“What did you do?”
“I told you we couldn’t stay there forever.” As she spoke, rays of sun broke through the cloudless sky. “Really, I think you’re trying to confuse me.”
“No.”
“No?” She asked the question as if there were no way she was wrong.
“I’m just… I’m… Where did we come from?”
“You tell me,” Aurelie almost commanded.
“The dance.”
“Dance?”
“No”, the boy, Reye, shook his head. “It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?” The water behind Aurelie rose from the horizon in rounded waves, and then froze. The freezing mounds became dark and dull, and then the green crept through in patches that expanded until the mounds were covered by it. It shifted and swayed dark to light and back to dark under the gentle breeze that blew from beyond.
“I was moving,” the boy recalled, “and the things I saw would change when I moved.”
“Of course, why wouldn’t they?”
The boy looked past and then back to Aurelie. “There was nothing else like me.”
“I know.”
Reye placed his right hand at the back of his head and felt the warmth of his hair on his palm and fingertips.
“And?”
“I rarely spoke.”
“I remember,” replied the golden female. “…I like your voice.”
“My voice?”
“It’s my favorite thing about you.”
“It is?”
The tall, dark haired and golden bodied female took a step back, away from Reye. “Why would I lie to you?”
Lie? Something in Reye’s chest warmed until it seemed to burn. It quickly became uncomfortable. “Why did you do that?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking me,” she responded, slowly.
The burning in the boy’s chest became a dull, numbing tickle. “I’m sorry,” he finally answered with gravity. His voice had deepened in a profound way, and as he noticed the change, the waters behind him begun to cascade, first rising as they had done in waves behind Aurelie. “I thought that was you.”
“I suppose it was, in a way.” Her tone was becoming less playful.
Reye turned to watch the falling water crash into the ground. A band of colors arced around the mists that the crashing produced.
“It’s beautiful,” Aurelie whispered.
“It’s how I feel about you.”
“I know.”
Politically Romantic 