She was hot standing against the tree. But not too hot. She was never too anything. At night it was cold. But not too cold. So, she sat in not quite discomfort and waited for the dawn. The sky lightened a shade at a time, endlessly shifting, a stunningly beautiful display, indescribable pastels, just for her. It was all just for her. He was still asleep. He was always asleep at dawn, so this was just for her. She wondered what too hot would be. If the sweat on her body wasn’t enough to stop the feeling and the heat washed over her like a current in the stream. The sun was ready to appear. It would be bright. But not too bright. Her eyes were fixed on the east. There it was. Just like yesterday. It took her breath away. Just like yesterday. She breathed deep. Just like –
“Beautiful. Isn’t it?”
She turned towards the voice, searching for the speaker. There was a woman standing a few feet behind her left shoulder. The woman was thin and tall, her smooth skin stretched across her small breasts and tightly around her stomach so her ribs were almost visible. The woman took a step forward and she took a step back. The woman wasn’t him. He was the only other one. But now there was a woman in front of her.
“Who are you?” She asked.
The woman smiled and looked past her.
“I like to watch the sunrise too. It’s beautiful.”
She turned and followed the woman’s gaze to the sun. It was beautiful. She loved to watch the sun. It was so bright. But not too bright, just the right amount of brilliance for appreciating it. She nodded. The woman stepped forward again, coming up shoulder to shoulder with her. She looked at the woman. The woman looked back.
“What else do you like?”
The woman asked such strange questions. She liked many things, but she felt as though she shouldn’t answer. She felt that there was something wrong. She looked back towards where he slept.
“He won’t be up for a while.” She said. She wasn’t sure why that seemed relevant, but she wanted the woman to know. The woman smiled.
“I know. Just us.” And then the woman’s smile changed. Or maybe it was that the woman’s eyes focused on her differently. Either way she suddenly felt there was a weight to the gaze that hadn’t been there a moment before. She took a step back. The woman lifted her hands and mimicked the gesture. It was strange. The woman looked so open and the woman’s gaze had gone back to normal. She took a step back forward.
“Who are you?” She didn’t mean to repeat herself, but she couldn’t understand what was happening.
“Let’s walk.” The woman replied and gestured for her to come. She paused a moment before falling into step beside the woman.
“What do you think of life?” The woman’s eyes touched her in a way she did not know how to respond to. The woman’s words made no sense. What did she think? It was life. She lived. Like the trees and the creatures and the flowers. She was not too hot or too cold. And she was with him. He was everything to her and she was everything to him. And there was the dawn. She never missed a dawn. It filled her with something to see the sky be painted and the sun come back to her, and to know it was for her. All only for her.
“The dawn is beautiful.” She said. The woman paused and turned to her. The woman reached out and touched her hair. She left her hair long and it made its way along her back and almost to the ground. He left his hair long too. But the woman’s hair was short. The woman’s hair framed the woman’s face and stopped before the woman’s shoulders.
“You are beautiful.” The woman let go of her hair. The woman’s hand fell to her shoulder and ran down her collarbone. The voice was low and serious as she met the woman’s eyes.
“You could be a sunrise.” She didn’t know what was happening. The woman’s touch made her entire body feel on edge. As if she was suddenly more awake than she had ever been before. The path of the woman’s fingers seemed to burn on her body and yet it was as if her entire body tingled in anticipation of more. But the woman’s hand fell away and the woman began walking again.
She turned and watched the woman’s serpentine hips swing easily as the woman wandered through the trees. She wondered at the woman’s body. She wondered at how much she could see. She worried the woman must be hungry, her belly was so small. She glanced back towards where he slept, not sure why she felt his absence. Was she wrong to speak to this strange woman without him? Why would it be wrong? She felt somewhere in her that she didn’t want him there. She wanted to have the woman to herself, at least for now. And even that was strange. She hurried to catch up.
“Are you hungry? We have food.” She offered, but the woman smiled.
“I have enough.” She watched the woman’s eyes scan over the undergrowth and distant fields as they walked. She couldn’t help but worry that the woman was judging what lay before them and was not impressed.
“We have lots of food. Any kind.” She insisted. The woman was so thin. The woman turned back to look at her and she stopped dead in her tracks. The woman’s gaze was physical again and she felt the intensity of being seen in a rush. She caught her breath.
“What about that fruit tree?” The woman nodded to the side, but didn’t break eye contact. She had to turn her head to see which fruit the woman had gestured towards.
“Oh no, not that one. That one must stay to support all the other plants, but its fruit is no good for us.” She said, feeling relieved that she could contribute something she was finally certain of to answer the woman’s strange questions. But when she turned back the woman raised an eyebrow.
“How do you know? Is it poisonous?” The woman’s mouth moved with such grace and her lips drew her eye irrevocably away from everything else.
“Not poisonous.” She said, although she was having a hard time focusing on the conversation about the incredibly uninteresting tree when such an interesting woman was barely a foot from her.
“But things that eat of that tree can’t live here. They don’t belong anymore and they have to leave.”
“Where do they go?” The woman asked so many strange questions. Why wonder where creatures went when they left? They were simply gone. But she wanted to impress this woman, she wanted the woman’s approval or smile or she wanted something from the woman so –
“Out into the desert. I think.”
“And what’s in the desert?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t like to say it, but it was true. She could name every color in the sunrise, but she didn’t know what lay beyond.
“I do.” The woman said softly. The woman lifted a hand to slide along her left arm and she felt her skin alight.
“Do you want to know what’s in the desert?” The woman asked so quietly it was almost inaudible.
“Yes.” The word escaped her in a rush, although she didn’t know if she wanted the woman to keep talking or just to keep touching her. The woman smiled and leaned forward pushing her hair back from her shoulder to whisper in her ear.
“The rest of the world.” There was energy and excitement in the words. The woman’s breath was warm on her ear and the small rush of air pushed on her as if powerful enough to blow her away. When the woman pulled away she felt a shiver run down her back. The woman took her left hand and pulled her towards the tree.
The woman made the world look as though it were made up of different colors. She had been with him for so long. For as long as she could remember she had always had him and he made her feel good and warm and safe and real. But this woman looked at her and she felt as if the world had been set ablaze. Like she had gotten too close to a fire. Too close. The woman had been too close when she had heard the whisper. It made her heart pound harder against her chest. Too close. Too much. It felt alien. It felt exciting.
“If you take the fruit, you can see the rest of the world.” The woman’s eyes shone in the early morning brilliance, sparkling like dew before her. She had so many questions, but the only thing she could think to ask was –
“How will it feel?”
The woman smiled and she felt the weight of the woman’s expression fall upon her shoulders. She realized just how much of her body the woman could see. She realized just how exactly she could feel her feet on the ground and the wind against her cheek. And she felt how warm the woman’s hand was in hers. She understood the woman’s countenance and for the first time she was afraid. But she didn’t want to run. She stepped forward. She wanted the woman to look at her, to see her, to know she was afraid and still staying here.
The woman leaned forward and pressed those flushed lips against her own. Her mouth opened to the pressure and the woman stepped forward, wrapping an arm around her back and lightly touching the back of her head. Her eyes closed as she tasted the woman and felt the pressure of the woman’s body along her own. And then the woman bit her lip and a rush of pain ran through her mouth and she tasted blood. Her entire body was on fire and she didn’t want it to stop. She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t think, but she wanted, she lusted for more. She leaned in, but as she reached out to pull the woman closer, the woman broke away.
She caught her breath and for a moment everything spun around her. Then she opened her eyes and she was standing alone beneath a fruit tree. She reached up and brushed her fingers along her bottom lip, looking down at her own blood. She felt a throbbing from the cut and looked up at the fruit. Reaching up she pulled an apple from the lowest branch.
“Hello?” His voice cut through the air and she turned too fast, cutting her heel on a small rock. Too fast. It felt strange to realize that. He stepped out from the path and walked over to her, a mild look of puzzlement playing across his face.
“What are you doing over here?” He had no idea she was holding the fruit. He had no idea her foot was bleeding. He only saw her face as it always was.
“What’s in the desert?” She asked. He looked confused.
“What do you mean the desert? You mean not here? What a strange thing to wonder. Why would you ask?”
“What is it like not here?” She pressed.
“What do you mean?”
“How does it feel?” His eyebrows wrinkled and he looked at her more intently now.
“I don’t know. Probably like it does here. Not too hot, not too cold.”
“But that’s not a feeling, that’s an absence of feeling.”
“What has you so concerned about the desert?” She looked at him for a long moment trying to understand her own feelings. Slowly, she brought her hand out from behind her back.
“Why don’t we eat it?” She asked.
“What? Because then we can’t live here. If we eat it, we have to leave.”
“Why is that bad?” She pressed. Her foot stung from the dirt below it and her breath came faster than it should be, but she wanted more.
“Because, because, because we want to be here.” He said.
“But –“
“Don’t say why!” He said sharply and she was taken aback.
“We don’t need to know why. It’s better to just be. And it’s good here. That’s all we need.”
“Is good all you want?” She asked, her voice calm and her gaze even.
“What else could I want?”
“Beautiful. Stunning. Painful.” She listed the first words that came to mind. “Alive.”
“We are alive.” He said certainly.
“No. We are living, but we’re not alive.” Seized with certainty she looked down and bit the fruit. It was sweet. And it left her fingers sticky from the juice. Looking to him, she realized how much of him she could see and she let her eyes rest on him with an intensity she had never possessed before. He took a step back and raised his hands. He looked so confused and vulnerable. She felt pity and dropped fruit coming to him softly and taking his hand. She wiped her thumb along the inside of her lip and lifted it to his face. She pushed her thumb gently against his lips and she felt him taste it.
“That’s my blood. That’s what it means to be alive.” He looked at her and through the endless depth of his eyes she could not tell what he was thinking.
“Why? Why would you do that?” He asked her and his voice was lined with panic. She leaned forward until her lips brushed along his ear.
“Because. I want to see the rest of the world.” She held herself there for a moment. Her naked body so close to his. She felt the energy and excitement of her own words. She pulled away to look him in the eyes.
“And I want you to come with me.” She held on to his hand, her eyes locked onto his.
“But it’s up to you.” She turned and picked another fruit from the tree and held it out. He took it in both his hands and looked down at it, then back up at her.
“How does it feel to be alive?” His voice was so soft it was almost lost in the wind.
She looked to the east. The sun had fully passed the horizon and glistened behind a shimmer of light. The sun though, was too bright to see. Too bright. She smiled.