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“Tell me again the story of how we met.”
My lover stroked my cheek as I leaned back against her. She was warm, in the dry, dusty way of stones in summer, and I could feel myself relax as it soaked into me. Muscled arms wrapped around me and she chuckled, the vibrations resonating in my own chest.
“Will you never be tired of hearing this story, my own beloved?”
“Never,” I declared contentedly.
“Very well.” Her fingers began the slow, careful process of unraveling the complicated mass of loops and braids of my long hair. I sighed with happiness. If she was unbinding and rebraiding my hair for me, she was not expecting us to move for many hours.
“We met in summer, high in the mountains. The sun was hot in the sky, baking the rocks that bordered every lake and pool for miles and miles. The lizards and snakes were basking in that delicious fire, while the birds were too sleepy to sing. All the air was thick with the scent of pine needles and dry grass and cracked earth beneath our feet.”
I trailed my fingers happily up and down her thigh as she told me our story. I remembered every detail just as she described it; it pleased me that it was carved into her memory as deeply as it was in mine.
“No-one lived in those mountains.”
“No-one but you, of course.”
I could feel her smile above me. “No-one but me, of course, my own beloved. Now hush, and listen. It was a stark place, lonely, empty but for the pines and the grasses and the birds and the crawling things. I loved the solace of it. And then into that emptiness a strange sound - footsteps, and a woman’s weeping.”
I shivered closer to her then. It was the part of the story that still hurt me after all this time. Her fingers soothed my neck and throat, offering silent comfort before returning to my hair.
“Women came sometimes to the mountains. They knew that men were unwelcome there, knew that there was a protector who would keep them safe as long as they needed the sanctuary of the pines. Some came and left again the next morning, having proven to themselves they could leave if they needed to. Some came and stayed only long enough to deliver the children they could not raise, their words offering them to the gods but knowing in their hearts that I would be the one to take them in. Some came and never left, and their bones remain at the bottom of the cliff.”
A moment of silence then, as we both mourned the women who could not bear the burdens inflicted on them.
“And then you, my own beloved. You were weeping the day we met, like so many of the others, but it was not with loss or hurt. It was the anger of betrayal and the confusion of being lost and unable to find your way. Your kinsman had led you to the base of the mountain and left you there. He had no right to do it. And so I found you, wandering, unable to find the one who had abandoned you and unable to find your way home.”
“You gave me a home.”
“I gave you my hand first,” she corrected. “I said, ‘Come, little sister, tell me where you would go and I will show you the way.’ And you told me then that you could not see the road in front of you, even if you were led to it. I saw the truth of what you said. Your eyes were beautiful, wine-dark seas, but barren, like a rockpool that has been emptied of fish. I knew without being told that this was the reason your kinsman had led you to my mountain. You were the child he had no right to abandon.”
“I was a woman grown, my dearest.”
“No-one who has been abandoned by their protectors is anything but a child inside their deepest places, my own beloved.”
I bowed my head, acknowledging the truth of what she said.
“I asked you if you would stay the night in my home. You laughed at me, my own beloved, because it is always night in your world. Always dark. But you knew the sun was setting because the breeze blew colder and you asked for the favour of shelter for the night. It was no favour, but you could not have known that then.”
“You took my hand and led me here.”
“Not here, my own beloved. Not into our sanctum.”
“But into the cave.”
“Yes. I guided you to the fire and brought you water to wash the dust from your feet. You made a libation to the gods before you soothed yourself. I watched you, treasuring the rare experience of company with whom I could simply be. You unwound the linen cloth that covered your hair and stretched out your hands to the fire. It was beautiful to watch you.”
I blushed. There were so many who had told me that my blindness made me ugly that I still doubted myself. Never her, though. I could hear the truth in her voice when she told me how she loved my beauty.
“I wrapped meat and grain in vine leaves and fed them to you that night. My fingers were dripping with olive oil and so was your chin. I wiped it away for you and licked the flavour of your skin off my thumb, indulging my longing since you could not see me doing so.”
“I heard the change in your breath, my dearest, though I did not know why it changed.”
“We spoke for hours of so many things, spoke until the fire had burned low. I had expected a broken woman, but I found a brilliant one instead, one who had so many things to say. I thought that she might be a fitting companion, someone to help fill my hours with conversation. I thought perhaps I could offer her a home in which she would be welcomed and cherished.”
I smiled myself then. I knew that my lover had always wanted me, but I never tired of hearing her say it.
“That night I shared my bed with you. It was a simple pile of sheepskins on the floor of the cave, but it was all I had to offer you in the way of comfort. You wept in the night and I held you tight against me until you finally slept, exhausted by your grief. In the morning I brought you bread and honey and fed it to you. You licked the sweetness from my fingers hungrily and I could not stop myself from kissing you.”
I reached up to take her hand from my hair and kissed it gently before letting her go back to her braiding.
“You kissed me back, my own beloved. I held your hands in mine as we tasted each other, as the salt of your tears turned into the salt of your sweat and your passion. You tasted like the sea and I wanted to drown in you.”
“I wanted to touch you and I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t let me.”
“I was afraid.”
“You were, my dearest. I could feel your trembling when I kissed your face, whenever my lips moved towards your cheeks.”
“The hours turned to days, turned to weeks. And I was still afraid. And you still stayed with me.”
“You needed me, my dearest.”
“Back then I still told myself that it was you who needed me, my own beloved.”
“You spent all of your days making a sanctuary where women did not have to be afraid; I could not understand what it was that you feared so badly yourself. You were the strongest person I had ever met.”
“I feared your disgust, my own beloved.”
“I know, my dearest. But you have never disgusted me.”
“One morning in winter I awoke and you were not beside me. I had not felt you rise, for I sleep deeper in the cold.”
“It is in your nature to become torpid in the winter. You have ever been a creature of the sunshine.”
“You were stroking my hair.”
“You froze. Your hair did not. It twined around my hand like a cat begging for a treat.”
“‘You must think I am a monster,’ I said to you.”
“‘I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world,’ I told you.
The fire crackled in the hearth beside us as she tied the last thread in the coronet of my hair.
“I am yours, my own beloved.”
“And I love you, my dearest.”