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If there was anything Harvey could say about his love for Imogen, it was that he never grew tired of finding rocks. There were rocks in her purse, pockets, and backpack. There were rocks on the shelves and rocks in the bathroom. Rocks in her boots, rocks stacked near the pond out back, rocks on the porch and buried in the couch cushions. Their stony countenances seemed to greet him kindly from every nook and cranny, in every lithe space imaginable. Some were there because they were pretty to look at, some were there as memories of places she’d been or wanted to go. Some were gifts given by friends and family, or were gifts from the crows that she left shiny offerings for.
He had asked her, once, why she had so many rocks—why she needed them, why she seemed to thrive off of their presence.
She had simply given him a freckled, idyllic smile that simultaneously comforted him and sent a tremor up his spine, before handing him a rock from her pocket. It was small but seemed so sure of itself. Its dark colors swirled like storm clouds and just looking at it stranded him in dazed hypnosis.
Imogen wrapped her delicate, blistered fingers, around his soft, scoured knuckles and set his hand in an open fist around the stone.
“Close your eyes.”
He hadn’t seen her mouth move, yet the words were spoken. It was as if the wind had taken the soft vowels from those pliable pleasure traps she called lips and set them careening against his ears, just for him to hear. Just for him to listen.
The wind didn’t have to tell him twice for him to acquiesce.
“You’re on a mountaintop,” the wind grew closer, her petals of rose pressing a soft kiss to his earlobe.
He was on a mountaintop. He could feel the stinging chill of the altitude, the wind whipping through his short, wavy curls. He could feel the gravity weighing him down slightly less, the one knee that gave him problems suddenly loosening.
“So is the rock.”
The small stone between his fingers suddenly felt like it was the weight of the entire planet, settling between his unworthy healer’s thumb and his ring finger with ease. It was the wind who had moved his fingers this way. He could still feel her lingering touch, her sunny Tuesday of July smile warm against his unkempt cheek.
“You are the rock.”
And fuck, he was. He could feel the millennia of gravel and sand settle unevenly between his bones. He could feel the pull and ache of the mountain as it struggled to keep its height from relenting torrents of rainstorms and snowmelt. He could feel the life he both fortified and antagonized, the world surviving from his lousy, broken hand. He felt the weight of himself settling beneath the liminal arcs of his shoulder blades.
The siren wind’s lips called him forward until his own were wound tightly around her perfectly curved features, and he couldn’t recall never knowing how the world was pieced together. He couldn’t remember why he hadn’t found home until this very moment.
His verdant, forested eyes flashed open to find her, but her honeyed irises were closed to his torture—to the chasm of his tears. The freckles, smeared across her cheeks in constellations, spoke instead. They wove stories of battles and lives lived long ago. They told him how they came to be, two figures wild and ungovernable merging beneath a weeping willow tree. The deftly crafted wind’s hands roved over his stone-settled body and stole his breath as petals blossomed fully to flower. And when those weeping willowed caramel eyes opened to find his, he couldn’t move for fear that he’d lose all of his earthly meaning. But with the flash of her bright, blinding smile, cushioned under the curve of cherry-stained lips, he was reminded: he’d always be able to find his purpose in her eyes.
“Do you understand it now?” Imogen whispered, pressing a velvety kiss to his healed knuckles.
He ran a finger across her starry cheek, tucking a wayward strand of those wily auburn locks he loved so dearly behind the curve of her ear. His fingers tightened around the stone as he breathed life into her lips. “Can this one be mine?”
The sharp melody of her laugh startled him. “It already is.”