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The sand feels soft and warm as she presses her palm down with the wariness of a newborn deer. She grabs a handful, it’s hot to the touch and the small grains get under her short nails, get stuck in the blood there. It would take a few seconds to get it all out, but the mere thought of putting her wound covered hands in the salty water makes her wince. She pushes her fingers deeper into the sand instead.
“Show me.”
She closes her eyes. The honey-voiced girl sits next to her, too close to be reasonable on this summer day, but she doesn’t mind the warmth of her body tickling her side, or the melting hold curling around her wrist. She doesn’t mind if it’s Bronya.
“It’s fine. Nothing I won’t survive,” she says, playing with the way sand flows through her fingers.
Her gaze is fixed on her knees, both reminding her of the journey they’ve been on so far – a portrait of oily blues and yellows and purples, smudged across her bones. She’d like it more if it was Bronya painting on her with watercolor touches, all flushed red and rose pink, up her chest and the thin skin of her cheeks. Her body is a canvas only Bronya is allowed to mark with brushstrokes, with whatever tint she chooses to use.
“Seele,” there are butterfly touches along her arm, down until they connect under the blanket of sand, “please. I’ll help, how about that?”
Seele takes a deep breath. The breezy air doesn’t carry the usual heaviness of danger, the tension of each unknown step doesn’t find home in her guts and for the first time in a long time she wants to let go and not feel like if she blinks, the world will collapse under her or if she keeps her eyes closed, the void behind her eyelashes turns into reality.
She turns her head to Bronya, and with a low, embarrassed voice she muffles, “But it stings.”
Bronya’s laugh is better than anything she’s ever heard before – songs that catch a fragment of how she feels about her might be a close second with whispers only her ears are privileged to hear under the stars, but the pearl-shiny chimes could save this entire world. They saved hers, at least.
“You’ve felt worse I reckon, love,” she giggles. She starts sweeping the dusty soil off her to grab her, and she lets herself be pulled up to her feet because there’s nothing Bronya could do that she’d meet with objection. Her eyes sparkle in the most beautiful shade of gray when their gaze locks and Seele feels her fizzy glow light a fire in the tip of her fingertips. “Come on!”
There’s no reason to run this time, yet they do anyway. Seele doesn’t spend unnecessary seconds on wondering whether it’s because they want to, or because that’s all they know how to do, perfectly, like they were wired to have the world spin under their feet.
The cold waves they created twirl around her ankles, surprisingly cold and clear. Bronya leads her forward – her knees buckle under the numbing pressure of not knowing where she steps as she keeps going, sending a chilly shiver down her spine. Bronya’s mellowy touch is right there to keep her steady.
“I’ll put your hand in the water now, okay?” she warns her gently, lowering their joint hands just enough that the sea touches her skin. When she nods, Bronya pushes it deep down.
The salt bites into her flesh where the wound is open, covered in dried blood that she couldn’t scrape off with her nails, and a small hiss escapes her mouth as the skin stretches painfully on the back of her hand. Bronya takes it in her own and starts cleaning it up with the hem of her loose shirt, tender and caring with her movements. Once she’s done, she lifts it out of the water and places her lips on her knuckles, still dripping with water. There’s an unmistakable pull in her stomach, drenched in a want so sharp she feels her limbs tremble.
Kissing Bronya is terrifying. Having her lips on hers is like having a loaded gun ready to fire in her clutch. Letting her touch map the walls of a maze on her body is even more frightening.
But the taste of salt on her tongue is addicting and she’s never been good with holding herself back. Seele knows a lot about surviving, yet she dies each time she’s in Bronya’s hold, turning into some doll she can mold to her liking. Her lips are fatally velvetlike, smooth like a papercut, and she wishes it’d draw blood so there’d be a tangible explanation for the raw hunger rotting the roots of her teeth. Nothing about her is from this world, and Seele couldn’t put her devotion to Bronya into words even if she tried. Her feelings for her couldn’t be phrased in a way that wouldn’t break through the definition of love – saying it is nowhere near what consumes her entirely when she looks at her.
A kiss is the closest she can get to her; she could hear their bones knock against each other and it still wouldn’t be close enough.
Sometimes, when everyone’s asleep, Seele feels Bronya’s arms around her tighten in the dead of the night. Sometimes she carves promises into her skin in the form of hushed always and forever . Sometimes she combs her hair with her fingers, even though they both know it’ll get ugly with dirt and sins, but she says it’s nice and soft, even when it’s sticky with someone else’s crimson red blood. Sometimes she’ll kiss her and whispers there’s going to be a morning tomorrow to get her to sleep and sometimes Seele pretends it calms her enough to close her eyes.
Salt in the wound is the least pain she’s ever felt, but it’s the one that leaves a trail of tears running down her cheeks. And Bronya is there to wipe them away, because she’s always there, and will be there forever.
By the sea the night is chilly, yellow plants moving softly in the breeze in patches around the beach. Hundreds and thousands of stars and planets are lighting up the clear sky, away from big cities and other places they are avoiding for now – for now, Bronya’s hand in hers is enough.
With their backs on the ground Bronya looks up, and Seele at her. The sand is still warm, gets in their clothes and hair and in the way of kissing Bronya, but she doesn’t mind because she might be the sun, but she’s even more beautiful under the moon’s silky blue light. Each time Seele looks at her she feels like drowning – breathless, and the only way to get to the surface is to keep gasping for breath underwater.
Bronya is still eyeing the sky up above when she opens her mouth. “Do you know what I did when I was really young?”
There’s no need for Seele to say anything. Bronya rarely talks voluntarily about her childhood and everything that happened growing up in a house full of people who would look right through her like she was made of glass, transparent and fragile. The only time she mattered was when the name Rand came in handy. That name shook mountains but couldn’t be steady enough for Bronya.
So Seele listens, quietly, with her breath held back, too afraid to move even a grain of sand.
“I used to sneak out to watch the stars,” she continues. Her eyes sparkle as she speaks and a soft smile tugs at the corner of her lips at the sight. “I wasn’t allowed out alone, especially not in the nighttime, but I found a way to climb on our roof without anyone noticing. It was dangerous, but I just learned about constellations and the legends behind them and I wanted to search for them in the sky. I spent so much of my nights looking at constellations I started to make up my own. I had stories for them, and everything. I even had a notebook where I had them all in order.”
She can’t stop herself from interrupting. It comes out almost inaudible but – Seele isn’t the only one listening. “Do you remember them?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It was a long time ago,” she says, finally turning her head to face her. The desire to touch Bronya – anywhere, everywhere – overrides any sane thought in her mind, already reaching to take her face in her palm. Seele knows her hands are rough and dry, dirty with salt and sand and there is probably more blood attached to it than soft touches, but she leans into it like she doesn’t know that’s a place for a weapon.
“We can just make up our own, if you’d like.”
And Bronya smiles at her like f orever, and kisses her like always . There’s not a second in the universe that she wouldn’t spend with her. Broya says something to her lips, calm and hushed, but she doesn’t hear it, can’t hear it, because the drums of her ears only echo forever and always and she already knows that a constellation lighting up her life is called Bronya Rand.