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The grass is soft against her palm, brushing her skin as lightly as a feather, tingles waking her nerves as green strands tickle her flesh. Her hand stops her path on the patch of grenness, fingers plucking a daisy which lays on the ground, petals open to bask in the sweet light of the sun. Melina touches the yellow center with the tip of her finger, rubbing the pollen there absentmindedly. The small numbs feel warm against her skin, as if the flower drank the heat of the sun all day long and relented her prize to Melina at this moment, which is technically what happened.
The lingering heat, small as it is, makes her smile. Melina always had cold hands, ever since childhood. It worsened when she fell ill, though it was far from the only aspect of her body that was irreversibly changed by her condition.
Her hands were always cold. No matter how far the heater was pushed in the room, or how many gloves and heat pads she wrapped around her, the tips of her fingers perpetually hard and numb, reluctant to gather in any warmth at all. It was painful to move them, the pinprick sensation tearing her skin from the inside and sapping the few precious resources of energy she had left. It felt like his skin had bruised there, the flesh numb and swollen by the cold ; in her troubled sleep, Melina saw the skin split at her smallest movement, the wounds gushing red blood that froze and stuck to her fingers, the pain so vivid it woke her up each time. The cold seeped into her bones, lying there like stagnant water. Her limbs were perpetually clumsy as she struggled to close her hands, the fingers as stiff as steel bars, her finger nails a pale blue that always disgusted her, the same color as gray snow, the sole look of them freezing her to the core.
Melina has always had cold hands, and that was still true, with one notable exception : when Janice was holding them in her own. Melina takes the flower and tucks it into Janice’s braid, sneaking up to her as she rummages through the basket in front of her.
“What are you thinking about ?” Janice asks her, retrieving the silverware she was searching for from the depth of the wooden basket. It clunks in her hand as she lays it down on the sheet, her hand returning inside once again.
“Nothing thrilling, I’m afraid” she answers, placing a soft kiss on the uncovered neck in front of her. It tears a giggle from Janice, as busy as she keeps herself, arranging their furniture and balancing them on the uneven ground. Some times ago, Melina would have refrained from kissing her wife like that : her lips were cold as well, always chapped like broken porcelain. Janice never minded, but again Janice didn’t mind anything when it came to Melina. “I was just enjoying the sun and the imminent prospect of this picnic we have here”.
“That’s a bit uncautious, now that I think about it. We’re only in May, what if you catch a cold ?” Janice says, looking at the sky with worry tainting her face.
Melina doesn’t want to ever see this look on Janice’s face, not when she saw it everyday for months already. Her sickness is behind them, but the shadow of it still floats all around them. It’s in Janice’s eyes when Melina coughs a bit too long, in her father’s nervous gestures when she’s uncharacteristically out of breath. It looms over her when the weather cools down and the old weakness gets a renewed grip on her bones. But she refuses to let the sickness enter her mind, let alone her wife’s, today.
“The only danger I’m exposed to is melting away like a snowman” she huffs in a falsely grumpy tone, the small smile stretching her lips showing she’s joking. She tugs at the small scarf wrapped around her neck, knitted by Janice some months before. Janice laughs at that, her worries melting away.
She smiles at her, leaning down to lend her a kiss. Janice’s lips are warm, sweet as honey against her own. Melina leans back, laying down against the sheet they placed on the grass. She looks up at the blue sky, blinking at the strong light. She always hated white light, so heavily associated with hospitals and sharp needles ; but here, the yellow glow is anything but painful, the sun rays shining on Janice’s wedding band as she smoothes the sheet down before putting an assortment of plates on it.
Her eyes close, her body falling to sleep lulled by Janice's soft voice, the summer weather warming her skin. In the face of the sun, it's like she never even knew winter before.