The Deafening Silence of a Wild Thing
She slid through the water like a wraith, silent and staring into the rain. In the calm of moments between water droplets cascading down her face, her eyes met mine, and the world around me stopped.
Rain hung suspended in the air, light enough to push to the side. I swung my head around slowly, watching, waiting as the world hung on a single, baited breath. Beneath the gloom of the clouded sky, the canyon was the murky darkness of an overcast mind.
I took a breath, a deep one, and the raindrops near my mouth quivered where they had stopped in the air. I let the air flow from my lungs, pushing one, silver raindrop towards her. She caught it on her tongue, her eyes caressing the canyon around us, her gaze touching my face with wry intensity.
The pool beneath the waterfall barely rippled as she passed through it, silent and deadly and overwhelming. Her body was sheathed in white, the hem of her dress tinted green as it floated eerily up her thighs.
As she floated in the water, it drifted behind her, like a familiar in love with the shape of her mistress. In love with the shape of the wild.
I ran a hand through my wet hair, the touch of my own cool flesh shaking me from my reverie. Like a Fae in the woods she had lulled my thoughts to sleep, opened my mind to the sensual intensity of this dark and silent world. I was captivated by the touch of her eyes, the water slipping across her skin, the gentle movements of her body.
It was but the barest of moments, but I saw the shape of the wild, felt the longing of lost things waiting to be found, heard the distant call of a bird on the wing, flying high over the mountains in an eerie sky.
All around me was the cool touch of water against my skin, all around me was the deafening silence of a wild thing.
She spun in the water, raindrops clinging to her hair like liquid crystals. In the moment between moments there was no other place to be. In a moment to end all moments, I knew what I was.
Her dress floated around her, twisting in the water like a living thing, drawing my eyes from the cool pale of her flesh to its moving shape.
She smiled up at me, a ghost of a smile, the barest trace of pleasure upon those lips, then she tilted her head back and her lips parted.
She took the barest of breaths, like the deadly still of the wild waiting for a storm, or the sharp intake of breath before pure ecstasy.
Then, time resumed once more and the rain fell heavy and loud upon the world.