“He no longer beheld the night…It seemed to him that he felt those wings that we all have within us, unfolding…”
Temperature fell, then storm arrived: slanting snows and billows of wind that broke in burst against wall and windows, scratch of snow soft in after-settling. Inside, they held to the warmth of one another before hearth of strong-kept fire, corners of the room lit in candles where fire failed to touch, dance of wick light illuminating and soft-warming recesses, lines, and accents hidden from fire’s reach.
In fire’s light they held until falling into dreams over blanket, still in hold, as energy from hearth colored bodies and scene; light and heat soft singeing eyes, face, and open skin left free to radiant flame.
When morning came, the hearth was only embers, gray ash and heart of keeping heat concealed and hidden within. He rose and began again, stoking and feeding the heart, breathing into the embers until flame took again, and he tended with attention until fire restored to full.
Fire, light, and heat again, he returned to her and, like the hearth, breathed life into her embers and restored her full to flame.
After, they rose as dawn revealed. Sky remained in gray, winter world through snow framed window marked in drifts and wind sculpted snow accents before and aft every object and structure that changed the current of night’s strong winds.
In the warmth of room, she prepared then poured fresh-brewed coffee, its heat and warmth effect becoming layer and accent in effect and energy of scene. Warm on face and within, she gazed upon her skin, dapple of freckles like shadow snowfall frozen in decent and spread before backdrop of snow-white sky that, through shadow fall and backdrop, rosed in affected warmth as a dawn, should sun, right then, have penetrated through winter’s sky. Sun stayed hidden, but she discerned a dawn and glow.
She held to her coffee in mug as she studied him across in room. He read with open journal beside, pen upon opened page, ready to write should inspiration read or sign from separate source—external or of something within.
She studied the book, its voluminous pages, gold-leafed paper bound in red leather binding with stamped cover face. It was a book that would seem an act, if she did not plainly see his focus, the way he stopped to mark and underline passages that affected in way he dreamed, one day, to emulate in his own way and telling, real or imagined, of dreams and destinies.
She watched as he read, pausing and marking what seemed in places full pages on end; drinking quiet from her coffee, absorbed in its and her own keeping warmth.
“Good book?” she asked.
He smiled, focus breaking as her voice and question returned him back from immersion. “It’s the greatest romance I’ve ever read,” he answered.
“What makes it so?”
He thought, seeking words before providing answer, but the words did not appear. She sensed a blushing that did not show through sun and wind-burnt face, but there remained sign of vulnerability in desire to answer what, never before, was asked and wanted learned by another.
“You just have to read it…” he responded in voice meekened in musings. “Everyone has stories that speak to them greater than others. This one speaks to me.”
“What is it that resonates?” she questioned further.
His meekness grew, vulnerability—like blush—from soul-depths rising into shallows to be seen.
“All of it,” he answered. “…A bad man changed through a single kind and merciful act; the soul-quake and paradigm shift as world and life changes; how small acts of seeming chance—both good and bad to first-appearance—may, in life, align and afford manifestation to many destinies; God as spirit and invisible hand that guides, should we trust and dare to follow what we do not know and cannot explain; soul-love of Destiny that is and can only be for One, sensed and known with every fiber of a being when presented and appearing into lives of each other; alignment of God’s infinite intertwined intentions that, lived, become a romance of realized destiny…all of it…”
He laughed after, seeking lightness in dismissal, nervous and believing he failed to explain what he had never thought, nor tried, to define in words; for the language of spirit speaks without.
She thought on his answer, listening to his silences as much as to his words; language of spirit intertwined into the spoken.
She wondered, then asked, “And what is romance to you?”
His eyes moved to the fire as, in the sky, sun burned through the gray as illumination point magnified and scattered through lens of window into room.
He searched again for words, this time finding.
“Romance is the discover-discernment to something in us through recognition and witness to its resonant presence in and from another.”
He rose and placed another piece of wood into the fire, shifting those already lit as embers sparked and rose in the draft of flame. Across the room, light transfigured in scatter gold of appearing sun that warmed and lit her sense in skin as words struck resonance within.
There are no words for the sense, only awareness when it lives; and she held in a silence, soul speaking through peace as ever luminous as golden flame through veil of gray.
Neither spoke. There was no need.
He returned the book as she stayed in her thoughts. How long it held, she could never say. She lost herself; absorbed and immersed in something above sense as body, mind, and spirit held in luminous warmth: romance, appeared, in heart of winter.
“Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.”—Victor Hugo, Les Miserables