There were days when the greater stories would not write, and when such was, he wrote the ones that would.
So it happened—at libraries and bookstores, coffee shops and street sides—as Annie read or rested near to him when she would feel an energy shift: energy of eyes and attention in sudden fix to her. Her own eyes then rose from book, coffee, idle gaze or thought that drew her spirit distant, before suddenly returned, and she found his thoughts on her.
Knowing her full possession of eyes and his attention, a blue flame lit like pilot light waiting for catch and full of take. With eyes and else, he studied, noting features and ways of being she, herself, could never see until he wrote them true.
Waiting, she would return to her book, coffee, or after-pretended thought; feinted disinterest as she held in eagerness to learn and read his making.
After witnessing and observing, noting subtleties of living details, he wrote: an exercise of thought and spirit-letting that flowed with ease and speed from mind to page; and when it finished, he would rise from his place with smile, deliver and leave it upon lap or near beside to read.
Always, she did, right then and there and, always, it had effect. She would read, and doing so, she sensed the details that he found: straight fall or wave in hair depending on the day, movements in the wind both cool and warm that disrupted settled still; energy, hue, and way of eyes when staring indifferent or in focus-told intent; change in body’s blush, begin of expression near heart over open spread of upper chest, hue’s after-rise and coloring of neck and then to face, heat and flush-effect of blush’s rise and holding stay. He wrote the sense of her skin, its cool in first-touched and way it quickly changed; movements of acceptance—both slow and fast—of ways they became and hold and peace of resting after.
When story ended, Annie’s eyes searched upward from page to find his own smiling back, entertained, as he witnessed beginning living precise as story wrote: asking eyes; flutter and race of heart—first-sense warmth expanded into flame; fed and kindled in words and thoughts and after-wants—as rose-blush told in tempered flush upon her open skin.
Reading eyes and his expression, Annie’s lips—straight and soft-opened sight and trace of teeth—next, curled upward into spread growth of smile. Stares keeping, eyes conversed: asking, affirming, telling unspoken understoods.
Annie rose, taking firm hold of his hand, and together they departed making straight for home, for solitude and room, where with spirit—door closed fast and strong behind—they made the stories true.