From These Ashes
15 March 2010
"Woman! Are you coming to bed, or do I have to come back out there and drag you in here?" Harry's voice called to her from their bedroom, and though she couldn't see him, Maia knew the smile that was on his lips. Playful. Comfortable. Perhaps even tinged with the delicious splash of his desire for her. The woman loved that after years of living and working closely together, that the man still looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time. She loved a lot of things about him.
"Keep your shirt on, Lowe, I'm just finishing up," she called from the study. Truth be told, Maia had finished working in her journal nearly an hour before. What had demanded her attention was something else entirely. Once the ink was dry, she folded it carefully and slipped it into the envelope she had marked with an H.
Maia turned out the lights in their flat, checking the locks and windows as she moved through their apartment to join the man who was already warming their bed. She couldn't wait to crawl in with him, feel the tangle of their arms around one another, and whisper until they were both asleep. She couldn't wait to find out if he had, indeed, kept his shirt on.
The letter was left in an envelope on the table near the hearth, where Harry and Maia frequently sat. Under the envelope was a small, flat box. There was no real adornment to speak of on either, but it wasn't the sort of occasion that begged adornment. Still, the woman of water felt a need beyond her understanding to express something, and that something would sit on the table and wait for him to find it, in the morning.
Inside the envelope, he would surely know her messy scrawl the minute he clamped those dark, soulful eyes upon it.
15 March 2010
My Harry,
I never know what to say to you when the Ides of March come again. I can tell you a thousand times that I am grateful. Grateful for the very notion of you. Grateful for your presence in my life. Grateful for every inch and every minute of the life we share now, but in the end, they are all just words and they will always fall short.
They will fail, but I will try anyhow.
I need for you to understand, in no uncertain terms, that you are the single most precious thing in my world. Without you, I survive. I fight and I hunt, I command and I serve. Without you, I would carry on just as I did. But with you, Harry...with you I live. I am alive. When I am with you, I am not the captain, or the hunter or the flood. With you, I am just a woman. With you, I don't have to be anything else, and you cannot know what a gift that is.
When I came to know you that awful September years ago, you were the only person I had met who really knew what it was to look into a mirror and see the worst looking back. I felt, then, that I was trying to crawl out of a grave and find the morning. To my eyes, you were what I could hope to be. You were a phoenix, rising from the very ashes that had consumed you. You were vital and beautiful, stronger because of the very fire that destroyed you. These days, I remember that man, but look on the one before me, breathless and amazed. Every day, you are more beautiful.
In my hope that you will never forget how you look to these eyes, I have enclosed a small token. I hate how empty it sounds to tell you that I am glad you are still here, but it is the truth of it. I can only hope that I continue to bring you the joy and peace that you bring me. No man deserves it more. I love you with every shadowed corner of my soul, and every starlit haunt of my beating heart.
Entirely Yours,
Maia
Inside of the little box was a silver coin. On one side, the date was engraved in clean, unambitious lines: 15 March 2010. On the other there was stamped an elegant engraving of a phoenix.
15 March 2010
"Woman! Are you coming to bed, or do I have to come back out there and drag you in here?" Harry's voice called to her from their bedroom, and though she couldn't see him, Maia knew the smile that was on his lips. Playful. Comfortable. Perhaps even tinged with the delicious splash of his desire for her. The woman loved that after years of living and working closely together, that the man still looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time. She loved a lot of things about him.
"Keep your shirt on, Lowe, I'm just finishing up," she called from the study. Truth be told, Maia had finished working in her journal nearly an hour before. What had demanded her attention was something else entirely. Once the ink was dry, she folded it carefully and slipped it into the envelope she had marked with an H.
Maia turned out the lights in their flat, checking the locks and windows as she moved through their apartment to join the man who was already warming their bed. She couldn't wait to crawl in with him, feel the tangle of their arms around one another, and whisper until they were both asleep. She couldn't wait to find out if he had, indeed, kept his shirt on.
The letter was left in an envelope on the table near the hearth, where Harry and Maia frequently sat. Under the envelope was a small, flat box. There was no real adornment to speak of on either, but it wasn't the sort of occasion that begged adornment. Still, the woman of water felt a need beyond her understanding to express something, and that something would sit on the table and wait for him to find it, in the morning.
Inside the envelope, he would surely know her messy scrawl the minute he clamped those dark, soulful eyes upon it.
15 March 2010
My Harry,
I never know what to say to you when the Ides of March come again. I can tell you a thousand times that I am grateful. Grateful for the very notion of you. Grateful for your presence in my life. Grateful for every inch and every minute of the life we share now, but in the end, they are all just words and they will always fall short.
They will fail, but I will try anyhow.
I need for you to understand, in no uncertain terms, that you are the single most precious thing in my world. Without you, I survive. I fight and I hunt, I command and I serve. Without you, I would carry on just as I did. But with you, Harry...with you I live. I am alive. When I am with you, I am not the captain, or the hunter or the flood. With you, I am just a woman. With you, I don't have to be anything else, and you cannot know what a gift that is.
When I came to know you that awful September years ago, you were the only person I had met who really knew what it was to look into a mirror and see the worst looking back. I felt, then, that I was trying to crawl out of a grave and find the morning. To my eyes, you were what I could hope to be. You were a phoenix, rising from the very ashes that had consumed you. You were vital and beautiful, stronger because of the very fire that destroyed you. These days, I remember that man, but look on the one before me, breathless and amazed. Every day, you are more beautiful.
In my hope that you will never forget how you look to these eyes, I have enclosed a small token. I hate how empty it sounds to tell you that I am glad you are still here, but it is the truth of it. I can only hope that I continue to bring you the joy and peace that you bring me. No man deserves it more. I love you with every shadowed corner of my soul, and every starlit haunt of my beating heart.
Entirely Yours,
Maia
Inside of the little box was a silver coin. On one side, the date was engraved in clean, unambitious lines: 15 March 2010. On the other there was stamped an elegant engraving of a phoenix.