How would you feel if you had some grungey, knock-kneed youth bending over you, administering to you, paying your vigil for hours on end, as it rained and cars drove by, unawares, splashing you both with refuse?

How would you feel if this took your hand into hers and on a hazy, muddy afternoon, now that you are feeling revitalised, she walks with you along an old track, by forgotten paper mills and cotton fields?


And how would you feel if she whispered in your ear, four words that are at once familiar as they be confusing. An unshakeable knowing that you have to start today. Or tomorrow. Or forget it, and grow curiouser and curiouser, as the years knot you in their threads, like the branches of so many old trees, a curtain to the hills.

Rosanna, that is her name. Is it really her name, or plucked from the air, like a petal snagged from a flower.

The honey in her is restlessness. She is awake. Her grave of snow and velvet at the hands of criminals forgot.


She sits crossed legged, closed of eye, with a meditative smile on her lips, and through the leaves, like sunshine, comes the pitter patter of words in whisper. Or is that from between her lips.


Little woman, the Kingdom has not forgotten her, nor the strangers whom she has touched with a hand godless and yet so holy.

Long branches scraped at the glass of her bedroom (river place of calm and of dreams), like wooden fingers asking her to rise. "Come on sleepyhead, fend not for your dreams, but for footprints, fingerprints, chase the winter out of all nests"

Thea awoke with a start, wiping perspiration gathered at her brow, her throat and palms clammy with night-time restlessness. She stared out at the window from her sheets, alone that night in her apartment, the warmth of Anastas' body( a flavour away, gentle, tall presence somewhere in the night) and she rose, crossed to the glass and stared outside at the snow.

It didn't stop, it fell sometimes lighter than others, often heavier at night as if the sky was less shy in deep purple, and no matter its rain she loved to watch it. It was so peaceful.


Her body cruised about the room, footsteps quiet on carpet, as she rubbed her hands together, her body awakening to the temperature. Above her the ceiling peeled and somewhere in one of the dark coridors flickered a lamp, and the keys on her piano were lonely and her sheets in that big, empty bed were unwelcome. She pulled on her leather jacket, fluffy houseboots and walked onto the street, to gather snowflakes in her hair, to wake up some more, or just to tread because she was contemplative and maybe just a bit lonely, too.


She had not been a soul and still was not, who lingered on questions and uncertainties, she acted with boldness, no matter the outcome, she liked deliverance and could not stand to hear heartbeats or the flickering of lamps the soundless keys of her piano or the gentle catch of the hands of a clock. She liked the details, but only in writing, in looking on from, not in being so alone and so aware of her fragillity.

And for the first time since her attack, Thea allowed herself to tremble, to cry out, however weakly, and crouch to her knees. She held herself tight and breathed in with a pinch of her nose, won't to make a sound, to whimper, to hear her own feeble mutterings. There was worse and she was better than she knew often, and however much she was resigned to show this, to let it out, she cared not for holding onto pain much longer. Pulling herself up by way of a lean into her door, she pressed her forehead into the metal and shook, her frame scrawnier and milder than during the day, all bravado and straight spine and here, here! There, the poet had no words, was empty as the inkless pen, and only tattered, beaten memories lunged across her face, tangled in her eyes, and she forced herself to let it all out, to stand there, and be human.

Even if she was a little more, and so often a little less, so full on her convictions and self authority, she was still just a young woman, with a bloody reminder that surfaced at the least likely hours. That night she had not yet forgiven for stealing so much of her life. Yes, there was danger, danger only in failing to remember, in not fighting for her own story. The most cherished one of all..

Masha stood at the foot of her shared bed with Anastas, buttoning up her high collared, lace fringed, charcoal dark blouse. The bed was empty, Anka long since gone with the business of his day, and there was just her and the moody light of a cosy room in a big, empty house.

Walking through the corridors every morning, back and forth through the large rooms, readying herself, doing what she had to before leaving, was something a ritual. Her bare feet a whisper across floorboards and stone as she snuck out the back door to water the roses that lined part of the back fence. Sometimes she would stop and smile, as she watered, in a semi-disbelief that this was something she shared with someone else. It was remarkable, foreign, and lovely. Anka had enchanted her with his promise, and the more she stayed here the more she felt alive in a softer sense.

In essence, Masha was evolving. No longer a capricious youth but a woman. She took care in how she dressed, how she presented herself, her manner, her dignity. The building blocks to becoming a better person, a better woman.

These were efforts made she knew, in part, because she was in love, and without Him she was lost. She would have remained the same discontent, lonely writer, not daring to go out ona branch to get to the fruit she desired. But it was too the tide of time, washing over her. On her visits at the beach, in her time away from the Inn, she had found herself. It was a profound, obscure clarity she had gained.


But away from her beloved shore there was the expanse of a house, and a heart, and it was there that all her flaws, all she had ever done right, was magnified.

Sitting down on the stone bench out back, she placed the watering can at her feet and looked around the yard. It was time to be strong, to forget what had happened to her, for good, and enjoy the bounty of all he offered, and all they could give together.