Eyes Familiar (prose)

It was in the dark morning before the dawn, in that timelessness of long ago where life and light, death and darkness were stirred into a perpetual grey morning fog.  I wish for that time now, that time when candle flames sputtered to soften the shadows that rolled through the night; when I lived in the restlessness of sleepless nights, bitter dreams, and sweet insanities that clung to me and carried me through dull days full of empty aches. 

Memories return to haunt me.  In those dim times past, the candle flames burned in her clear, green eyes and blew sparks into her copper hair; orange-gold stars falling with the sway of her ivory neck and shoulders.  The smooth thrill of her velvet shapes floated in the darkness before me glowing linen pale in the candle’s light.
   
Spellbound I would gaze at her, lost in her swaying, naked curves, my heart keeping time to the rhythmic flicker of the candle’s flame.  Her voice, a low, lilting whisper, hissed syllables into the gloom; ancient words with archaic meanings flowed from glistening wet lips.  Her thin white fingers, crimson tipped, drifted up in the reverse blessings.  A wave of chill air drifted through the room as the candles sputtered acapella in time to the rhythm of her words.  The darkness stepped in closer.  A shadow, only slightly darker than the rest, rose up in the far corner like greasy smoke.
 
She, in the full grip of her chanting, having summoned the shadow with her whispers, slowly dropped to her knees on the floor, arched her back as if to scream, bent back with diamonds of sweat glistening on her neck, shoulders, and flushed breasts releasing a deep moan.  It cut to the bone, that long, lamenting moan; deep and hollow it seemed to echo the remembered longings of a restless soul.  The sound lingered on the air, reflected off walls and bounced down the hall rushing through the house and leaving dull silence behind.

The shadow in the corner was gone.  The candles returned to their drunken sway.  In her deep green eyes a living fire reflected  that was brighter than the candlelight.

A chill passed through me, ice water poured down my spine, and in that moment I knew love; ancient love once between us and now rekindled in the shadows; in the candlelight.  Lovers always, in times that were and in times yet to be; on a beach five thousand years ago I gazed into her familiar eyes, on desert sands under pyramids I told her I loved her, on grassy hills over white chalk cliffs I kissed her remembered lips.  Kneeling before me, I could see tomorrow in her eyes.

She leaned forward and put her still trembling arms around me, her flushed damp skin smooth and slippery.  After a moment she rose, her curved, naked form swaying across the room as one by one she closed her fingers over each and every flame.  As I watched her drift from darkness to light to darkness again, my feelings for her welled up in my chest and I almost called out.  Almost, but I didn’t dare, afraid the sound of my words might break the spell and somehow take her away from me.  She had been taken away from me before.

In the light of the last flame she turned to look at me, a timeless, ancient look that spanned the ages.  It was a look I had seen before in eyes etched in my memory from a time when the world was new.  She closed her fingers on the flame and then only the darkness remained.