The snowfall is steady outside. Through the window the world appears still, frozen in a single perfect moment. Like something fictional, unreal, only visible through the panes of glass like a painting on display. The world seems dead, lifeless, devoid of warmth. Frost clings to the barren branches of the forest like something possessed of crystalline life. Everything is so cold.
Within the shelter, all is warm. On the bed behind where he stands gazing into the stillness, his monstrous form almost entirely occluding the window lies the sleeping form of his goddess, sheets only slightly covering the naked flesh that he had spent the night before exploring with his lips, kisses almost desperate in the hunger that they only barely contained.
Inside there is warmth, there is comfort, there is life; in stark contrast to the season of death in full swing all around. He glances back over his shoulder at his slumbering fragment of the divine and his breath catches ever so briefly as he encounters her beauty, as with every time it is like he sees her for the first time. That is how it has always been since the moment he first saw Emily in a crowd of strangers, something shimmering and radiant in the midst of a sea of banality. He’s grown accustomed to the effect that she has on him, yet the intensity of it all never seems to fade.
The day is only just beginning but still he looks forward to the end, hours and hours away, when he can look forward to walking through the door again and seeing her for the first time just like always; the undisguised love in her eyes mirroring his own, taking his goddess into his arms and feeling her collapse into him, her head against his chest as if she needs to hear his heart beating to prove to herself that he is alive.
There is no need to search for that proof though, he hasn’t been dead for years now and there is little chance that he ever will be again. That is not a state that he would ever willingly return to; and he doesn’t even know if he can die a second time, but he will go to great lengths to avoid finding out. Still she seems to need reassurance that he lives and breathes, and he happily embraces her as she drinks in the sound of his heart, alive and powerful within his chest, the tempo strengthening the longer he holds her to him.
Peacefully dreaming and oblivious to his movements as he silently begins to dress for the day ahead of him, she is left to her sleep. He won’t wake her until he is ready to walk out the door; the routine is clockwork in its precision and application. Downstairs he prepares a pot of coffee as he absently browses the cupboards in a seemingly aimless manner, as he gradually formulates something approaching a plan for breakfast. It isn’t until the coffee is almost entirely through brewing that he finally decides on simply frying a few eggs and some bacon, enough for her when she makes her way downstairs as well.
He pours himself a cup of coffee and carries his plate to the breakfast bar and eats in silence, enjoying the tranquility and not wishing to disturb the goddess sleeping upstairs. He isn’t particularly eager to venture out into the winter chill, but leaving affords him the opportunity to return, and returning home to her almost makes being forced to leave worthwhile.
He remains sitting there after finishing his meal; the last couple swallows of coffee cherished as warmth as he stares into the world of ice beyond his patio doors. Nothing moves anymore, the snowfall appearing to have tapered off sometime while he wasn’t really paying attention. Not even a breeze destroys the illusion of everything being frozen in place, a freeze-frame of reality. For a moment he wishes that the world outside really would stop, that time out there would stand still for him. He daydreams for a minute how lovely it would be to have all the time he could possibly desire right there; in the warmth of their home with her, no pressure from the outside world forcing him to ever leave her for even a moment. The reverie ends as he watches a branch cast off its burden of snow, the weight too great for its slender architecture to support. He shakes his head with a smile, almost sad that he hadn’t somehow willed his fantasy into existence.
He lazily rinses his dirty plates and slides them into the dishwasher before pulling out a new coffee cup and pouring it full for the goddess that he is soon to awaken. He sets the cup on the countertop and he softly climbs the stairs, attempting to make as little noise as possible which is more difficult than it might be for someone who stood less than six and a half feet tall and weighed close to 300lbs.
Standing in the doorway for a moment he watches her sleep, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest, the subtle parting of her lips as breath escapes between them. He hates having to interrupt what he hopes are only the sweetest of dreams, but he knows that she would be angry with him if he were to slip away without waking her first, and he knows that her anger is nothing that he would care to have directed at him. She hates the sense of momentary confusion that she feels when she wakes on her own and he is not there, his absence somehow more pronounced for her when unexpected.
He crosses the room to her side of the bed and he leans down at the hip, brushes a stray hair from her face, and kisses her cheek. Somehow she never fails to awaken at this gentle prompting, and he loves watching the sleepy smile that precipitates her rise into full consciousness. Her eyes flutter, blinking back sleep, and when they open they seek out his own eyes with a subdued intensity. The kindness and love that he sees there, so clear and unambiguous in those eyes of hers is one of the only things in his life that can cause him to wonder if he isn’t still dead and experiencing some sort of Heaven tailored to his deepest dreams. Only in a dream, he thinks, could a goddess gaze so lovingly upon him. He has been a good man, but nothing short of a saint should merit such a magnificent thing as that look in her eyes. But he long ago accepted it with gratitude and the sort of awe that all human beings reserve for things that are nothing short of a miracle.
“It’s time for me to leave,” he whispers, his lips mere molecules of air separated from her cheek before kissing her once more.
She rolls towards him; the implicit grace in even these half wakeful motions never ceases to fill him with adoration. Her every movement is like the most divinely choreographed dance in his eyes, so unearthly, so sublime. She reaches her hand to his neck, gently brushing her fingers against his skin before grasping the collar of his shirt and drawing him down to her lips. Sweetness becomes predatory, no hint of transition between the two, and he finds that quality in her to be more than arousing, almost enchanting. The hunger of her kiss like someone starved, seemingly seeking to devour him; a fate that he could not conceive of denying her if it was her will to do so.
She was his savior, his second chance at life, and that life was hers if she so desired to claim it from him at any time. His lovely goddess owned all that there was of him. It wasn’t long ago that he had been an average man, not special by any means; neither good nor bad, he simply was. With her he was something else, he was elevated with her; she lifted him higher than any man was meant to rise, and somehow he felt that he was doing the same for her, though he had no idea how.
He loved her as he imagined one god must love another, spiraling ever upward to heights that he could never have grasped as a man; each kiss a prayer, every touch devotion, the shared gazes of reverence and adoration. Was he still a man, he wondered, knowing that everything else had changed when she stepped into his life. He seldom questions the blessing that she has bestowed on him, but he does sometimes wonder how much of him is still really a man.
The kiss is broken as she releases him, her willingness to do so clearly in question as he stares into eyes that contain whole universes within them. That he desire to retain contact mirrors his own so perfectly is not in doubt. If neither of them needed to part, they likely never would, and perhaps they would over time merge into something wholly new. But for the present that metamorphosis would have to wait.
She smiles, and radiance fills him, warmth like a newly formed star expands within the center of everything that he is. “I love you,” she says with a voice like the flutter of angels’ wings upon his ears.
“I love you too,” he replies with an unselfconscious smile like that of a child witnessing magic for the first time.
While he is away she will spend her day in a room of windows, painting what he considers to be the most magnificent images, snapshots of the beauty of her imagination. Whether these fantastic visions are illusory or the product of memory that surpasses human experience, he may never know. What he does know is that no one else is any more willing to tear their eyes from her paintings than he is. Every piece sells, and there is always a hunger for more, her work producing something akin to Stendhal syndrome in a large proportion of those witnessing it; it’s as if she elicits an addiction in others, an overwhelming need to glimpse these things that no human eye could hope to witness otherwise.
In contrast, his day is to be one of penance. He will spend the next portion of his day walking through the world of the dead. There will be silence, unbroken on a day like this when no one but the most overcome by mourning would venture into the necropolis. He spends his days a shepherd of the dead, the choice he made as his personal form of atonement. It struck him as being funny sometimes, a dead man caretaking the dead. It seemed strangely fitting to him.
“There is breakfast waiting for you, and a cup of coffee,” he says, knowing that she knows this already, having grown accustomed to the routine of their mornings.
A hint of moisture in her eyes always makes her appear on the verge of tears; whether of joy or of sorrow he can’t be certain, but he sincerely prays for the former. “Why are you always so good to me?” The question is familiar, derivations of these words slip past her lovely lips more frequently than he can comprehend.
“Because you deserve nothing less,” he replies. As far as he is concerned, nothing is too good for her, and nothing that he could attain would ever be as good as he felt she deserved. She was his salvation, she had become his everything in one sublime moment when she brought him back to this life that they now shared; and somehow, though he couldn’t comprehend how it might be, he was hers as well.
Reluctantly he turns and makes his way down the stairs, his day beginning and he can think of nothing but how happy he will be when it comes to an end.
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