Never After

Micha sat on his stile, trying to sketch the meadow and failing. Instead, he had drawn Thomas’s hands, the tendons standing out on his wrists as he clutched in helpless passion at a scattering of new-fallen leaves.

Micha slipped the page to the back of the book and forced himself to concentrate on the landscape instead.

Autumn was dying around him. The green in the meadow was fading to grey, the wildflowers were curling in upon themselves like heartbroken lovers, and stripped-back trees stood stark against a sunless, opalescent sky.

He made a half-hearted attempt to stop the pond looking as though it floated about three feet above the landscape and then went back to Thomas, lightly detailing his forearms, exposed in ecstasy, and then the interior crease of his elbow.