—14— #4
In that little twinkle, I felt something living reach out and whisper over my cheek.
As if he’d stepped closer, I was aware again of the fragrance of him, the faint sandalwood scent of soap, the oil he used in his hair.
And something more, something deeper. For a moment, I closed my eyes, letting the pleasantness fill me, and imagined an evening sky with ten moons.
“Do you think the moons would all rise at the same time? Or in a row?”
“In an arch, some brighter than others, perhaps.”
An invisible hand in my mind painted this vision. “Maybe the sky is not so blue, but some other color.”
“Pink!” Gurdaya said. “Yellow!”
I laughed. “That sounds beautiful.”
“It isn’t only about beauty, though,” Tanveer said. “What sort of people would live in those worlds? Do you remember when we read Flammarion? He speculated there could be many societies.”
It was one of my favorites of the books he’d challenged me to read, full of speculation on the flexibility of time, and the soul’s travels away from earth.
Tanveer had liked the astronomy portions more, but we talked about it for weeks.
“It seems logical,” I said. “There are so many societies on our world.”
Tanveer nodded. “If you could travel between worlds, there would likely be treaties. And almost certainly conquerors.”
“Why, though? Why not imagine cooperation, and peace? Maybe war gets left behind.”
“I have difficulty imagining how that would happen.”
I gave a little huff. “Perhaps it isn’t a terribly efficient way to solve conflict, with blood and death and destruction.”
He tucked his hands behind his back and turned my way. “And what instead?”
“How do humans who don’t want to kill each other navigate problems? We do not kill each other at the first disagreement, do we? Our fathers are not in agreement over politics, but they sit down to discuss answers to their problems and conflicts.”
“True, but they are only two men.”
Gurdaya sighed. “You two are so boring. I am going to my room.”
We fell silent as she departed. Tanveer stepped slightly closer so that our hands brushed.
After we’d been standing there alone for a long moment, he turned that hand and took mine.
We walked to the wall and looked over the edge.
Far below, light spilled from the room where everyone danced and feasted.
A few people milled around the enclosed garden.
We looked down on them, weaving our fingers together.
I felt his body next to mine, as if he were a star exerting gravity over the planet of me.
I noticed people far below looking up toward us, and pulled him into the shadows.
In no part of my body or mind or soul or heart was there a single moment of caution.
I fell against the wall, and he followed laughing softly, pressing his body against mine.
A soft wash of light touched the angle of his cheek, his forehead, the straight line of his nose, and I absorbed all of it as if I’d never seen his face at all.
I raised a hand and touched his cheekbone, the edge of his eye, his nose.
In return, he touched my hair, my ear, the line of my neck, his fingers leaving a trail like a comet. In a quiet voice he said, “I have been waiting since last summer for this.”
“What? Why didn’t you say?”
A rueful smile touched his mouth. “Would you have wished for this then?”
I had to be honest. “No.”
“You had to catch up.”
“What if I never had?”
He shrugged. “We would have continued as we always have, as we always will.”
A slight darkness rippled through the silvery moments, the recognition that the future—
“Do not think of it,” he said, and kissed me.
I kissed him back, greedily, our bodies melting together.
I could feel his shoulders and the muscles in his back, and he ran his hands over my waist, and lower.
There was no thought, only sensation, in the places where our forms met and our hands, and our mouths, but all through my limbs, too, and my belly.
I pulled away, panting. “I am quite . . . this is . . .”
He flung himself away to put his back against the wall beside me. “Yes. As am I.”
“I did not know that anything could feel that way.”
“Nor I.” He laughed helplessly.
“I know we should not,” I said.
“Oh, no,” he said, and rolled toward me, kissed me again. “There will be a time that our lives will take us somewhere else, to other things, but we have now. It can be our secret thing, like writing in Urdu. No one needs to know.”
I pressed upward toward his mouth. “It will be our secret.”
He pulled away again, taking a breath. “We shall have to be quite aware of our faces when we are with our mothers. I do not worry about my father, or yours, but our mothers will scent a thing without our knowing.”
The words landed with a thud of truth. “Yes, you are right.” I paused and pursed my lips exaggeratedly. “When I see you, I will think of smoked fish.”
He laughed. “And I will imagine an unshorn old ewe.”
I slapped his arm. “Horrible.”
“Effective.”
I nodded. “We should go back, so no one suspects anything.”
“Suspects what?” he said. “I brought you up to see the telescope, as I’ve done before.”
“Of course.”
“Wait,” he murmured, capturing my hand. “One more.” My skin rippled, and I leaned in, lingering in the galaxy of his being before reluctantly pulling away. I followed, alight.
A small worry whispered through me—now that this had bloomed between us, how could I ever live without it?