Chapter Five #3
She squinted in disbelief into the shadows. With a hum of displeasure, she scowled, “You’re using sarcasm against me, aren’t you.”
“What!” He inhaled sharply, “No!”
“Oh,” her scowl fell to a small pout, “I was almost sure that was sarcasm. Melody was explaining sarcasm to me after the tall, no-faced man spoke to me earlier.”
“Ah! Smith. He’s pretty sarcastic, all the time.
Not his fault. Lawyers are naturally prickly,” Austin chortled, the sound warm and inviting.
It rumbled the air around them and made her lips curl up even though she didn’t know what he was talking about.
And yet, his tone was nice. It slithered in her ears and filled her lungs with an unknown substance.
Her smile broadened on her face as she searched the dark for him.
The real parts of him. Just for a sliver.
Then she stopped, furrowing her brows. Blink, blink. “If the teddy bear is not for inhabiting, what is it for?”
Austin’s laughter fell off before he eventually made some sort of choking, clearing sound. When he spoke, he did so with a rasp. “Hugging…cuddling.”
“I don’t think I know how to do that,” Hyacinth murmured, searching her mind for anything. Something. She came up blank. “What’s a hug?”
“Oh, it’s an embrace. Where you wrap your arms around something…I could…I could show you, but you have to promise me something.”
Hyacinth eyed the shadows suspiciously. “Promise what?”
“To close your eyes.”
“Oh! That?” She sputtered with the absurdity of him to ask for something so simple.
Hyacinth blew out the candles and accepted the dark.
I am from the dark. I used to be a part of it.
Closing my eyes does not bother me. Stepping back from the metal slab, she threw her arms out to her side and exclaimed, “Eyes are closed!”
Exclamations were as close to screaming that she got in the last few days.
Austin chuckled softly. There was an awkward shuffling sound, like he was hesitant.
Hyacinth put her head back and kept her eyes closed, listening for him.
The sound of feet padding across the cold, unfeeling tile finally reached her.
Breathing that echoed in the massive room, it all felt so loud.
And yet, she didn’t mind the noise. Noise is life.
She smiled, considering screaming for Austin just to show him how good all this was…
then two hands brushed across her sides.
Her body jerked upright in surprise. The sensation of every inch of her prickling was wonderful and alarming as those massive hands wrapped around her.
They came to settle against her back, and she was scooped up into a massive chest.
She smelt soil. Like soft dirt tilled after the rain, fresh and earthy.
It filled her lungs and snuffed out any other air inside her.
Fresh soil, like from an old garden that’s well loved.
It made her imagine a backyard. Large, endless grass with thick puddles of rain, a dark and stormy cloud grumbling over her.
In her mind, her hands held a rake, pulling away sogging leaves away from roots of a massive tree.
The scent was so specific that she could almost imagine the hand that was twisted up in the tree, reaching out for her.
Like the plant grew around a person. Like it’d eaten them whole…
except for the hands. Fingers spread in her direction; rain drops falling off the tips.
Drip. Drip. Drip. That hand flexed toward her and grabbed her face. Finger nails scrapped her skin.
Hyacinth gasped, stumbling back out of the hug. Her hands flew to her own face, searching for the hand. A single candle was lit, and Austin was gone from reach.
“I’m sorry—”
“A hand!” She panted, blinking rapidly as if trying to clear the heavy raindrops from her eyelashes. “It grabbed my face.”
“A hand?” Austin’s voice softened.
“It was in a tree. Like it was eaten by the tree. And it reached for me. I saw it so clearly.” She searched the darkness for Austin, to make him her anchor in a world that spun around her.
Her mind replayed the hand, the tree, and the lunge in the rain.
It made her insides shiver uncontrollably. All until he sighed.
“Those are memories; you’ll make your own.”
“Memories?” she parroted the word like it would make the weird sensation in her gut go away. “I do not have any of those.”
“Yet,” Austin urged sweetly. His tone was so soft and tender it lured her forward, back toward the table. “You don’t have any of those yet. But…but we’ll make some.”
Memories of my own. Hyacinth didn’t want the hand in the tree to be her only memory. She glanced up in the meager candlelight, finding the shadow outline of Austin and smiled.
“Can my first memory be of learning what a teddy bear is?”
Austin shook the shadows vigorously, “Yes! Yes of course it can! Just…just wait here and don’t touch any other tables.”
Hyacinth leaned over the one with the candle, watching the flame dance while Austin made the shadows shiver with his movements. I’m choosing my first memory! That’s so exciting.