Forest Lovers

Forest Lovers
Tilly Rivers

The smell of rare and rich white flowers and rain lingered in the forest. A grassy moss bed rich and vibrant sat in the clearing, nature’s mattress, waiting for the pair in whom came here. Their secret place.

She wore her hair in a single plait down her back which hung like a twisted rope of copper, and the small curls which famed her face made a halo around her heart-shaped form.

The trip here only ever took several minutes, the walk down the path from her home, thankfully was only minutes away, for she could never be gone to long. How often she wished for, longed for, an entire night in her lovers arms. Alas, she was never sure if that would come about, even if he promised that one day they would be together, forever.

The heart of the city cut from the north to the south. The train, emerging into the rainy night and then plunging back into the dank beneath the streets, rattled and rocked across the city of millions, greasy, wet dirty, feral.

**It stank of cigarette smoke and piss. The walk from the station to his den was hazardous and wound through Dickensian rows of decaying houses, pavements peppered by dog shit and the smell of weed drifting from the shadows. She had a sense that at any moment unseen hands would snatch her forever into the darkness.

By an almost unconscious agreement, this was their monthly ritual, her trip down through the earth, to emerge into this sort of urban underworld. It was always the same time each month, when the moon was new, and the darkness was at its deepest.

The den was a long way up. The building was tall and the lifts cavernous; odious smelling. Unenclosed, the floors were at the mercy of the elements: the wind would whip through the centre of the structure and make howling animal sounds on her ascent. Despite being expected, she would have to knock hard at the door, and sometimes neighbours would peep out of theirs, as if they had mistaken the sound for a knock at their own. Maybe they had heard them before; maybe just a coincidence.

Some nights she would knock and knock and knock, and then make the hazardous descent to the street in order to phone and ask to be let in. Often the music was turned up and he would not hear a thing until the phone shrilled through. When the door opened, she would slip though like a phantom, as if drawn inside by hidden arms. It was warm and dark inside, so dark that it was nearly impossible to see. She could feel him standing over her and then his hands on her shoulders taking her cape from her; his hands on her neck, the rush of his breath like the rustling of dried leaves in her ear. No waiting. Complete and utter darkness. She could not see him, just a darker space in a dark place, like a black hole in the starry night.

Sometimes there was a bit of light from the street, from a neighbouring building; a shaft that penetrated the room weakly, and it would make the transparent alabaster of her skin glow faintly, so she moved like a phantom in the room. The shade would follow her.

Every time, he would repeat the same ritual: in the cover of the darkness, he would strip her clothing from her until she stood naked and shining. Then with the careful deliberateness of one paying honour at an altar, he would remove her necklace, her rings, earrings, everything. When her ears were bare, he would suckle at the lobes and move down her neck tracing the lines where the gossamer silver of her necklace had been. His breath would be rushing, and she could see in her mind’s eye the ardent fire in his eyes and the way his nostrils flared wider to inhale her scent.

She would feel herself stirring and the moisture come. The heaviness in her legs made her totter a bit. He would whisper in her ear that he could smell her. That he could smell her sex and that he knew without her saying that she wanted him.

She felt herself lifted in the air and her feet set lightly on the hard, flat seat of a chair. His skin felt very warm, hot, where their bodies met, and his arms encircled her waist. He would place one hand over her face, feeling every contour as if blind, as if this was the only way he could discern her. His breath was humid on her sex. He would gently part her thighs, and then the folded petals of her, his tongue searching, first gently and then growing more insistent as she loosened and breathed. Her hands clutched his head, his hair feeling like lamb, the curls sleek and tight, and she pushed herself into his mouth that devoured her, that drank her in.

A strange thing would happen when she felt her passion mount. She seemed to luminesce in the dark - a strange, pallid shining. He would pull her off the chair, still locked to his mouth. His scent was earthy, like rare wood. His bed was big, and strewn with cushions as if it was the dais of some decadent king, a pasha. It was brocaded and edged with exotic designs. She could feel the embroidery under her fingers, the nap of velvet and the slickness of sateen, and she seemed to cast a glow upon this resting place. In that queer glimmering she could barely make out his eyes and the faint gleam of the wet on his mouth, hanging slack and open, his face. He shone pale blue in the reflected light. A spark here, a twinkle there. Mostly she saw nothing. He was huge, and when his hands traced her face it disappeared under them, smothered. When they came to rest for a while on her breasts, they covered them completely. He used the pads of his fingers to knead slowly and pull on her nipples; hard like little stones. They appeared as a shadow only, against her alabaster paleness.

She would arch her back as he continued his feast and call for him to end her torment. He’d slide up the length of her body and pull her into him; roll on his side and cup her with his legs, his belly, his chest, her ass against his loins so that she could feel his cock pressing into her. He would rock, and she would grow lighter and lighter, pressing back and calling like a queen, her tail lifted, rolling. When at last he would push into her and she felt herself parted and filled, the glow would turn very bright. He could see her sex, when she was on her knees to him. When he fell on her with force, the light would be blocked; she blotted out by his size and strength. He tried to cover her with his shadow, fill her with his darkness. She moved desperately, wanting him to slip over her like a second skin, to inhabit her; wanting to light him from within, feeling the charge build, as old as the cosmos, the creation. But it was a battle that always ended in stalemate, she would leave stirred, brightened, but in the end unfulfilled, unshaken.

And so it went. She, bringing the pallid moon whenever they met; he bringing the void in which she wished to fall and then illuminate from the core. The winter was drawing to an end, and the crocuses had begun to peek out of the yellow, flattened grass. The nights that they spent were getting shorter, and lighter.

And one night it happened like an immolation. He was in her and moving on her and her cries had mounted from murmurs of assent to delirium. She positively glowed, leaving his body haloed as if by an eclipse and then he rolled, pulling her on top of him, freeing her light to the room and to the city, freeing her to the beyond. As she moved, the world for her grew bright and blinding, washed with colour, splashing everything it reached.

She rode back toward the north, ducking underground and emerging time and again into the crisp blue daylight and never saw him again.
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