art by erica altosaar
She had asked, once, long time ago, "Did you know that beauty could be separated from the beautiful?."
....
He put her arms over his shoulder, and she rested like a babe swaddled by its mother. With a rough bump, her body jumped up until her buttocks rested gently in the crooks of his arms. Then he proceeded to carry her still-warm form over the fields, where the tall grass brushed against her pale, blueing legs. His hands caressed what it could as the body slowly grew cold, and the colder it got, the more he found himself trying to run home. To save her before she froze, to save her before she was completely gone - the blood ran freely from her wound, like the fragrance of a flower slowly separating away, like the silence growing louder with sound, like humans living on the outskirts of humanity.
