To you who are sleeping on the train, unknown, untamed, unclaimed, untouched but by the pain that lingered on your sleeping lips as you sit by the window and the rain, to you I write these words so you may suffer them, as I have suffered your sad beauty. While you sleep alone, I dream awake...

When the walls of our train have vanished and we have been abandoned in this green valley in the rain, you will find comfort in my presence. Below the chain of hills to the east is a small wooden cottage built for broken wanderers. When I have taken you there, sad still yet more awake, you are soaked as completely in the rain as I am in you. You send me out of your small bedroom with a window to the hills, out to the kitchen, so that you may rid yourself of your sodden clothes in seclusion. When you sink your damp body limply into your delicate mattress do not hesitate to forget me if only briefly; I am happy in the kitchen justified by your existence, warmed by being in the neighbourhood of your presence. I dare not try to describe why you have affected me the way you have. In any case, you are the only one who matter greatly, and you must already know.

When you have awakened, I am ready with my Darjeeling tea and warm cookies. Do not ask me where I have gotten such simple delicacies in the middle of nowhere. I have my little magic just as you have your wizardry. You take my little offering curled up in your bed, the sheets carelessly wrapped around your naked body. As we sip the hot tea together in silence, you stare out of the window. It is still raining, but the clouds have diminished and the light has changed. The late sun of the fading summer has spread a warm yellow glow all over the valley and the green hills beyond. I walk to the window and open it, letting in a cool gust of rain soaked wind and turn to you. You nod to show your approval and shift to a position of greater comfort on your bed. As you do so, the pink nipple on your small left breast peeks unmindfully out of its cover. You do not bother. I return to my seat on the wooden chair by your bed.

“There are cookie crumbs on your lips,” you suddenly observe with a smile. I wipe my mouth and smile stupidly at you refraining desperately from saying all the cheesy and sincere sentences flooding my brain. After a few minutes have passed you look at me and demand, “Why have you brought me here?”

“To hide myself in you,” I reply, “But also to take away all your sorrow and show you that you don’t have to suffer the isolation of being the only magical creature in the universe. If I can’t take away your pain, at least I want to succeed in sinking myself to the very depths of your melancholy and share it with you. If not to relive you then at least to save myself.”

You break out in laughter, “Where did you learn to talk like that cookie man? You’re sweet but you lie without knowing.”

“I’m not lying,” I tell you, “Did you really think you’d always be the self-sacrificing girl, the protective woman, the care giver, the comforter, obliged to bear pain, to remain forbidden, be the melancholy charmer as it were and get away with it?”

You shift in your bed and rise a little higher, your back resting on two pillows. You allow the sheet covering you to slip below your bosom, revealing the smooth skin of your chest and your soft tender breasts, before drawing it back up. “You might be good at heart,” you say wearily, “But you’ve exoticized me too much to understand simple truth.”

“Often true understanding begins with blunt fascination,” I remark holding steadfast against your deterrents to my bewildered admiration of you.

You look intently into my eyes for all of three seconds, which while they last seem like an eternity, and once past seem like one of those fleeting moments whose existence one is not even sure of. You look away at one corner of the room, into mundane space which allows your mind to travel away from your immediate surroundings. I sit by patiently looking at the air around us to maintain the decency of not staring at your face. After all, there is no other place my mind would like to wander off to.

“Let us go outside,” I remark at length.

“What?” You say when you are finally shaken out of your reverie.

“The rain has almost stopped,” I tell you, “Let’s go look at the hills.”

Suddenly you climb out of your bed, entirely nude but for the shroud of secrets which cover you head to foot. I look away and hasten to bring out a set of pyjamas, the only kind of dry clothes in the cottage, from a cabinet for you. When we are outside you stare wide eyed like a child at the spectacle all around us. The sun is not yet set but it is not clearly visible through the veil of grey clouds. The green fields with long grass and the stunning hills not too far in the distance are radiant in a rare and brilliant pale yellow light. We are bathed in sunlight yet the rain persists in a thin drizzle.

I don’t know how but something in you has changed. You are less distanced from your surroundings now. We walk a little away from the cottage in the direction of the hills to where the well is. It is a large well with water closer to the edge than in any well I have seen. Suddenly a large gust of wind catches us off guard, blowing your damp black hair astray and then letting them fall down and rest tighter around your neck. You shudder in the wind and draw closer to me. It is only the wind, I say to myself, she does not care for your presence. Just then, as if reading my mind, you plant a placatory peck on my cheek. For your efforts and good intentions, if for nothing else, it seemed to say. But there is something else I notice as well. Could it be? Is it merely the merriment of the nature which has infected you into coming out of your faraway sadness if only briefly? You seem happier, immersed in the present, more comfortable in the haphazard green fields and rain soaked wind than the soft bed in the cottage.

It is too wet all around to sit, but you grab my hand and take me to a sudden large rock with a jagged top. Instead of sitting on it, you make me sit with you on the large wet grass, our backs leaning against the smooth side surface of the rock. We are facing the hills beyond which the sun will set in some time. By now you are weak and breathing heavily from the effort of having to walk barely a hundred meters. But your face is lit up in a little smile.

“I have been here before,” you remark.

“That’s not possible,” I tell you.

“Oh well not here perhaps, but a place similar enough to call it ‘here’. It doesn’t matter how far away it is if it is the same in all essential details, does it?”

I consider this for a moment before replying, “I don’t know.”

“And you seem not so different from someone I once knew either,” you continue, “In fact you look and talk almost the same. You even made Darjeeling tea. Do you know?”

I am not sure, what it is that I am supposed to know, but I reply anyway, “How do you know it wasn’t me and not someone else, if we are so close?”

“I know. The tiniest of differences persist. There will always be a gap.”

I am forced to accept this as a fresh gust of severely wet wind chills me to the bones. Yet again, as if responding to my melancholy you inch closer and hug me round my shoulders, your breath warm on my wet neck. I don’t know how to respond as I struggle to get accustomed to your sudden changes of mood and demeanour. You are not a very realistic character. Although I have searched for you for as long as I remember, the very real-ness and practicality of the mundane life I have lived for the past several years of my twenty five, have etched their traces on my psyche, so that I am forced to struggle with the brilliance of your presence at first, before I can remember, adapt and present myself more impressively to you.

Now our fresh clothes are completely drenched. Clinging tightly to my body it makes me feel all the more cold. The rain, while it had promised to stop, continues to fall gently. But you have no desire to go back to the cottage just yet. Instead as you catch me shivering, you help me out of my wet shirt.

“Thank you,” I say. You merely smile and I startle myself wondering if there wasn’t the slightest hint of mischief hidden in it.

“Aren’t you cold?” I nearly stammer, “Wouldn’t you like to… you know go back…”

You bend your head gently and kiss my damp chest with your wet lips. By now I’m not even sure whether you are seeing me or remembering the other person you have told me about. When I go about unbuttoning your shirt, you behave in compliance as if you have allowed me to do this many times before. Soon as I have unbuttoned the top four slots, a thin dark red mark etched on your milky white skin peeks out from the gap in the fabric. When you arch your arms behind you, taking off the shirt, I can see it etched at an angle between your breasts and ending a little above your abdomen; a surgical relic from a disease you once had or might still be suffering from. I have already seen it once, when we were in the cottage, but absorbed in speech I had paid little attention to it then. Below that, I can see your waist curving in a beautiful shape of sublime feminine grace, while your belly almost flat but not quite rises in a soft bulge above the elastic of your pyjamas. You might wonder why I should tell these things to you, but you must understand that I want you to know the nuances of my experience of you at this moment.

These details I take in, in a state of breathlessness as I note that each element of beauty or imperfectness in your body – your slender shoulders and neck, the curve of your small back, the mark on your chest, the shape of your waist and even the slight bulge of your stomach – are marked by my knowledge and memory of your beautiful eyes and face. These are your shoulders I am enfolding in my arms, you who I have known through your sad eyes. You aren’t just a pretty woman, but the woman who have affected me like no other and each of your features are coloured, textured and nuanced by that knowledge, by the specific feel of your presence.

You hug yourself against the chill as water droplets from the drizzle begin to trickle down your shoulders. Daring myself against my odds, I kiss you gently behind you ear, my arms still around your shoulders. You simply let me, without flinching or drawing away. I kiss you on your neck and below your jaws. At this last touch your body seems to tremble the slightest bit and you turn your head and kiss me square on my lips. My body is suddenly awake with sensations I do not remember having felt before.

I hold your delicate frame in my thin arms and kiss you again, our wet faces never before so close together. As our dripping lips brush against each other, I take my tongue and search out yours. There is a tingling sensation when the tips of our tongues touch inside our mouths. I think you feel something too for your body gives a little shiver at the touch and we draw our lips apart. You take my face in your hands and draw me upon your bosom. I feel as if I can lose myself indefinitely in the soft white skin of your chest, amid the smooth swells of your small pretty breasts with their pink nipples glossy in the rain water and the yellow light.

I don’t quite know when it has happened, but only now I notice that a strange calm has settled over me, as if I have entered a state of deeper appreciation and enjoyment of your company and your body than merely anxious lust.

I take my time as I kiss the narrow divide between your chest, over your scar. I can feel your breathing intensifying when I place my lips around the mound of your right breast. While drawing out my lips, I stick out my teeth and catch the tip of your nipple between them. You breathe a little heavier this time, but do not say a thing. You have closed your eyes, as if you have dismissed the specificity of my being. You seem as if you are content to let someone defile your body albeit gently, while not caring for the details of the perpetrator. But I have gone too far now to hold back.

Slowly I twirl my tongue around each of your nipples in turn, while sucking at your breasts at intervals. So now your breathing becomes more intense causing your belly to form into a slight curve when you draw in a long breath. Delighted at the sight, I let my lips travel down your chest, kissing down the length of your red scar onto your soft sighing stomach. I take out my tongue and twirl it around in the white folds of your belly button. I can feel your body react immediately as your back lurches forward from its resting place against the rock, thrusting your chest at me. Placing my hand on top of your dripping stomach, I kiss you once again on the mouth and you finally open your eyes. First you stare blankly at me like someone lost in an unfamiliar place and then all at once a whole new demeanour comes across your face. It is subtle but easily identifiable. It is a look of affection.

I press my hands tight against your stomach once before sliding it slowly downward, fingers creeping in through the elastic of your pyjamas. Below it, hidden amid the darkness of your groin I can a feel a dash of soft unshaven hair upon your pubis. You move your body and rest your back on my chest allowing me to caress the areas between your two thighs. You know I can only resist for so long, don’t you? Before I can imagine a proper timing, my fingers find their way onto the damp folds of the lips of your moist vagina.

When I enter two fingers all at once inside of you, you let out a little moan of pleasure. A rush of wind invades our tiny abode again, wreaking havoc among the large grass while blowing your hair across your face. You don’t bother fixing it. You have taken my other arm to hug your warm body tighter on my chest. There is something infinitely pleasurable in feeling the sighs and shivers of another person’s body with the skin of your own while your fingers move dextrously to cause it in the first place. You try desperately to suppress any sound of pleasure from your lips (out of what sense of decency or pride I do not know), but when I enter my fingers deeper and with increased vigour you cannot not help but let out throatier moans of delight. I look at your face, constricted in pleasure and I cannot help myself from stopping to kiss your cheek. You look at me and smile with almost stifled affection. I tell you then that I do not remember being happier in my life. You merely kiss me back and urge my hand to get back to work.

What you feel now is my thumb rubbing against the timid shape of your clitoris while my index and middle fingers enter you simultaneously. You lurch back upon me from the sensation. You seem to last for a whole of two minute before your body bends forward in a jerky motion, contracting the muscles on your stomach while you let out a long, low and deep moan. I am not quite sure how, but before I know it you have my pyjama pants off and your warm breath upon my erect and pleading penis.

The process happens in a blur as the rain begins to pick up. It is a little darker now, the sun has approached closer upon the peaks of the hills. I find myself wondering how it would feel to be inside your small mouth as my penis stiffens to its full potential in expectation. You hold it gently with three fingers of your right hand and slowly push back the foreskin causing rain water to mix with my own fluids. Then you draw your lips close upon its tip and kiss its viscous wet surface before withdrawing, all in a single motion as if planned from beforehand. I am bewildered but then your voice speaks to me, “Take me now, please.”

But tell me if you will, whose face is it that flashes through your mind as you shed your final bit of clothing? I watch as you throw your pyjama onto the bushes, while revealing the lush dark hair upon your erstwhile concealment. Completely naked now, looking at me invitingly, you are an enchanting sight! We move a step or two away from the rock and resting your body on the mud between the wet grass, I enter you gently from the top.

It is an altogether delightful and unreal sensation, do you know? I inch slowly and firmly into you little by little. Your eyes seem to water as they bear into mine, our faces against each other, the tips of our noses touching together. You are tight down below and after the first few times, when I start entering you with greater frequency, you start letting out low moans. I lift your mud stained shoulders a little and enfold your body in my arms continuing to enter you with greater force.

I can smell the rain on your neck, but I can also smell the fragrance of your own body from the depths of your skin and from your underarms. I cannot tell you how erotic this is! And as if tracing its origin from the very core of your being I can smell too your detachment from me at the very moment of us being connected physically in the most intimate way possible for a man and a woman. The moment is so beautiful and vile at the same time that I feel close to coming inside of you. But you know I don’t want to give in just yet. So I start to hold back as an older suspicion comes back seeing you panting beneath me.

I can tell already. You aren’t well. Not as well as someone of your young age should be. You have become frail. The intensity of the sensations in your body have made you breathless and you cling to my arms feebly. When I stop in concern, you say aloud, “No! Continue! Please!” There is something in the way you say it that makes me trust you and go on. I lift my head off your neck to see that the sides of your body have become stained with mud like your hair and your right cheek. It is no longer merely drizzling. The rain has picked up and it is large droplets of water which are now crashing into our bodies.

Soon the rain is coming down so hard and with such concentration that we can barely see twenty feet beyond us. It has grown even darker, yet a faint yellowish glow persists radiating from a point beyond the hills, spreading an unreal half-light all over the valley around us. The water is cool but the wind has subsided to our comfort. Even through the blanket of rain, I can make out the beautiful rhythm in which your small body jerks with each of my delayed thrusts inside you. With the palm of my right hand I press down on your stomach now and begin thrusting faster than before. You moan louder but your voice is lost in the terrible sounds of the rain.

Then suddenly drawing yourself away you get up and take my hand leading me to the mud path between the grassy fields. The path is running with mud coloured water and we spatter a lot of it on ourselves as we staggered to the middle of it. You make me lie down on the soft wet mud and holding my penis with one hand between your thighs you enters me from the top. As I see you riding me, your body bouncing up and down while the skin of your belly curls and straightens with each move, I cannot help but feel I am closer to the end. Resiliently I hold out nevertheless. The rain crashes over your beautiful body, washing away the mud little by little. I grab your shapely waist to guide you in on me at my own pace now. As I do so you look at me meekly and taking your right hand you begin to brush against your clitoris.

It is only now that I realize completely what has been half bothering me throughout. Even when I am entwined together with you, there is a sense of absence, a sense of gap between us. As if you are not making love to me specifically but to someone else, or to merely a male body. On rare occasions when you have bestowed me with a kindly or affectionate look, I’ve felt close to tears with joy but on others you have been indifferent. As if merely satisfying your own needs. Yet still, on other occasions, you have looked at me as if you have known me from long before, as if you are rekindling with a long lost lover. I can tell that on these occasions you are not really seeing me but someone else.

Suddenly bewildered with a maddening collage of emotions impossible to put into words, for the first time I start entering you brutally without respite. You seem taken aback at this sudden violence but let yourself go with the sensations. I can see your face grimace into a distorted expression of pleasure through the torrent of rain as your freshly cleaned body jerks repeatedly from the blows it is suffering at its base. Your panting intensifies steadily and you seem like you might drop from the simultaneous exertion and pleasure till you let out a long loud moan as the nails on your finger sink piercingly into the skin of my chest. As soon as the moment passes you fall limply onto my body, exhausted.

You let yourself lie like that on my chest for a couple of seconds before rolling off onto the mud. Then as I watch, you sit up slowly as if in a daze, wet mud now dripping from your pink nipples. It is very nearly completely dark now in the fields running with water, but can I can yet see the heavy rise of your chest with each laboured breath as I barely make out your smiling eyes between the wet hair plastered around your beautiful face. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone or anything as fragile as you.

I watch your left hand extend slowly toward the erect, burning expectation sticking out from my groin. Then as if by mischief you barely touch it with one finger before drawing your hand away. Once again I am bewildered, in utter agony of needing to be satisfied, of being relieved of the throbbing desire swelling at my pleasure point. But when you draw your lips close to my cheeks and kiss me, I am suddenly at peace, as if tamed by a magical spell.

“Chuck your poetry cookie man. I will never be the woman of your dreams, the woman you want me to be,” you whisper in my ears, “But if you can take it, I’ll always let you be my whore. And be your whore in turn.”

I am stunned. Too overwhelmed to speak as I look at you through the shroud of rain. You are sad, mischievous, weak and radiant in the gloom, all at the same time. “Come on cookie man,” you urge me on, “let’s go to the cottage and get some more of your special Darjeeling tea and cookies.”

And so we go hand in hand in the rain, toward that ruin of a cottage in the middle of nowhere, me not knowing what is to come, but through some magical intuition sure of its goodness. In time, I feel sure, I will make you see more of me and less of him, and hopefully more of the future and less of the past. But that is not now. Now you still sleep on the train as I watch quietly out of the corner of my eyes.

When the train finally comes to the station, you open your eyes. They look around briefly as if searching for someone until resting on me. Suddenly you smile, “More of the future, yes,” you say to me, “And less of the past please. That would be nice.”

The End.

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