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“I don’t know what’s wrong with me now. Everything was perfect, I wasn’t even plagued by any of the darkness...” She pauses for another shuddering breath. “But then the smell of this comforter reminded me of all those nasty rooms I got fucked in… and the night is getting so cold… and… “
She takes another shuddering breath and I sit up, picking up a few logs and tossing them on the fire. “I can do something about the night chill.”
She sits up too, her perfect breasts glowing with a light all her own. All of her glows with that light. All the time.
The logs catch fast, hissing and groaning as the flames envelop them. My back is icy cold now, but my chest is burning.
“You wanna burn the comforter?” I ask. “Like as a symbolic gesture and whatnot.”
She looks at me, the gleam in her eyes not just from the fire. But then her face grows unsure. “I don’t know… what if we start a forest fire?”
I scoff. “This time of year? No way. And we’ll be careful. We’ve burned a lot of shit here over the years and it never spread. Besides I’m all for taking what I need from this world. God knows it has taken a lot from me.”
She looks shocked for a moment, but then her lips stretch into a devilish little grin. “You’re right. I’m due some good in my life too.”
She starts dressing, which I’m sorry for. But I reach for my jeans and shirt too. The fire is still burning bright once we’re standing fully dressed beside it.
She’s clutching the comforter. Looking at the whole situation now, I’m fairly certain we’ll just end up smothering the fire with it. But her eyes are laser focused again, and full of steel.
“Go for it,” I tell her.
“Fuck it,” she says and tosses it on the fire.
It covers the fire pit and for a moment, I’m afraid my fear would come true sooner rather than later. But then the flames, bright and hot, eat their way through the center and start devouring it whole.
She watches it disappear with an excited sort of hunger in her eyes. It was filled with down and made of some other natural kind of material, because there’s no nasty chemical smell rising from it and it’s burning clean and neat.
I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her close. She comes willingly, but can’t seem to take her eyes off the fire. I hope it means she’s getting some cathartic sort of moment from this. She deserves it.
After a while, the flames start dying down. She’s leaning against me and we just stand there in silence, holding each other until barely any fire remains. The comforter burned clean. Only ashes are left.
“How was that?” I ask.
She looks up at me, grinning. “I feel better now.”
“The thing about darkness is that it’s always there,” I say. “You just have to fight it.”
She knows exactly what I mean, I can read it off her face, but she doubts it.
“What if it wins?” she asks, quietly, like she’s afraid of the question.
“It only wins if you stop fighting it.”
“You sound so sure,” she says. “Is that what happened to you? And why people think you’re no good for me?”
I chuckle even though I don’t think it’s actually funny at all. “So that warning’s reached you too, huh?”
She nods. “It has. But I’m happy I ignored it.”
“Are you?”
She looks up at me, then stands on her toes and gives me a sweet, soft kiss on the cheek. “You’re not so bad.”
“I was,” I warn her. “The thing is, I stopped fighting the darkness. I just let it take me. Until I met you. I figured you were all about the light, so I better be too, if I wanted to have you.”
She looks at me, her eyes steel again as she shakes her head. “I’m tired of fighting it. I want it to take me too.”
“Do you?” I ask, meaning it in a softly mocking way, but the steel in her eyes grows razor sharp as she nods.
