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It was difficult to tell time passing, cozy in the study. There were no clocks to speak of and no windows. nothing to distract him from his work. It was little surprise then, when a different sort of darkness fell.
Chapter Ten - Hugo
Skeletons in the yard. The usual phrase used for my home town. A place so small and intimately involved, most didn’t even try to keep secrets. It was just a lot of unneeded stress. The millennium had turned. Many of the old ideas at least gone underground, if not done away with. Things once considered shocking, or scandalous, had become a part of modern life. Like a single woman of 30 having her second child in ten years.
There were no illusions. I hadn’t been planned, very few 20-year-olds thinking that far ahead. I was also kept. Not only kept but loved. As much as a kid could be. A love I felt responsible to pass on. Particularly after Delphine.
It was a grass scented afternoon in the dead of August. Summer expending but still with more to go. The long days of lemonade on the veranda not behind us yet.
“Here they come,” grandma said, the swing creaking lightly.
She seemed interminably old then. I was nearly in my 30s myself before I realized my grandparents must have only been in their late-30s when I was born. Young mothers were a family tradition of sorts.
It didn’t look like much. Just a white blanket Mom held bundled in both arms. Whatever it was, didn’t make a sound.
“Be gentle, honey,” Mom said, handing me the blanket.
The blanket started to move, and I immediately knew what all the fuss was about. That tiny, helpless human entering my life as the person I would become was still being calibrated. I wouldn’t have wanted to meet the me I’d have been without her.
***
The blackened inferno smoldered. Wafts of smoke curling ethereal fingers up the stone chimney by the soft orange light. Time itself seeming to stand still. Vega shifted in my lap. I stroked her hair, coaxing her back to sleep. The work could wait. It wasn’t worth shattering her peace.
I spied The Plague, still on the coffee table. I hadn’t picked it up since Vega first arrived. Getting too occupied with other concerns. Through a daring feat of ingenuity, I got the pristine edition into my hands without so much as a stir from Vega.
It had become something of a tradition. Once a year, during the darkest days of winter, I would re-read Camus’s masterwork of relative absurdism. Just to remind myself of how bad things could get. A more empathetic form of Schadenfreude. Taking comparative comfort, rather than immediate joy, from the misfortune of others.
I read in the sounding silence, unconsciously stroking Vega’s hair. A feeling very much like love stirring in me. Protectiveness at the very least. I wasn’t sure she quite got the idea of the collar. Most think it is about ownership which was, admittedly, one of the possibilities.
Though it can also be about trust and connection. Trusting someone literally with your neck, one of the most sensitive and delicate parts of the body. The basis of the phrase ‘stick your neck out.’ There was an element of marking, but it worked both ways. I was hers as much as she was mine. An idea I liked ever more.
As I read, my hand drifted down. Marking the curve of her ear. The angle of her jaw line. riding at her neck, tracing a line around where the solid, warmed metal met her soft skin. A hum exhaled from her as she stirred. Lifting her head from my lap. I wrapped my arms around her, just to let her know I was there. Resisting the urge to kiss her on the cheek. It still felt a bit too intimate for where we were.
“Morning.”
“Indeed it is. At least I think. No windows, you know.”
“I noticed. What time is it anyway?”
The gold hands stood out against the white face. I’d gotten a watch with lines instead of numbers, because I’d been told it was the thing to do. The first and last time I tried to follow a fashion trend.
“Just after six,” I said, checking my watch.
“There’s a six in the morning now?”
“Yes, for a while now,” I laughed, “You sound like someone who could use some coffee.”
“Good guess.”
Working together like Victorian machinists, the steam whistle of the chrome contraption only adding credence, we got the aged espresso machine to cooperate, dispensing two medium mugs of lovely, Italian style beverage. They might not have the best track-record in terms of military allies, but they sure did know their coffee.
“Yummy,” Vega concurred.
We returned to the study, hand in hand. I didn’t usually like the idea of drinks in there but there was a coffee table and it seemed worth-while to try it. It was also best to vacate the kitchen before Matilda got up. She hated it when I hung around while she cooked. At least as far as I could remember.
