AllFreeNovel
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It’s a different cage from the safety of her family, but it’s a cage nonetheless. It will stifle her. I will stifle her. The boundaries of my life are as far as I’ve ever been able to push them. I’ve tried, in the last few years, to walk longer distances in the city. To take more outings that are less carefully planned. I haven’t been successful.
A stubborn hope paints itself over the back of my mind. Things are different now. Daphne’s here. Sin’s moving back. Will’s insisting on some higher degree of closeness.
More attempts would mean asking her to wait. To make her life small.
The fire she’s painting is a prophecy. If I failed, she’d have no choice but to burn it down and transform again. There’s no telling if she’d rise from the ashes.
I can’t deprive the world of her work.
Look at it.
I can’t.
And even though I’m watching her paint the end, there is beauty in it.
In the canvas, yes. Those fiery waves, yes. But also in her body.
I’ve watched her long enough to see what she’s doing.
Daphne is dancing.
I become aware of the music gradually. Music isn’t the most accurate word to describe the sound. It’s the only one that fits. I couldn’t hum the tune. She doesn’t need a melody. Just a heartbeat.
I find it irresistible.
I wait until I’m sure before I get closer. There’s a space between strokes, a space between steps—there. I take her free hand in mine and turn her under my arm.
Daphne laughs against the backdrop of the world on fire. Her eyes glimmer. “What are you doing?”
“Dancing with you.”
“I’m not dancing,” she says. “I’m just painting.” Her protest is sweet and wrong. When I lead her to the next place on the floor, she follows. Daphne gasps, a splash of flame growing under her brush. “How did you know where I was going to go?”
“I’ve been watching.”
“You’ve been watching,” she murmurs, and it sounds like I love it when you watch me.
I moved the stool out of her way hours ago. Some artists paint sitting down. Daphne is always moving. The waves in her pieces take their sense of motion from her body. It’s a pattern that takes patience to see. I know it like I’ve been watching all my life.
If dancing with Daphne was the purpose of my life, then I accept.
The world retreats.
I spin her again. Pull her close. I find a way to take her hand so I can feel her strokes without changing the piece. They’re familiar to me, the way the sensation of her brush on my skin is familiar. I know these, and they’re entirely new.
This is everything I’ve ever wanted.
Art injected directly into my veins. Daphne can’t know how it was in that closet. In that series of closets. It was dark. Hopeless. Suffocating. I couldn’t stretch my legs out, much less dance. If I’d known this was in the future, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much to be locked in. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so painful for the door to open and let me out.
This is more than most people get in a lifetime. I can’t let any dread into this memory. It will keep my heart beating after she’s gone.
In the absence of dread, hope returns. I can’t bring myself to disparage it. I’ve never wanted anything like I want Daphne. I’ve never let anyone so far in. I’ve never entertained the possibility of letting another person see my life in such raw detail. It’s far from the curated image I present at showings and events. The people desperate for my opinion on art can never know that my mind can be tipped off-balance by a single out-of-place brush stroke.
Daphne knows. Or—she would know, if she stayed. If I let this go on long enough.
Then what?
My brothers are the ones who kept me alive long enough to become this person. Until I could build enough systems and structures, walk far enough, exist in a new place long enough without my mind imploding. Even with all those things, I’m not immune from the occasional collapse.
