This Is A Story About You

This is a story about you. You are glad, you’ve always wanted a story to be written about you. You have often wondered what it would be written like, how your story would go, how you would be portrayed, and most of all, if you survived.

This story starts with you looking out of your window at the stars. They are bright, glowing endlessly in the peacock navy of the sky. You have often wondered why people say the sky at night is black, when it is not really black at all. But there you sit, wistfully, arms crossed over the stone windowsill of your bedroom, and you feel the gentle breeze of a summers night on your skin. You like it. You have always enjoyed that sweet coolness of a summer breeze that is neither cold nor sweet. But it does smell soft. Of the olives that grow in the orchards outside of the city, and the cherry blossom trees that grow just past them. You can only smell them when the streets are bare, and the nights are quiet, and summer has almost taken full effect; but not once day comes, and the street sellers waft their produce in the streets and clog your nose with travelling goods. No, then you are only concentrating on what is before you.

But it is not day, and you can smell the olives and blossom, and you are wondering what someone someday may write about you, if ever.

You live in Greece, there are mountains nearby that you cannot see out of your bedroom window, but can see once you leave the city. You enjoy your life here, you have never known anything else. And why would you want to leave? You do not know. Yet, an odd feeling has come upon you this night, and as you look up to the stars just hovering above the rooftops of the houses next door, you wish to be out of the house. Out on the street. But more than that, you wish to be out of the city.

You rise from your bare stone bedroom, slipping on your sandals that were left unsurreptitiously on the floor, in a most definite way that your mother would have given you a look for, and slip out the front door of your home. You are aware that you are wearing nothing more than your chiton; a loose, light, cotton undergarment that hangs from your body by a small string belt at your waits and the ties atop your shoulders. It is unisex. Both your father and mother wear the same to bed, as does your sibling. But this is not a story about them. You walk along the cobbled street serenely, not rushing, nor going slowly, but somewhere in between. There are no windows alight with candles, it is too late for others to be awake, only the large braziers that line the street corners light the way. As well as the stars of course. But they become dimmer when you pass a flame, then glow bright once again when you enter the shadows. Just as stars do when you look at them.

Steadily you make your way out of the city gates, the cobbles turn to a dusty dirt road in front of you, well-worn with cart furrows and footfalls, and you are glad to have left the city. The windows in the houses felt like eyes upon you, yet you were more fearful of the human eyes that could have been watching you from their own hiding spots in the dark places of the shadows. You can now see the olive groves surrounding the city. The trees are old here, chapping, and furrowing their roots so deep into the earth that you are sure they will outlive the city when the eventual time comes for it. All cities and empires fall, you know this, and yet there is a holding of time in Greece that makes it feel as though each village and town will go on forever. All in there slow, familiar way.

As you pass certain trees you let your hand run along their branches, feeling the wood beneath your fingers and plucking an olive here or there the plop into your mouth. You enjoy the sharp taste, the crunch of your teeth through the fruits skin, and remember the days when you would steal handfuls in your youth and run home with them in the folds of your cloak. Your mother would put them in a bowl and you would eat them throughout the day. You miss those times. The memory brings with it nostalgia, and an ebbing sense of impending worry as your childhood has now gone. But you push that aside and look back up at the sky. The stars are bright like lanterns now you have left the confines of the city, they glow like beacons atop the mountains that are only lit in times of war. They ebb in and out. You find yourself mesmerised, head tilted back, hair tickling at your ears, and lips still tanging with the taste of olives. It is only when your foot catches on a root that you notice you have left the olive orchards. You have entered the forest, blossom trees scatter here, and not too long ago were you too young to enter. You have only been here once before with your sibling. They cupped your hand in there’s and you went into the woods in excitement. The trees seemed looming then, wise and tall; and you spoke in laughing tones of the adventures of Heracles and Jason, of which you wished to be a part of, and wondered if when your parents found you both spouses if you would be allowed to return here, to the woods.

But now you are not thinking of that time, you are thinking how bright the forest seems even though it is night. Shadows do crowd the ground, and if you look too far through the trunks only darkness ensues, but elsewise you can see where you are going by the breaking strobes of starlight. You do not feel fear here. You do not feel watched here. You do not think of the stories of people being robbed here.

Starlight tickles in through the branches of the trees, and a hush whispers through the leaves and grass as though someone were singing in the language of the earth around you. You hear the occasional crack of footfalls on branches and hope that you might catch sight of nymph, or the short tail of a satyr, or perhaps the long legs of a centaur. All woods are known to house such things, this you know. Your father spoke of them often, and the priests at the temple would tell tales of their havoc to travellers in the forests. You hope to finally see one in person.

The small tinkle of water catches your ear to the right and you follow it till you reach a small break in the trees, a brook has settled its way through the forest. Lining it are large pebbles, taller tufts of grass, and small willow leaves. White light catches on the water's surface like glinting feathers. Small bubbles coat its skin, and the frothing of the shallow waves reflect the starlight onto the open grass around it. You are caught by how beautiful it seems. How gentle. Peaceful. And find you have already sat by its edge as your hands go to the lacing of your leather sandals. They loosen and fall from your feet easily, well-worn from use, and feel the tender touch of the grass upon your feet. Everything is soft here. You can smell the forest around you, the scent of the grass beneath; and now you dip your hands into the cool stream before you to taste the crisp swell of water on your tongue. It tastes of the minerals it runs over, fresh and earthy. You let the water run from your lips and chin, feeling the drops splash onto your knees below, your chiton has risen up your thighs as you leant forwards for the water. You do not mind. Your fingers dry against the grass as the warmth of the summer day still radiates up from the soil, you are content, you feel safe and warm here, as do the eyes that have fallen on you from the nights sky.

You do not notice you are being watched till the being comes out from the trees they landed behind. It does not startle you as much as it should have. They are confident and gentle, not trying to disturb the bushes and foliage around them, and they glow like moonlight from their skin. You can see their god-like grace in the way they move, their immortality like a colour upon the eye. An unsung song holds its breath around them like the silence of their padding feet. Their feet are bare. No twig, nor thorn, nor stone would dare scratch or sting their skin. This you can feel in your gut.

You become like a doe who has never seen man before; you are still and watchful, eyes following where they tread, breath making itself known in your chest as you wait for the crack of noise to spike your fear. But none comes. This being knows your tender heart, and they makes certain no noise would startle you now. Their grace has filled the forest, it will keep others at bay, no mortal other than you shall be here tonight.

Their eyes are golden like the sun, and they captivate you just as thoroughly. From their eyes you look to their bare feet, their delicately crafted ankles, and calves that are toned with well-run muscle. They wear a short tunic, its edges embroidered with mother of pearl, patterns woven delicately there, and it lies high enough on their thighs to stroke a warmth between your legs and in your stomach. Your legs tightened of their own accord as your eyes trembled upwards to their arms, which are strung with lean muscle, shoulders bare and certain, and you linger on the small cleft at the base of their neck. You did not know why, but you wanted feel that cleft upon your tongue. When your eyes reached their golden ones again your notices the soft curls of hair upon their forehead. You wished to touch those curls.

They draw closer to you, and you feel no fear. You feel entranced. The tales of the gods had been true in every description, they were beautiful beyond compare. You knew now why maidens did not fight and scream in the arms of the male gods who went upon them; or why men fell to their knees in awe before the mighty female gods of old. You feel your mortality in your chest and relax in servitude to the god that stands before you. The god who now kneels beside you. The god who now whispers for your name almost over you.

Their hands brush up your arms, scattering tingles and goosebumps there, their eyes stay locked onto yours, your heart begins to race, and you feel, with the softest of delicacies, their rose bud lips on yours. Their tongue is sweet like berries. Their skin smooth like satin. And when they press themselves upon you in the grass, your clothes coming away from your bodies with the gentlest of touches. Their heat presses into you with moaning divinity and you breath out their name into the night, with only the stars gazing back from above. They are warm and gentle to start, and then passion stirs you both into a dance as old as time; your hands clutch each-others skin, your lips touch every place they can, and a wetness drips between both your thighs multiple times. You are connected, now only one being, and you know this is the divine purpose of life. It is what you felt created for, what your fate was leading too; and you wish for it to never end.

But so it does, yet you do not separate into two souls. You lie atop of them, your stomachs exhaling in opposing rhythms so that your skin never breaks apart, their body glowing with excellence beneath you, and their scent thick upon your skin like an ownership. Their eyes glow open, their gaze locked onto the sky above, and you feel yourself slip into a contended full sleep. When you wake it is still dark, and you are still connected at the hips, you are surprised you did not wake alone. You look up and see their eyes are still open, you know they have not slept; you wonder now if gods do sleep, and so try to pull yourself away from them. They do not let you. This pauses your actions. They sit up and hold you close, their cheek beside yours but not touching, their breath along your jaw, tickling, and their arms wrap around you like blankets.

“Be mine, forever.” They wait for your nod, which you give softly, and yet a small part of you knows it was never a question. You now read this story, that is about you, and you read it from the stars to which you were taken. You are no longer mortal, you no longer smell the strong tang of the travellers produce on the streets, you no longer cup hands with your sibling nor taste the olives from the trees outside the city you once lived in. You have watched the world collapse and re-build itself, you have seen great empires fall and wars persist. You finally get to read the story that was written about you. The only story. And it makes you glad, and you look down from above the stars, sitting on the lap of the god who took you so many years ago, and you remember what it felt like to gaze out of a window and feel a warm summers breeze upon your skin once again.