The knight soon fell asleep, his broken arm limply hanging over his chest. The head slowly nodded forward until the chin rested on the collar bone. Amelia sat beside him, listening to his lumbering breaths. Glancing at the broken clock, she wondered: for how long had she watched this man, his motionless journey through the night.
Putting a hand to the cold metal shelf he sat against, Amelia felt its rough sharp edges, Zach’s unfinished handiwork. Rising from the hard floor, she finds herself staring down at her guest, unable to move. She manages a look over her shoulder at the cheap cots on the other side of the room. Slowly, like pulling herself away from a warm fire on a winter’s eve, she makes the first unsure step toward bed. The second step comes slowly, but falls a little more naturally than the first. Finally, she is walking, walking away from the stranger and to her own repose.
She only makes one mistake: sitting down at the edge of the cot, Amelia, just ever so slightly in the corner of her eye, catches sight of the helpless man sitting alone on the floor. Moaning, she pulls the thin cot from its shelf, and stomping, drags it over to the slumbering knight.
Dropping it next to him, she waits. He doesn’t move, say that he continues to breathe gently. Grinding the back of her molars, Amelia resists the urge to kick him awake. Curling her lip under her teeth and biting down, she falls to her knees, coming to his side. Softly touching his shoulders, she pauses: the muscles, so tense and hard, even in sleep. Slowly, she begins to make little circles with her thumb, rubbing his back.
“Come on,” she whispers, “There’s a bed.”
She continues massaging, but he doesn’t wake. Stretching her arm around to the other side, she hugs his body. Leaning it over, Amelia tries to ease him onto the cot. He starts a gradual slide off of the metal shelf, but suddenly falls into her. They awkwardly tumble into the bed, he unconscious, and she with cheeks, that even in this sterilized underground light, could be seen for the lively hint of a crimson blush spreading across them.
His head now rests upon her midsection, at her breaths rising and falling like an ocean buoy on a cool summer’s day. She watches it, the quiet expression of deep dreams, the ruffled unwashed hair, as it moves, studying his many scares. Entranced, she reaches one finger, tracing the pale line running below his eye. She stays like that, gazing into his face, until overtaken by her own dreams.
Intraworld
Part 1:Â A New World
Part 2:Â The Library
Part 3:Â Fairy Tales
Part 4:Â Floods of Darkness, Springs of Light
Part 5:Â Underground
Part 6:Â Maybes
Tale Told 