Chalcea,
My subconscious is not being subtle anymore.
We were in a castle. A courtyard inside it, open to the sky, and someone had put beds in it. Not one bed. Beds, plural, scattered around like furniture nobody thought twice about. White fabric everywhere. Draped off the stone, hanging in the arches, moving a little even though I don't remember any wind. Plants growing up the walls and out of pots and out of places plants don't grow.
I was on one of the beds with a sheet over me. You were down at the other end of it completely nude.
We were talking. That's the part I lost first. I woke up and the words were already gone. I don't have a single line of it. Just the shape of it. Easy. Unhurried. The kind of talking where neither person is trying to get anywhere.
And then you stopped talking and crawled up the bed.
You kissed my ankle.
Then higher. Slowly. Taking your time about it in a way that felt less like build-up and more like you were just going somewhere, and had decided not to rush the trip. Up my leg. North.
I woke up right at the edge. Genuinely wet, genuinely annoyed about the timing.
Here's what I keep turning over, though.
You started at the ankle. The furthest possible point from anything. And worked your way in like there was no reason to skip ahead.
Even the sex dream was about patience. I don't think that's an accident.
There was white fabric and stone and green, and your mouth on my ankle, and a conversation I can't remember but apparently didn't need to.
Come take the long way sometime.
Noel