The grass whispered to us, but it was in a language we didn’t speak; we ignored it

The grass whispered to us, but it was in a language we didn’t speak; we ignored it. The sky over our heads was a blue like nothing we’d ever seen before and practically glittered, unmarred by clouds. Together we raced up the hills, our legs pumping, chests heaving, running like we were children again. Our hair streamed out behind our faces, getting into our eyes, and, laughing, we pushed it away, tripping over our too-large clothing in our rush.

She stopped then, and I stopped beside her, unable to speak. She was bent almost double in her attempts to catch her breath, but, after a few moments, she met my eyes and smiled. Then, without warning, she fell to the ground, laughing. I fell too, landing beside her. We rolled onto our bellies and let the sun sink into our skin, wordless for some time, just eating up the day.

“It’s so lovely,” she said finally, her voice like music. “I want it to be forever.”

The sky was too bright to look at; I shut my eyes and felt the warmth permeating me. Every once in a while a breeze would come and, almost with affection, it would ruffle our hair and clothing and chill us a little. “Yes,” I said at last.

“Do you come here often?”

“No.”

I heard her roll over, and suspected she was looking at me. I peeked through half-opened eyes and saw that her gaze was running me over, flitting along the lines of my face, my neck, my shoulders. She saw me looking at her and grinned.

“I like it here. I never thought there was a field out this way.”

“Not all of the land is farmed,” I said, turning over onto my back as she had. “There is still some untouched.”

Now it was her turn to be lost for words; her eyes traipsed across the sky, and I watched her gaze, trying to see the world as she saw it. We had not had many conversations, and I didn’t know what to say. Perhaps she preferred the silence. All our words had been taken away from us, it seemed, by the sun; we could hardly see, much less speak.

Her hair was spread out underneath her head and was splayed out in long rippling curls, golden, the same golden that the grass was; it tangled with the plants’ stems till I hardly knew which was which. She twisted the waves around her fingers and let them slide off to be as they were, a nervous habit, I suspected. Her hands were tanned from the sun and a bit callused, the hands of someone who knew what work was, and yet still kept some scrap of spirit in her, some sign that she’d not yet been broken.

“What are you thinking about?” Her voice broke the stillness.

“You.”

She blushed, giving a muffled laugh. “Of course you would say something like that, wouldn’t you? It’s so typical.”

“Typical of whom?”

“Of men in general.”

“I honestly was, though. I was thinking…” I saw her waiting for me to find the words, and bit my tongue, suddenly not able to meet her eyes. “I was just thinking about how I don’t even know what kind of a person you are.”

“I see.”

“Do you travel often?”

“It’s for my father’s business,” she said for an answer, but I wondered at the truth of that; I’d seen no father when I’d spoken with her before. Still, I took in her words without question.

More silence, broken only by the rustling of the grass. She sighed and lay back, brushing a few grass stems away from the soft skin of her face. For a long time she lay that way, and I watched the gentle rising and falling motion her body made as she breathed. Sometimes the wind would come through and she would shiver as it played with the faded sky-blue fabric of her dress, making it brush against her skin.

I could not sleep; my nerves consumed me, and besides, it was probably not even afternoon – the day was hardly half over with. But now I was convinced she slept, because her breathing slowed, becoming even, and her shivering stopped completely.

I slid nearer to her, and now was close enough to see the veins beneath the delicate skin of her eyelids and wrists. In sleep, her fingers shook and wrapped around each other. Almost without knowing what I did, I reached out and took one of her hands.

She jerked awake, surprised, her eyes fluttering open, and then quickly shutting as she was blinded by the glare. But she did not pull away. After a moment her other hand rose and rested itself against my arm, gentle, almost friendly. Eyes still shut, she smiled.

“You’re so cold. How can you be cold on a day like today?”

I did not answer, but instead touched her hair, weaving my fingers through it to lift up her head. Cast into my shadow, she opened her eyes and gazed upwards at me, wordless, that silly smile still plastered on her face.

Her eyes were green, I saw as I moved closer, and she had freckles. The skin on her throat was not as tan as that on her hands, and I imagined I saw the blue-green of veins beneath.

I wanted, in that moment, to stay like that forever, and I’m positive she did too; the day was too perfect to want it to end at all. But we were not children, and I’m sure that she and I both knew that it had to end sometime. She slid her hand down my arm, her fingers intertwining with my own, warming them.

I bent my head down and sunk my teeth into her neck.

She convulsed and gave a startled half-gasp, her eyes opening wide; but she did not have time to struggle. Blood came out of her, glittering like rubies in the bright sunlight, almost blinding me with the intensity of its color. It ran in rivers across her skin, tangled itself into clumps in her hair, and stained the grass red.

She was dead in my arms, and I drank my fill of her. Even in death, she was still beautiful; her eyes were still open, green like springtime, and her lips were half parted as though she was about to speak. Perhaps it was romantic of me to think that she could still feel that sunlight, somehow, but I did not have the heart to bury her, and so I left her lying in the sunlight as I went my way.