𝐄𝐦𝐦𝐚 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐦 • To You, From The Pacific Winds 🌬

XIV

There was a fathomless stretch of time after our recovery when everything felt like a long dream. We lived in a mise en scène of a fairy-tale, where the hug of heat was never-ending, and the island soughed as a symphony. Trouble seemed a long-eradicated disease, for good or for worse.

When I grew jaded of my room, then the library, then the home at large, I spent much time in Emma's room to quell the encroaching boredom. I'd sit on her bed with my legs stretched and lean on the wall beside the window, Emma's head on my lap, a book open on my shins. Her hands strummed the sunlight as it shattered past the trelisses, like the strings of a Heavensent lyre. Where her skin met sun, it turned a blinding alabaster-- if it weren't for her soft, warm weight on me, she might've been a limestone sculpture.

At night, she'd convince me to stay up past the early hours of bedtime and drink stolen coca wine. When that nightly citadel of ash ascended from the horizons, we kissed and talked and kissed again. All cacophony became nothing but ripieno to her vinous lips. After the reset, the skies cleared and the triangular constellation appeared, bright as yesterday and tomorrow. We'd be drunk, slurring incoherent thoughts and flirtations on a shared pillow, a tangle of undone hair and hungry hands.

I loved it there. All our rooms were identical, but she'd made hers so characteristically Emma. Here and there hung posters and photographs from the past, present and future. Cut-outs of magazines and leaflets papered the walls, turned her room into a collage of worldly charms. I couldn't understand how she found half of the things she stuck on her wall appealing. It was the most lovely way to clamp the mind shut, make it stop thinking of dread and deathlessness.

"What even is this?" I had laughed, pointing at a weird, egg-shaped cat in socks.

"He's adorable!" she cooed. "My wall contains everything that's good in the world-- this wee fella definitely makes the list."

"I'm happy that you're happy," I sighed, then idly searched her walls again.

Some distance above the egg-cat was a grainy photograph of a sprawling hinterland. On the foreground stood a weathered shack roofed with zinc. Beyond, I could barely make out a barren vineyard littered with rucksacks and bits of wire, more fencing than plantation. Despite the unglamorous scenery, Emma had it ornately framed.

It could be a secret nook of Cairnholm. No, it was more likely her hometown. No, no, the quality was horrendous - it must be from a nomadic past lover. I stopped my pondering before I made myself upset for no reason. Sometimes I forgot I could just ask Emma instead of being a presumptuous oaf.

"Where's this?" I asked, pointing at the photograph.

"Mézy-sur-Seine, France. Deathplace of Lili Boulanger." Emma regarded the picture fondly, sighing. "Julia and I were absolutely devastated Boulanger died so young and released so little music. I think we'd hoped to unearth some scrapped manuscripts, be hailed as chevaliers in musical archaeology."

I hummed. "What have you read? Did no one bother to check?"

She barked a laugh. "If there were something to be found, they would've been found already. They said in Boulanger's memoir that people have combed her residence absolutely clean. But still, I'd like to visit."

We stumbled across these yearnings often in our conversations, ones with that unspoken someday, sometime, somewhere away from the loop.

Emma was well-practiced in obscuring countenances that might register as an emotion other than absolutely fine. But after that fateful day on the boat, she had been holding me so closely, close enough to peer beyond the veil. I came to learn that tone of voice she spoke in, the wistful upturn of her eyes. A mistiness sublimated from under her lashes like morning brume, and her words lodged shallow in her throat. I knew when she was thinking of those damned could've-beens.