reminiscing this and that

[Luz Cresceno]

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Seasons held such sway over her life; even her moods were bent by the narrowing of days. Amid sweer summer winds she was all easy words, a ready comrade for those that marched the night hours. Winter brought a chill that snacked on bone-marrow and bad-thoughts, and introspection ruled all minutes and moments passed without dialogue-distractions. A creature could get mired in her mind – and all to often, Luz Cresceno did. Tonight, for example, as she made tired trails in her new home. Though her den lent warmth to an aging skeleton, the sap had risen in her again (as it always did) to leave, to be out and so abundantly about. Had she not stumbled on a shape surprisingly familiar, the sensation might have inspired her legs to stagger, tumble, rove and ramble until that mist-laden land lay far behind, a distant recollection of leaden hearts and memory-ghosts. (So many of them not even her own!) She was not so fortunate. Luz espied a lupine-shaped something on the bridge, and it tugged on certain strings until she found her feet on the same wooden structure, urged forth by the most dangerous of sensations: deja vu. Proximity revealed a familiarity with this beast (dressed fetchingly in copper colors and brass shades) and a half-recalled conversation brimming with parries, small word-plays, flimflam banter. Curiously enough she found no name, lurking amidst other dusty details in that memory, but it did perturb her greatly. His body played traitor, now; his thoughts were not light ones, or else his stature lied better than the best of silver-tongues. Another day (a summer one, fraught with butterflies) she would have turned away, abandoned him to introspection and bridge-thoughts. Yet today was not such a day. Today she was older than she’d ever been, and her bones were like fierce ice below her skin, and her eyes were but gem-intimations below a curl-tumble – a testament both to the trying winds and the odd privacy of her thoughts. “Hey there, familiar,” said a voice amid the diamond-dust winterland, revealed by process of elimination to be her own, “you look so down.” Her posture didn’t exactly exude the sort of saintly kindliness that might have coaxed a confession of bad-day incidents, perhaps even a bit more. In the stead of various other poses, she elected to remain absolutely herself: chin lifted, shoulders slack, hip oh so slightly tilted, hands curled in disuse at her sides. (These are the things that Luz Cresceno is made of.) Only her face seemed out of place. Those amethyst eyes hadn’t altered a bit from their usual low-lidded, long-lashed regard – yet her mouth wore no lopsided smile, no suspiciously askew grin. It was a simple line, and like all lines, it could go either way.

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