Page 131 of The Surviving Sky
Iravan swallowed in his sleep. His curled fingers relaxed as he breathed out.
“Maybe we ought to have let go of each other when we had the chance,” she whispered. “Maybe I should never have come here. But maybe that was never possible with us. If you would wake, we could find a way out. Don’t you think you should wake now? Isn’t it time, my love?”
His eyes flickered.
He swallowed again, and then his breathing changed into a rhythm of wakefulness.
Iravan opened his dark, almost-black eyes, full of awareness and purpose, as though he had never really been sleeping. He gazed back at her.
She had known this would happen. Of course she had. Her senses had adapted to his rhythms. She’d spoken, and he had listened.
Iravan pushed himself up to a seat. She moved away, scuttling back, not daring to touch him anymore lest she break the spell.
“Ahilya,” he said, and his voice was clear.
“I’m here,” she breathed.
44
IRAVAN
Iravan filled his gaze with her. She sat inches away but didn’t touch him, although he was sure she had been running her hands through his hair only an instant before.
Afraid, he didn’t make a move either.
Instead, he stared at her before he disappeared, beforeshedid.
He waited on the crossroads of the mountain path; he could see himself standing there in eternal agony. Was this vision another life? Had he lived this already? Washe…he?
Ahilya’s long, wavy hair rippled to her waist, undone. Her terra-cotta skin glowed with vitality and health. And those big eyes, beautiful and bottomless, watched him with wariness and intelligence. She wore rudra beads on both her wrists now, several of them; more peeked out from below her kurta, over her neck.
“Is this now?” he whispered at last.
She tilted her head. “Yes,” she said, wonderingly. She sounded like she had known the answer but not the question. “Yes, I think this is now.”
“Are you real?”
“Areyou?” she replied.
He seized her and kissed her then. Under her grip, he felt his own solidity. She smelled of jasmines and sandalwood, and as he inhaled, his own lungs expanded, took shape,became.
She kissed him back with an abandon he had never known from her before. Something had happened to her, a silent metamorphosis. She was Ahilya, more herself than ever before, and so, morehis; his Ahilya, finally.
They unclothed each other, but it wasn’t in lust; it was in discovery. Their hands wandered everywhere, squeezing every muscle, touching every inch of skin. Iravan watched his fingers run through her hair, watched as they caught in the tangles. A weight of presence, ofmateriality, descended over him under her touch. It was as though his senses had relearned their purpose; the gravity of this body,hisbody, had reasserted itself. The two came toward each other together; there was no rush, this wasnow, as much as anything could be.
When they broke apart, Ahilya was gasping, as was he, both out of breath. That alone seemed so bizarre, so natural, that a strange peace settled inside of Iravan in the recognition of the idea that this wasrightand as it should be. His forehead touched hers. Her shoulders trembled under his hands.
“Iravan,” Ahilya whispered against his lips. “I think the architecture has been watching us.”
“No,” he said. “Not watching us. Nothing as base as that. This issomething…different.”
An urge to laugh grew within him. Ahilya had never been modest, not when it came to their intimacy, and he had hardly been reluctant when the mood took him over. The copse almost resembled the very one they had stripped each other in hastily, right before they’d had their bitter fight.
Perhaps she was thinking of the same thing, the absurdity of returning to a place that looked so much like the one so many months past. Ahilya inhaled deeply. “What do we do now?” Her voice didn’t quiver. Shesounded…amused.
Iravan reached for his clothes, but his eyes fell on his skin, registering its color for the first time. He stared at his arms and his legs, down at his chest. In the sparkling dust of this place, he had not noticed before, but his skin glowed with the blue-green light oftrajection—ofEcstasy.
Within his first vision, Ahilya stared back at him. She had already put her clothes back on. Her sleeves were rolled back as his had been so often, a more comfortable manner for the rudra beads on her arms.
