Moving Images Challenge #45

STORM WARNING

She sat with her head against his shoulder, watching the waves crash ashore.  The wind was strengthening -- she could feel the storm approaching in her bones.  She swallowed the taste of fear that tainted her tongue.  He needed this.  The storms that raged in him needed the space to range free, to exist without the restraints he must place on them inside the four walls of his house.  She didn't know how else to show him that she was with him, other than to be with him when his soul raged.

His hands hung between his upraised knees, and every now and again, he clenched them into fists of fury, the knuckles white with tension.  He did not move or make a sound.  He did not shift beneath the slight weight of her head on his shoulder.  Once, earlier, she had tried to lift it up, to move away and give him room, but he had pulled her head back to its spot silently, demanding the connection she had thought he might not wish for.  She sat still, and waited.

He had made a large fire, and she was glad of its warmth as she stared out at the oncoming waves. They were still a distance off, but creeping closer, as the night grew dark as pitch, making the huge boulders morph into monsters. She wondered tremulously, as they sat looking out over the invisible giant that nudged the shore hard, what had triggered this latest episode.  They had not been in touch all week, but she had thought nothing of it, as she herself had been too busy to do more than remark on it in passing to herself.  So when he had called, two hours ago, and asked that she meet him here, the alarms had gone off inside her.  She could tell that  something was very wrong, but knew she'd have to wait till he was ready to tell it.  She sighed quietly, and watched the waves.

"I can hear you thinking, Andy!"  

His deep voice slid through her ears like liquid fire, warming her.  She heard the faintest amusement, and relaxed, though she made a show of  indignation.

"Can you blame me?" she asked with asperity.  "Your summons was more than usually dictatorial today!"

His chuckle warmed her further, and she felt the knots that had been gathering in her spine unroll themselves slowly.

"Is that what you think I do?  Summon you?"

The dark roundness of his tones washed over her, making her shiver in reaction.

"Isn't it what you do?"  she counter-questioned him. "Like a king commanding his subjects!"

Suddenly, his arm was around her shoulders, pulling her closer into him.  The move startled her.  He had never done such a thing before.  What could it mean?

"The ocean calls to me," he remarked, in a random shift of subject.  "Can you hear it?"

She remained quiet.  She knew he was not asking her a question to which he expected an answer.  He continued,

"On days like these, when storms push and pull at it, the energy burns me, like lightning crackling overhead.  I cannot resist."

He stopped speaking, but she knew he was not done. She had learned to wait with him, and had come to know the value of patience.

"I have been summoned," he said finally, after a long pause.  He chuckled again at his choice of words, and turned to face her, his arm still around her. "Will you come with me?"

She could feel the fine tension in the fingers that curled around her arm, in the hard chest that cushioned her side, in the tight thigh that sat rigid next to hers.  He spoke calmly, when he was anything but calm.

"What have I always said, hmm?  No matter what. That's what I said all those years ago.  I meant it then. I mean it now."  

She let her words sink in, and felt the tension begin to ease from him.  She smiled.  

"So, when do I have to be ready to leave?"