Rising Sun Valley Dear Fellow Traveller

She does not need the validation of the charming stranger-boy, but is it so bad to want it?

She would not cling to him like his words might pull her from her broken world into the safety and surety of his arms. Like so many women she’s seen bind themselves to the predominance of their masculine counterparts. Like her own mother had with her father.

A little voice urges her to slow; that she did not know this boy, that she would not ever fall prey to the loveliness of a handsome face even if he spoke to her handsome words, too.

But his eyes are blue and full of whimsy, and she is a creature of curiosity who wants to feel only the novel surge of this moment between them. And it is her choice to inhabit a world with him if only while the muffled storm outside carries on. Does Louis feel it too? She thinks he might in the way he draws close, admiring her tattered pelt like it is not a thing to discard, but to treasure. She has never before felt that.

She shivers and presses the crown of her head into the fur beneath his throat. He is warm and sweet, she feels the words as he speaks them and on her maw is a brazen simper.

“What if good manners fail to impress?”