C) Part 3

All her life her parents had tsked, Don't Touch. She had learned to
withdraw her asking finger tips, to love lingeringly with her eyes. Her
first word had been red, not mother.

Colour and sound, these were her friends. If you cannot touch, your
body becomes a shell only, a means of movement, the lonely entrance to
your mind. Sound dances without flesh, muscle, bone - never feeling the
loss; she wished she was air filled with music.

Waves' crashing laced the silence, higher higher till she could hardly
breathe, must drown in sound, unless she became a fish. She had not
blinked so long he swam before her

He could not be a wild thing, wore clothes - a rich blue jacket and
paler trousers - yet seemed untamed. The hill of his turned shoulder,
horizon of an unknown land, his hair live gold burned the space between
them. When she had learned all his back, the broadness of it, the curve
of his outflung arm, sprawl of his thighs to knees to shin, the silky
milky stripes of skin before his sea wrecked boots, she could no more
hold against the hidden magnet of his face

kneel beside, reach out
touch
solid other
that neither her parents, nor brothers know

guilt, fear

let go

longing, some inkling of belonging beyond wrong doing, again,
touch

rough wrinkled cloth, his shoulder beneath, firm, now, roll him
over

Cool pink as the still, swallowing hollow of a cowri shell flecked with
grit. Short sandy beard thick with it, as if she'd caught him in the
last moments of a change from sea thing to man; as if all the things in
the rock pool he lay beside were mixed as she mixed dabs of paint,
shaped them into something strange; his fingers, dangling in the
breeze-rippled water looked to sway idly as weed. Heart beat faster,
she withdrew.

Knees hammocked in uncountable grains of opaque light. Maybe each was a
man egg, waiting to grow to a pebble, a boulder, in the warm womb of a
pool. But sand is so strong! Great force would be needed to break out.
Maybe that was why he looked close to death, just beginning life.

She hauled his arm, heavy as thunder from the pool.

And why now? Of course, the storm last night! If lightning struck a
rock, it must be split. She could not be afraid of a new born, and yet,
reaching out to smooth the curve of his sandpocked cheek as she had
helped chicks from a too hard shell. The first touch tingled, she was
almost surprised her finger did not pass through it as water, grew
braver or more foolish, traced the cracked red of his lips. She was so
aware of his hurt, and maybe deep, unknown, of a break in the stone
casing of her days, tears fell onto his mouth, and she did not think to
wipe them with her sleeve, wished to lick it like she would forbidden
fruit bursting with juice, or drink in stories, untold by ink, knew she
must know them now or they'd be forever lost.

They were cold, tasted of blood. She'd gone so far she could not stop,
slipped her tongue between, trying to soothe the dryness. His teeth
hard as flood barriers. Opened, in a groan.

She lurched back to a crouch, ready to run. He didn't stir. The right
arm of his jacket was indigo wet from cuff to elbow. Salt limned every
crease of cloth, his skin, lashes, like frost. He was so weak, if she
didn't do something he would die.

Her water bottle! Fumbled off the lid. Tumbled a splash into her cupped
hand smeared across his mouth; his lips move, his tongue writes a rune
of ownership on her palm