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The Roman Myth . . . Chapter Four the last breath
The last beating of Jasper Whitlock's heart died on the moss of his soul's burial ground. Far away, far from alone in the shadows and mildew, at the foot of the intimate moonlight and timeless cracked stone, laid underneath a blanket of southern stars was a newborn with eyes the color of his thirst for blood on his parched tongue; coating it like the sweetest nectar of all.
That field became his heart's casket. And so he stood there each day, dead of the boy he once was. 1893 was the year Jasper Whitlock would become a subject of 18th-century mythology. To taste blood and let it spoil on his tongue would be his last wish, wearing the smell of their blood on his sleeve like a cologne. Without the fire in his eyes, and ice in his veins, he had still been something before his turning. He had almost forgotten he had been made of flesh and bones, a brilliant mind, and crooked grins made from careful hands. Jasper can never remember much of who he was before overburdened with the sharpest teeth as sharp as bloody swords to swing in battle, hitting you like sharp stones flung. Before the years of darkness began to cloud over. But now he lingers to admire, the things he had so naively taken advance of.
For however long Jasper Whitlock Hale has lasted without a beating heart, he never felt more alive than when Wanda Gambet ran through his thoughts, her heartbeat playing on repeat like a broken record forming the words of a love song, a movie playing in his mind. Playing her part, then pressing rewind over and over again. A muse to sing, sailing in a sea of emotions, painful waters darkened by screaming dreams, halted between war and peace, no greater desires exist than the golden sun-touched woman.
Tossing the light duvet off her body, the subject of his gnawing impure thoughts, she got out of bed on two strong legs, her bare feet padded across the floor of her townhome, the softness of the sun's fingerprints sending goosebumps down her spine. There was a pulse rising from the bedroom, a perfume of violets, dampness, the freshness— the sense of spring hung in the air. Outside the windows lay trees fifty— maybe a hundred— years old, heavy clouds ghosting over the town, and the field of too-early young blooms steaming in a thick layer of fog, dressed in garments of sunlight. A thin haze of wet branches of oak glistens like a sea of stars against the sunlight.
The breath of sunlight had awakened color, the dawn of a new day was brought upon Wanda Gambet and Jasper Hale. The sun had shied away from the clouds that had burdened them. Twisting the cramps off the bones, Wanda's fingertips pressed firmly, massaging each knot and kink in her muscles.
A loosely fit topaz silk button-up top hung off her skin, matching silk shorts that cut off mid-thigh strapped around her hips. A sliver of skin was touched by the sun's golden mist between the hem of her shirt and shorts, between her legs, as her feet padded across the oak floors to the cold tile of her bathroom. While others still stirred and rearranged themselves in the sunlight, anchored down to their beds, tangled in sheets lost of the courage to lift from their mattresses, Wanda had always found solitude in the symphony of twittering birds who bask in their luck and rustling ferns, rodents lurking in the dawn, a blanket of wild red leaves, rising with the light.
