Her Eyes

Twenty Five

"What is that?" Esmae asked, watching as Nikolaos carried large cardboard boxes into the cottage carefully.

He thanked the delivery man and closed the door before bringing the boxes upstairs slowly, Esmae following behind him like a stray cat.

"A new desk," he replied, placing the boxes on the ground in his office and rolling his shoulders back, feeling them crack. He sighed and rolled up his sleeves, grabbing his box knife from his desk, and opened the box, careful not to touch what was inside.

The office room was surprisingly bright thanks to the sunlight streaming through the open window. A soft breeze tickled the curtains and brushed against the surface of Nikolaos' desk and computer, cooling down the system.

He ordered the desk a while ago after seeing Esmae hunched over several times as she wrote, and cleared some space in his artistic, slightly cluttered office for her. There was enough room for a desk to fit in the corner of the room beside a shelf where Nikolaos kept his photography equipment and a printer. He had many cameras and lenses that he collected throughout the years, his favorite one staying on his desk, tucked safe inside its case.

"A desk?" Esmae asked, standing to the side as Nikolaos pulled out the materials that made up the desk. He flipped through the instruction manual briefly before handing it to Esmae, pulling her closer to him simultaneously. "Yes, a desk. Do you want to help me?"

She nodded, sitting next to him on the wooden floor gently, shivering as the cold wood touched her bare legs. Thankfully, she was wearing long socks, so her feet and calves stayed warm.

She opened the instruction manual, falling prey to the multiple languages displayed on the first few pages. She remembered them faintly from memory, but none of them stuck to her, as unfortunate as it was. She eventually found English between the Dutch and French, sighing softly as she ran her fingers over the familiar letters.

"Why do you n-need a desk?" she asked, staring at the pictures that displayed the order in which the desk should be built. She ignored the wordy instructions, not caring much for the letters that merged like a smoothie when she stared at them for too long.

Reading wasn't her strong suit.

Nikolaos chuckled, seeing her tilt her head at the manual. "It's for you," he confessed, nodding to himself proudly once the materials were sorted and organized.

The dryad's head whipped to him. "For me?" She didn't see the need for a desk. She didn't have a computer, or homework, or any type of work for that matter. She simply existed and found comfort in sitting on the wooden floor that reminded her of the outside.

She didn't say that though; she didn't want to seem rude and ungrateful.

"While I'm aware of your love for the ground, your back will not appreciate the way you bend over so much. It will cause problems later down the line," he explained, brushing a hair behind her ear and staring into her lush eyes that sang spring harmonies.

"Problems..." Esmae repeated.

"Yes, problems. You see, the human body falls prey to gravity more than the trees outside do," he began, using words he knew she would understand, "if we twist and turn in ways unfit for our natural state, we will –"

"Break," Esmae finished. Her mind went to a tree branch she once saw. It was fighting the wind as it shook from side to side. It lost its battle eventually and snapped, falling to the ground with a heavy thud.

She remembered the silence that accompanied it. It was deadly, more deadly than death itself.

Nikolaos stopped speaking for a moment, understanding the implications of her words. "Exactly. It doesn't feel nice to...break," he said softly, his gentle voice combing through Esmae's hair and making her shiver from the warmth it brought along.