her echoes within me | JENLISA

Chapter 1

Golden leaves spiral from the sky the first time they kiss.

It’s been a soft autumn, and their love bloomed with the times. Lisa’s father was away on business. Jennie’s mother was stitching up war wounds at the infirmary across the way. Like most days lately, they found themselves drifting farther and farther from home, which was a relief for Lisa, ever eager to put distance between herself and the cold, empty manor that had served as a roof over her head for most of her life. Jennie, who had shared many a laugh and comforting embrace in the shelter of her small quaint home full of warmth, nevertheless found herself eager to follow Lisa anywhere, but especially the hallowed orchard.

It doesn’t belong to either of them. They aren’t certain who owns these acres stretching farther than the eye could see, beyond the shimmering horizons, some measurable distance behind their own homes, but they’re always grateful to capitalize on its relative emptiness. Just through the orchard lay a meadow, with naught but a single oak tree to spread its shade, and it’s always there that they find themselves wandering. Jennie has long lost count of how many afternoons they’ve drowned in the comfort of this tree, the usual sharp edges to her outings with Lisa inexplicably softened when the two of them came to rest at its trunk. It’s been marked with their presence for many years now, a small heart containing their initials they carved in together with the small bowie knife Lisa stole from her father.

Jennie is never sure if it’s the magic and mysticism of the tree itself, singular and towering, or the familiar and gentle tenor of Lisa’s voice as she reads softly to Jennie from the various books she could never be found without. Just as when they were children, Jennie would slip into slumber with her head tucked into Lisa’s shoulder, and when she wakes she would always spend the first several seconds pretending she hadn’t, if only to remain there just a bit longer, dappled sunshine her blanket, head filled with the sweet scent of her friend’s soft curls just beneath her nose and the sound of Lisa’s heartbeat reverberating in her own aching rib cage. Lisa never seemed to realize when she was awake. She would read on, softly, until Jennie stirred and nuzzled deeper into her embrace, until Lisa’s lips brushed across the top of her head, and her body in its entirety burned with something she could never name.

But she suspects she’s beginning to discover it.

She has felt this way for as long as she can remember, and when she tries to think back, pinpoint an exact moment, she finds it’s as difficult as recognizing the precise instance in time that her younger self learnt how to breathe.

She feels as though she’s been built with this yearning, this ache that suffuses every inch of her body, but in times such as these, when they’re tucked into this haven isolated from the world, it’s hard to feel the usual shame about it—particularly when moments alone give way to a different sort of fear when her monstrous appetite spreads its jaws wide and threatens to swallow the both of them whole. She’s not strong enough to resist reaching for her, fingers curling loosely into the wool of Lisa’s dress. The fact that it serves as the only thin barrier between her fingertips and Lisa’s skin is one that tends to haunt her at all times, but admittedly most when it’s late at night.

Lisa tends to have that effect on her.

It was, in fact, only two days ago that their reading led to an epiphany. For years, Jennie had swallowed down these strange and confusing feelings, had tried her best to ignore the way her skin lit up with each graze of Lisa’s body, how she seemed to glow even at mere proximity to her. Now the incessant swirling of her stomach felt heavier, fuller, in certain loaded moments where the air felt alive and dangerous, the equivalent of the tension in the sky moments before a storm. She had rattled off excuses for why she often found her gaze drifting to various features that shouldn’t draw it—the soft swell of Lisa’s lips, the sharp angle of her jaw and elegant stretch of her neck, the defined measure of her collarbones and the subtle shadows splayed over her chest from her corset pushing up her breasts, only ever seen in brief stolen moments when they changed near the other—sometimes even the curve of Lisa’s backside, the shapely line of her ankles beneath her pleated skirts.