If Atem Lived in my Head

Her Bookish Smile

            

Nuni POV

            I lay draped across the arms of the chair, Atem just watching me like he does. I ignore him and I ignore my life and I ignore everything as I let myself fall into the words of the book.

Atem POV

            I love watching her read. Her smiles are so genuine, her laughs unrestrained, the way her eyes light up during action scenes. It's beautiful, she is beautiful. She reclines across the chair, for anyone else it would be uncomfortable, but she is so small, she fits perfectly across the arms of the chair. Her head leaning against the back, her legs draped over the side. I wonder if she notices me watching her. She normally does but when she reads it's like she lets her guard down completely. I make sure she goes undisturbed as long as possible but someone always manages to disturb her peace.

"Nuni!" her litter brothers, although they now stand taller than her, rush in. Their hair is drenched in sweat, their shirts cling to them and there's mud smudged across the youngest one's face.

"Yes, Kitten?" she asks as she sets her book down and offers them her full attention.

"I'm hungry." He's a bit of a whiny one but Nuni doesn't say anything about it.

"Alright." She sets her book on the couch and leads the boys into the kitchen. "how about..." she scans the contents of the oantry shelves.

"Mac and cheese?" she offers.

"Do we have hotdogs?" the curly headed brother asks much more politely than the other.

"Yep, you want that?" she asks them.

"Yes!" the boys exclaim in unison.

"Alright, I'll make hot dogs." Nuni fills a pan with water and sets it on the stove "go play until I call you." she instructs.

"Thanks, Nuni!" The curly headed one calls back as they rush back out with their friends.

"You are a very good sister." I tell her.

she scoffs "not according to my mother." She dumps a few hotdogs into the water and returns to her place on the chair, the book opened in her lap. Her features soften as she reads, allowing herself to be vulnerable in this moment, in front of me.

"Your mother is wrong." I whisper but she is too entranced by her book to hear me.  I take a seat on the auto man and continue to watch her features shift with the intensity of the story in front of her.

you deserve so much more than this, Nuni I think it to her in a quiet kind of way, I'm trying to convince her subconscious. She's too hard headed for me to try any other way.

Nuni POV

            I don't mind Atem staring, he stays quiet so it doesn't bother me, but this book is so good. Great I think now I'm going to be emotionally destroyed when I finish it I smile at the fluff moment in the story. I hear the hotdogs boiling.

Just one more paragraph.