this is about the main characters from all the light we cannot see, whom i found inspiring and heartbreaking
(marie-laure is blind btw!)
and this book is so beautiful and overwhelming
—
Music: Where you are, Mayday Parade
She listens. One, two, three, she counts his heartbeats. She imagines the ribs underneath his coat, or what's left of it, moving along the breaths he takes. Is he awake already? How long have they been asleep? She couldn't tell.
What if they slept through the cease-fire? But the heavy sound of a shell detonates, as if it had heard her worrying, and for the first time a sigh of relief escapes Marie-Laure's throat. There is still hope, they will find a way out.
On her right, the floor creaks gently.
"Are you awake?" she whispers, straightening up to sit cross-legged. They've slept inside the hidden room behind the wardrobe.
"Yes" his voice is raspy, but to Marie-Laure it flows light blue, dotted with little bees carrying bolts of lightning in their abdomen.
"What time do you think it is?"
She hears him shifting to take a look outside.
"It's dusk."
She feels his fingers slipping onto her palm — he invites her to join him by softly pulling on her hand. They stand at the window. "The sky is pale, but it glows red and golden, like the peaches we ate yesterday," she could tell he is smiling. "There are white trails of vapour. They look like clouds, as if Saint-Malo was a cloud-fabric."
"A cloud-fabric," she repeats, half-smiling. "I like the idea."
"Me too."
The morning breeze brushes their faces, making their hair swing and their eyelashes flutter.
"What do you look like?" she asks after a while, eyes closed as she tries to picture the world Werner has described to her.
Werner's gaze sets on her. He is surprised; she is beautiful. The sun makes her freckles come to life, her face is fire and bravery and all the things he isn't. He doesn't want for her to go, he wishes morning could last for a day, for two days, for a month, forever.
He has let go of her hand, but it is only a few millimeters away. "Do you want to find out?" She nods and he takes it again, setting her fingers on his cheek. "Most people say I look younger than my age."
Marie-Laure's digits don't move at first, but as he speaks, they begin softly running along his skin, passing on his nose, right cheek, then heading lower, sketching out the contour of his lips.
"How old are you?"
"16. How about you?" she doesn't answer immediately, which makes Werner blush as he remembers it is inappropriate to ask a woman her age, especially when he had only met her. "I am sorry, mademoiselle, you don't have to answer."
"I am 16 as well," she says. Another ressemblance.
He tilts his head and her fingertips tangle in his hair. Rough silk, shorter on the sides, longer on top, parted on one side of his head, now messily falling on his milky forehead stained with dust. Werner lets her hands travel freely, finding comfort in Marie-Laure's contact. She is close, he can sense her warmth and sadness. Some of her freckles are bigger than the others.
"My hair is light, almost white" he explains. "You wouldn't want to see me during summer, I wouldn't last an hour without turning red."
"Like a crab?"
He doesn't know why he is telling her this, but it makes her laugh so he laughs too and it feels liberating, it feels like the wind from spring afternoons of his childhood, when him and Jutta would slip away from Children's House after dinner and listen to the crickets and the trees.
"I have never seen a real crab," he admits.
Her hands are on his dark green uniform now. If she could see him, he thinks, she would hate everything about him. If he could, he would burn everything that made him a German soldier.
"Did you come here because you wanted to find my uncle?"
Marie-Laure lets go of him. It is only his mind playing tricks on him, but he feels colder already.
"Yes. And I heard you on the radio, too. You were reading Jules Verne."
They fall quiet. The sky is getting bluer, the last buttercup shades fading in minutes. Another shell blows. He will never see anything like this again. Nothing like her. "You were making me braver with each word. I have never done anything good."
"Werner," this time, it's her who takes his hand. "You are kind to me. You must be good."
