Short Stories II

Safe Haven

"Look..."

    His fingers ran delicately along the softness of her forearm, feeling the chilly skin wrapped and embroidered intricately with constellations of freckles. Sasha took sharp notice of the jolt of energy left behind each and everyone one of his touches.
    "Do you see how beautiful that sky is?" Sebastian released a contented sigh, pointing at the faroff moon fixated in the upper left of the tapestrated sky; the skies that were draped elegantly with the wholest of blues, the dark gradience raining down with the slightest dabble of silver caught in it's fall, all accumulating to an ornate masterpiece set high and proud right above them.
    "Focus on it... Breath it in..." With firm arms wrapped securely round her body, pulling her  tightly into an embrace, Sasha began to relax against the weight of Sebastian's chest. Just past the limp straws of red hair running down her back, the subtle breeze of his breath flushed the pale skin of her neck, sending favorable chills down the remaining slope of her back.
Taking brief notice of the way Sebastian leaned his head nearer her own, Sasha reached a small hand around the frame of his thin face, pulling his jutting cheekbone to rest against her own plush one. Blinking down auburn lashes, slowly, Sasha breathed in the sweet aroma of the night, catching a whiff of his natural fragrance along with it.
She wished, desperately, that they could remain like this forever. The two of them, closely knit underneath the vast protection of the skies, isolated from the ugliness of the world and encapsulated with love and never ending desire.
The sound of his voice woke her from her thoughts, reapplying gravity to the lost mind wandering through the clouds above them. His words, delicate and slow, trailed gently inside her otherwise absent mind, with an entirely un-formidable tone.
"If you can be entirely present right now, and really feel the wind and the grass underneath you, this moment will be yours forever... you'll remember every single part of it,"
The feeling of his soft whisper against her skin tenderly rose the fine hairs from the back of her neck, triggering a sensation of clement euphoria. She shivered, tilting her head back to sit on his shoulder.
"Every... tiny... part..." Sebastian cooed this into her nimble little ear, cuddling her even closer to his heart space, seemingly,  with every ounce of love that existed in his lean body.
"You're right..."  A genuine smile glistened on Sasha's face then, as she began to center her focus on everything around her. A rare brightness shined in the honey glazed irises of her eyes. The  strain previously riveting her mind suddenly felt as though it were simply washing away. Along with this, the brink of a mischievous smile curled at the corner of her mouth, begging for it's full expression.
"...And you're gonna have to be present with this!" Sasha exclaimed out of the nowhere, turning on her boyfriend, in playful hostility, to shove him roughly to the ground.
"AAHHH!" Sebastian cried out, struggling to endure the explosive tickles at his sides. A soft giggle escaped Sasha's lips as she dropped down to lie on his chest again, satisfied with her seemingly incessant tickle attack. Through a blur of excitable adrenaline, Sasha refocused her attention to the prominent rise and fall of his pecs, as she rode the stagnant rhythm of his breath like a sailboat amidst wavering waters. She could stay here, shrouded in a blissful high, for the rest of her life.
But morning always came, and she was never prepared for it.

    "Sasha Irene Jenson!" The angry call from her Mother, Genevieve, detonated from their nearby palace of a kitchen (or so it was treated as such, despite only being  a tiny closet sized room within.) Sasha huffed a deep sigh of apprehension before entering the kitchen, taking a moment to mentally prepare before waltzing into a kitchen potentially permeated with land mines.
    "Yes ma'am?"
Gen was a women who, for god knows what reason, decided to afflict herself with the redhead gene by obliterating her natural flaxen color for a more gaudy, atrocious red. She stood beside the stove top with a hand cocked irritably at her side, meeting Sasha's impatient eyes with an accusatory glare. As per usual, Sasha could already tell that the frustration embodying her Mother's eyes actually had little to do with her, but it was something that'd be projected onto her anyways. She was simply that special.
    "What did I tell you about staying out too late?" Genevieve only became concerned by her daughter's nightly absences when it became apparent that her other three children had not been fed dinner (this was while Genevieve was at home, fully capable of arranging a simple meal for the four of them, had she not been too busy marathoning soap operas with a glass bottle of whiskey at her lips).
    "Genevieve..." A lack of a parent to child relationship resulted in the loss of her
"Mom" title. Quite frankly though, Genevieve only minded it in defense of her own fragile ego. Never, if not hardly ever, did she show convincing signs of wanting to be a legitimate parent to Sasha.
    "You got home at ten o'clock last night, Sasha! How COULD you, when you know your siblings need you!" An accusatory tone flashed through Gen's stream of gruff words, her voice climaxing to a painful croak by the end of her sentence. Although sober, Genevieve was still exceptionally hung over from the night before, which in turn fueled her irritation with Sasha's behavior. To be fair, Sasha's actions were not entirely justified, as her siblings likely went to bed hungry; But Sasha could not separate herself from the unconditional love that Sebastian gave her on those starry nights alone with him. Alone with him, entranced by the wisdom of his words, and calmed by the soothing low-tones of his voice, Sasha felt disparate from her teasing reality. She felt... safe.
    Sasha couldn't help but cling to this feeling with everything inside of her.