Ripples: Prologue

Night swimming in her diamond dress,
Making small circles move across the surface
Stand watching from the steady shore
Feeling wide open and waiting for
Something warm and tender...

That night, Zeke went from the grave to the lake as he always did, and watched her.

She never knew he was there; of course she didn't. Hidden in the shadows spreading like butterfly wings, he sat awed and silent to watch the trails left by the soft slide of her body. How beautiful she was - how utterly exquisite, moving smooth as warm oil on skin, carving gentle paths through the water.

He watched her with his lips parted, and his eyes huge and wondering in the darkness.

His hands pressed flat on the ground, his spine curved as a longbow as he leant to listen to her voice echoing out across the night.

Her music throbbed through his veins like the promise of a heartbeat next to his, a promise as yet unmade and unknown. He ached with every sound, each note plucking on the parts of his memory he had thought dead and snapped.

God, but she was beautiful.

And dangerous.

He couldn't help himself - every night, he swore he would not let his feet draw him down this path. Every night, he crouched by the waters, and threw back his head in a silent, unending scream at the agony and the brilliance of her song.

An atheist seeing God, he could not help himself.

In those stealthy nights, she was everything he had ever dreamed about - his impossible fantasy, his daydream creature, saying words he knew he would never hear. He had never seen her face, or even all of her silhouette. Only her voice, haunting him in the long and lonely nights. So long. So lonely.

Maybe he had passed her in the streets a thousand times. Maybe he had spoken to her, or argued with her, or lent her a textbook in his classes. Zeke didn't know.

He didn't want to know.

He couldn't bear for the dream to be shattered.

It was becoming harder and harder not to call out to her. Harder to leave when he heard her swim towards the shores so he would not see her as she was, but as he imagined her. Harder not to step into the light and declare himself.

But Zeke knew - he had learned it the hardest way of all - that nothing would ever match his dreams. He didn't want the return of that crazed and useless anguish.

No, he couldn't bear to know.

It never occurred to him that he might not have any say in the matter.

Now she's moving further from you -
There was nothing that could make it easy on you:
Every step you take reminds you that she's walking wrong