We walked together through a vast field of irises. There was a depth to the darkness around us, and while it stayed what it was, I could see straight through it. In it, the outlines of the hills stood out sharply against the gray sky, and I could make out every tiny blade of grass, every mound on the earth far in the distance. If I looked longer and concentrated, I could see the web of veins on a leaf that was many yards away, or small black beetles scurrying among the grains of soil. Then I would be back where I was, walking with Francesco through the fields, filled with a profound awe I had never felt before.
We stopped at the foot of a small hill, and stood silent, looking at the flowers, tender and trembling in the wind, their golden-yellow middles winking at us like little eyes. They were mostly bright blue and, here and there, a rich, deep velvety violet that was nearly black. Occasionally, a lightning bug would glide above, glowing gently. So mournful, I thought, yet so happy, breathing with the mystery of the night, and the One who had made it as beautiful as it is.
'Look,' I told Francesco. 'Faces of the night.'
'Yes. They are all turned towards us now,' he echoed, a thoughtful note hidden in his distant drone. 'This must be the first time I feel I truly - belong here, Ursula. I feel I am where I must be, and I am part of what I see around. I have only just woken and opened my eyes, and the world has turned out to be wonderful beyond my imagining. Before that, I had been in some charmed sleep I could not shake off, and I was having nightmares. Or I was not there.'
I felt his heavy hands on my shoulders. There was something in his eyes that told much more than his words did, and I smiled at him, glad, feeling there was no need for me to say anything either. I buried my face on his chest and drew him close to me, and we stood locked in a tight embrace.
I freed myself quietly after a while, and ran my hands over the sides of his cheeks, over his shoulders and down his arms. Then, without fully realizing at the first moment what I was doing, I took the top stud of his black denim shirt into my fingers and, after feeling it for a bit, pulled it apart. I looked up and met his eyes, shining with a calm, concentrated light. He was studying me intently, his face serious, asking without words whether it was this that I really wanted.
'Yes, Francesco, I want you,' I whispered. 'Take me.'
I watched him slowly undo the other studs one by one, and toss his shirt aside, so that the flowers bent and rustled under its weight. He started to unbutton mine for me, and helped me take it off, baring the brown skin of my arms and chest. It bore that scent still, musky, but with a slight cool sourness, and feeling it seemed to stoke up my desire. I hesitated a split second and took off the tight sports top I wore for a bra, surrendering to him my body, which would from now on be only his, - and with it, but my whole being.
He threw me into the fragrant, wet flowers, and I heard the buckle and the triangle of steel on the tip of his belt click against each other. Then I was dizzy with his icy lips on my cheek, on my throat, on the tender space between my breasts, and while I caressed him, growing giddier with longing every coming moment, he entered me.
He treated me with all the unbridled strength of a desire that had been bottled up for entire centuries, so much that he had not even suspected that it existed. Now that it had become unleashed, he was not himself. My body tensed against his thrusts, and I bit back the shrieks brought by the sweet suffering of it. I wanted to breathe out - no, Francesco, stop, I can't bear it much longer, - but then it came, that moment of ultimate, total merging, and light exploded within me, wave after wave of it shooting through me in a myriad electric currents. I cried out, loud. I could not have enough of it, of touching his body which was no longer separate from mine, and I held him to me, wishing that moment would never end.
He abruptly went limp, and withdrew. Completely exhausted, I lay without movement amidst the crushed flowers.
'Enough,' he said with a sudden tiredness. He was looking at the sky, his eyes like cold green jewels. 'I cannot control myself. I will hurt you if I continue. I have spent centuries without love, without touching someone else this way.'
He trailed into silence.
'I have loathed this body ever since I became what I am. It had never been truly mine. I was thrust into it against my will, and I wore it like clothing that had not been made for me. Now I am trying to get inside it, as it were, and it does not fit. It is as some foreign thing and I do not feel it as I should have.'
'Why should you, Francesco? It's your own body. Yes, you didn't want it changed. But it was, and there's nothing that can be done about this, right? It is you, now, one of the things that make you who you are. Why should it be worth hating, then?'
'Yes. It was wrong,' he said very quietly and flatly, as one drained of any strength. 'But I need time to get over it.'
'I know, Francesco. And I'm sure you will,' I thought a little. 'You know - sometimes I get sad too. I see myself as a wrinkled old woman with white hair, sitting on a bench in the garden surrounded by my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I imagine myself looking back on my life which is drawing to a close, serene, sure that it has all had meaning, and it was good exactly the way it was and I hadn't chosen some other way to go, and I can calmly wait for death to come and take me. That's the true eternity, isn't it. But then I remember that if I became what both of us are, it was meant to be. Here and now, there is only Ursula the immortal.'
One of the irises hung above my face, its stem broken. I reached out and touched its petals; they were indigo, the color wet and intense where they were bruised.
'And if I'm lucky, I can see not only my children and my children's children, but their children too - and theirs - and theirs - and so on without end. Isn't that the greatest gift?'
I stirred, so that the cool, juicy leaves underneath me creaked, then crunched when I sat up. I got to my feet and walked over to where my shirt shone white against the greens and blues. I slipped it on and found my velveteen pants. The scent of irises was heavy in the air, - sweet, watery, tied closely to the flesh and to all those things that are firmly rooted in it. There, I thought; now we are also tethered to our bodies, and to the earth which might not have us back for a long, long time to come.
To the earth, and to each other, I thought with a surge of warmth as I turned towards Francesco, who was still lying on his back, his skin a glistening brown amidst the lush greenness. His features had become like those of a bronze statue, and nothing in them indicated what he might feel. But he was not the same. What we had just shared had violently broken all his barriers, and, though he had frozen over once more, inside he was still with me - had me in him, - and that would never change. And I, still full of the memory of his touch, and of his flesh within mine, had become melded with him, too, so that the two of us were a single whole.
'Remember how you said once that the other side means there's only one - you, and you alone? No, Francesco. The other side always means there are two.'