Halcyon

The silence lay between them, infinite, stretching all the way to the endlessly distant blue horizon, and beyond. The sun beat down, merciless now, so close to midday. They should be inside, she thought, I will burn. But it was the last noon, the last day, and the minutes and seconds stretched in infinity towards departure. Neither spoke.

The silence pressed heavily on her.

He kept his face turned away from her. She regarded his profile, admiring it in a detached way, but always obliquely, looking straight ahead, as if what mattered was out there beyond in the unfathomable blue, and not right here beside her, where his knuckles rested against her bare knee. His touch was so light that she could not tell if it was intentional, or if they had simply become so accustomed to the physical fact of one another in the past fortnight that the conjunction of flesh simply was: that they had slipped effortlessly into a new way of being.  

She shifted slightly, becoming uncomfortable with the silence, the motionlessness. At that moment, she realised that she was impatient to be gone, wishing for the time before to remain intact in her memory, pristine and perfect as the unblemished vista before them.

The clang of noontime bells from the nearby village brought them both sharply to their senses. It was time to take leave: to retrieve baggage, call taxis, make ongoing connections.

As they stood up to go, turning in tandem together like practised dancing-partners, she noticed that in the fierce midday sun, now straight overhead, they left no shadows.