MalloS

Did he know when that was? Did you know something if you’d known it once, but had forgotten since?

It was an age-old question which had dogged educators for eons, and had possibly even crossed Croe’s mind in the years before she knew who she was. For the first time, Mallos empathised. The memories were there - hazy, indistinct, beyond recognition. It was as though someone had hit the mute button in the middle of a conversation, and he was now trying to read lips without context or training.

It didn’t help that he couldn’t follow a train of thought to the end. Every time he felt he was getting close to meaning, another half-baked memory or irrelevant idea crashed into the one he was thinking about and derailed it. Different details in the room stood out, each vying for attention. The shards of broken glass glittered aggressively under the breathy bioluminescence: the biggest repeat offender for stealing his patchy attention. On the opposite side of the room to the broken glass, a few cup-shaped black leather chairs and a matching two-seat sofa had been blown onto their backs and thrust against the wall. Broken glass was embedded into the leather like jewels. Mallos’ dark eyes lingered over a particularly large shard, chillingly shaped like a dagger, lodged in the wall above the sofa.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, releasing her hand without meaning to. He took a few steps to the side to study an overturned table. It must have been glass-topped: its surface had shattered, adding to the crystal carpet and leaving only the gleaming chrome legs.

There had been something on the table. Mallos didn’t know what; didn’t know how he knew. When he tried to think about it further, his brain jumped to the details of a liquor cabinet which had been thrust up against a side wall. Dark skid marks across the floor showed the journey it had taken from a few feet away. His fingers moved of their own accord, running along the edge of the table legs. He didn’t notice until he registered pain in his left hand. He glanced down. He’d picked up a piece of glass from a still-standing side-table and had been turning it over in his hand; a sharp edge had sliced cleanly across the tip of one finger. A thin trickle of blood coloured the edge of the glass. He dropped it, pressing his fingers against the heel of his hand to stopper the blood flow, and tried to stand still for a moment. It was no good. Energy thrummed through his veins, driving him to move.

There was nothing here to fiddle with, to deconstruct or build. Mallos turned on his heel, feeling the glass crunch under his boot.

Not your boot, a voice in his head reminded him, these aren’t your clothes.

His brain tried to divert, to consider whose clothes they were then, and where his own were. He pushed the distraction away with more success and closed the short distance between Croe and himself. He curled his hands over her hips and leant in, pressing his lips against her temple.

“Dance with me,” he shifted one hand round to her lower back and found her fingers with the other. “Please.”

Please wasn’t usually a word in Mallos’ vocabulary. Neither was I don’t know.

He couldn’t tell if the pulse beneath his fingertips was his, or hers, or their hearts beating as one. Moving in time to imaginary music and thinking about what his hands and feet were doing provided some clarity and structure to his brain, enabling more linear thinking. He pulled Croe a little closer at the waist, revelling in her touch, her sea-salt scent, the quiet hum of her power beneath her skin. It may have been his imagination, but he could almost feel the magic surging through her blood. It was electrifying, breath-taking.

“I think there was someone else here,” he said after a moment, not wholly committed to the idea. It was more of a feel than a think. It was the best he could offer her for the moment, though; his brain had already fired off in another, closer, more intimate direction. “Is this how it felt,” he wondered, “when you first met me?”