Where Autumn Stays
It was like waking up from a good dream you can't remember. I opened my eyes and I could feel the comfort that dripped down through my muscles, all the way into my bones. I didn't notice until much later that the calluses had disappeared from my hands. I was more preoccupied with the fact that I was lying in a bed of leaves. I hadn't done that since I was a kid.
You were lying next to me, already awake and staring up at the canopy of fall colors that decorated the branches. The fire of your hair seemed to blend with the leaves tucked behind your head like a pillow. I remember wishing I could reach out and touch it, but I was too far out of the haze of sleep to be so stupid.
"Where are we?" I asked, because the look in your eyes made me think you were the sort of person who knew things I didn't, but wouldn't shame me for my ignorance. I felt it somewhere in my gut that you must be a teacher, or something like it.
"No idea," you said simply, and didn't even break your gaze from the sky.
I sat up, even though I was comfortable where I was, and I realized that the pain in my joints was gone. I moved as carefully as ever, but when I braced myself for the stab of lightning through my tendons it never came. I looked son at my arms and realized they were not my own. They were the arms of a young man.
"What's your name?" I ask.
"Autumn," she says, and for the first time she looks at me. Her eyes are gray and green, and my heart stops when they hit me. We don't say anything after that. We just look at one another.
When I realize that I'm staring I stop abruptly.
"I don't know where we are, but I've been here a long time. It's nice. The weather doesn't change really."
"Fall..." I said, "good season to be stuck in."
"My favorite."
"Mine too."
And then we sat in silence again. At some point my hand intertwined with hers and I let my fingertips gently caress her wrist. There was nothing there but it felt like there should be, like the pain in my joints or the wrinkles on my hands.
"You know I've been waiting a long time for you," she said.
"I waited my whole life," I said with a smile, and I kissed the part of her wrist where I knew the scars should be.