There is nothing more glorious than the sight before me; Polly, happy. And so, I think the rains are quite possibly my favorite thing.
And baring her breasts to me - I will not diminish the magnificence ofthatparticular sight. She is surely made in the image of the Goddesses -she must be. Nothing could be more sacred.
Polly interrupts my trance-like musings without even opening her eyes while she addresses me. “You’re staring at my tits, aren’t you?” she asks, her arms slowly swaying at her sides as she counteracts the gentle tugging of the river’s flow.
“Yes.”
“Pervert.” The word is said like a half-hearted accusation, but it is accompanied by a smirk, and the lifting of one of her eyelids.
I have no defense. And so, I just tell her, truthfully,reverently, while all the rains fall around us, “you areso beautiful.” The words fall not only from my mouth, but from my heart. Truly, I did not dare hope that the female the Goddesses deemed to gift me would be as wonderful as the one in my dreams, but she and Polly are one and the same - and somehow, in the flesh, Polly surpasses anything my dreams could conjure.
She stops floating on her back and turns to face me, only her shoulders and head peeking out from the waters now. Polly does not say anything at first, she just looks at me as though I am a riddle told around a fire that needs to be deciphered. Finally, she shakes her head and starts to turn away. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I reach out beneath the waters to catch her wrist, preventing her from turning from me completely. She pauses, and I can feel the reluctance in her to meet my eye. When our gazes finally do meet however, I do not see the female who just moments ago had been teasing me about my uncontrollable perverting on her, or the one floating on her back without a care in the waters. There is something hardened in that look she gives me - something hardened, and yet vulnerable. Her expression isdifficult to understand as she stays there, pretty lips set in a hard line, and her eyes looking… almost dull. Even her mane - her beautiful purple hair - she lets sopping locks of it hide her beautiful face. I want to push them back - toseeher - but I do not think this Polly in front of me would like me to.
Instead, I say nothing, my grip on her loosening a little beneath the waters until she is able to give the gentlest of tugs and slip her wrist free of me.
Chapter 11 - Polly
The downpour of rain was fun for maybe the first forty minutes. There’s something… I don’t know… almostspiritualabout floating on your back in the water, raindrops falling all around you while you justlet it happen. Embrace it. No ducking for cover or dashing into a building. Just…feel the rain.
But then it just kept coming.
And coming.
And coming.
Long after Aloryk and I climbed out of the river, the rain continued. I was clean now, but my pajamas were rapidly getting soaked as I scrambled to put them back on. Aloryk had kept his loincloth-kilt thing on the whole time, but it seems to be made of thin leathers and skins so it didn’t hold onto much water - neither did his feathers. Well, the badly injured wing looks quite bedraggled, but the right one just has the raindrops beading and running right off it.
Strange how quickly I could go from laughing, floating on my back in the rain to darting over to the nearest tree with the largest leaves.
“I would not shelter under that one if l were you, my Polly,” Aloryk tells me as he leisurely follows to where I’m ducking under a huge, black leaf, using it as an umbrella.
“Why?”
“The singing spider likes to make that particular tree its home and although-”
“Spider?!” I yelp, leaping away from the tree while I frantically dust imaginary spiders off my whole body. “Where?!Where?!”
Aloryk’s chuckle is low and honeyed. I can barely hear it over the constant pattering of heavy rain. “You are fine,” he says, laying a large, warm hand on my shoulder. “They do favor those types of trees though.”
I glance around, looking for alternative shelter. Being in the rain isn’t particularly fun anymore, not now that I have soaking wet PJs on.
“Here,” Aloryk offers, sitting himself down on the jungle floor and opening up his good wing. “I will shelter you.”
I make a sort of half-step toward him before faltering. “What about your injury?” Aloryk merely smiles that dangerously handsome smile of his and shakes his head before jerking his insistence that I take refuge under his wing. I follow his urging, throwing out a weak complaint as I go.
“Are you sure this is comfortable for you?” I ask, sitting with my legs pulled up while I hug my knees to my chest. Aloryk holds his wing out over me, the sheer mass of ink black feathers falling around me like a curtain. His feathers have pretty little lights peppered on the tips, too. It makes me want to reach out and run my hand over them, but that seems… kind of intimate.
“It is fine, female,” he replies, the rain still pelting down on his head while I’m under the canopy of his wing, listening to the drops pitter patter and roll off his feathers. The sound reminds me of a specific time in my childhood - when my dad was still around before… before the truth came out, and Mom made him choose. The sound of the raindrops on Aloryk’s wing above my head sounds so much like some of the camping ‘trips’ my dad would set up in our back yard come rain or shine. When hewas home with me and Mom, he was definitely the ‘fun dad’ and would set up our tent, fill it with blankets and pillows, and run to the store to get my favorite snacks. He’d play shadow-puppets, make up his own version of fairy tales, complete with funny voices and teach me card games that we’d play well past any normal nine-year-old’s bedtime.
And then, in the morning, he’d be gone for ‘work’ again, and my mom would be left to take down the tent, tidy up the blankets and cushions, and deal with a cranky little girl who was experiencing a sleep-deprived sugar-crash.
I remember when she’d made him choose. It was raining that day and the tent was still up in the backyard. I’d hid in there, listening to the rain because Mom and Dad were arguing. I later found out what that was all about, and why my dad never came back.
The tent stayed up in the back yard for four years after that, cushions, blankets, deck of cards and empty candy wrappers still inside like a weird historical display of the last time he was here - the last time he was my dad.
Until the day I set fire to it and burned that old tent to ashes.
