The room is still in the early morning. The mansion is still in the early morning. Life aside from the overly eager chippys waits just a few more minutes before beginning another day. With the curtain drawn the sun can do very little to force its way into the room. So it leaves it in its darkness and moves on to more welcoming, less hostile windows.
She sits, hunched over just slightly. Perched at the end of her small single bed, facing the simple vanity that has no mirror attached. She is dressed, has been for a while now. Jeans, long sleeve blouse, long brown tresses tumbling around her shoulders marred by a carefully parted white streak. An outfit anyone might wear on a breezy fall day. An outfit only she could be nude in.
She is still bare. Still not covered enough to go out amongst others. Bare hands fidget in her lap, scared of the entire world. In their trembling, naked grasp lays their and everyone else’s salvation. They are heavy in her hands. Thick, double layered. Lightly her fingers pet the soft, green cotton. The tips of fingers run slowly over the palm of one of the gloves. The fabric there is not quite as soft. Instead it is well worn and crushed, smoothed down yet still firm enough to continue the wrinkles from the other side.
Her hands shift slowly, moving the gloves to study the tips more carefully. The color there is faded slightly, from both all the harsh surfaces it comes into contact with and the strain of her nails pushing against it. Testing each tip with its appropriate finger the thumb is by far in the best shape still looks brilliant and untested. Still fresh and ready. The index finger, however, is tarnished on both gloves. It suffers from the effects of being too eager, wanting to touch too much, ran along too many surfaces that were no good for it. A few more passes over the material proves that neither glove has a tear or hole in it, perfect barriers.
She turns one glove upside down and gently pulls at the elastic on it. It too is still strong, able to keep them in place. She tests its partner only to find it has the same unrelenting grip.
Then her thumb sneaks inside one and begins to softly stroke the fabric there. It is not as soft as the top part of the outside of the glove nor is it as smooth as the palm. It feels almost beady and has a faint coldness from coming into contact with nothing but her skin. It isn’t damp necessarily, but has a linger feeling that it will never quite dry from collecting moisture. Along the outside edge the seam is thick and bulging, holding together all the layers of the glove in its tight grasp.
She sits for a few minutes more, just faintly petting her green gloves that are more of a dark grey in the abeyant light. As she sits there, her head bowed down, her hair slowly begins tumbling over her shoulder. More and more of the impressive mass falls forward, dangling over her face, until finally the ends of a long white strip land in a curl onto the gloves.
Soon she pushes to her feet, slowly tucking the white mark and its chocolate companions back behind her ear. She crosses her room towards the locked door as she lazily tugs on each glove over the dainty and delicate pale pink nail polish and onto her hands.
The hallway is vastly brighter, completely bathed in warming sunlight that is coming through the open doors and the large, cordial windows. She follows along the ray of light, careful to keep one step away from it, as it streaks towards the imposing main stairs of the overly resplendent mansion.
Her hands run along the wooden balusters as she descends each steps. She has no idea how the wood feels as it caresses her palm. But she images it is smooth, like cashmere, from kids and teachers running their skin against it for years. No, surely it wasn’t that soft, wood was very rarely soft. It probably feels like leather, smooth and warm from all their touches. To her it feels like everything feels. Beady and slightly cool cotton.
“Hey, darlin’.” He is at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her. Jeans, long-sleeved flannel shirt, hair pointy and wild, a normal outfit for a breezy fall day.
She smiles a small smile for him. For he is why she got up today. Why she gets up most days. He waits patiently for her and she keeps her languid pace downwards towards him.
When she finally makes it he is eager, tested by a pace too slow for him. He quickly pulls her towards him, embracing her tightly into his grasp. She folds herself into him and carefully tucks her head under his chin where her hair can buffer.
He rubs his cheek against the top of her head, making sure to cover her in his scent before they got out amongst the masses. His hand gives her shoulder one firm squeeze before it begins sliding down her arm. His finger tips faintly breeze along the back of her arm, around her elbow, and down the inside of her forearm. It moves until it reaches her hand and pushes it up. They both watch as he laces his bare fingers through her smaller, covered ones.
She turns away from the sight, burying her face into his chest. Through the glove she can feel his strength, the power contained in the muscles that were now tenderly holding her. But she could not feel his softness. To her he feels like beady and slightly cool cotton.
His head moves along hers again. “I love you,” he whispers into her ear.
Her body jerks with a muted whimper and the hand he has not capture flattens against his chest. Her sobs startle him, especially since she does not pull away, but instead pushes herself closer to him. He can’t see her face; it is hidden, covered underneath her hair. Unsure, he releases her hand so that he can wrap both arms around her, covering her body with his own, protecting her trembling form from the entire world.
Her hand goes to cover her eyes. Her own tears she can feel as they soak through the long ago jaded gloves.
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