Skins

Part One.

He was the colour of oiled wood. Flickering by flamelight. Frenzied in his eyes, twitching in his limbs. Shadow pooled under his brows, at the corners of his mouth, in his collarbones. He looked at her with both the felicity of Saraswati and the blazing heat of Surya.

The movements weren't hesitant. Not cold. Neither knew what to do, but rebellion's ancient embers caught wind and burst into a scintillating mess of forbiddenness. Desire hung heavy around them like heat. The cries grew more desperate. Clawing. Fire rose to a fever pitch. His skin grew incandescent and shimmered in sweat; hers the same. An unbearable white. Too hot. Not together, not apart, but almost separately and nearly simultaneously, reality smothered them and they fell silent.

She felt the terror in his arms. She knew it was wrong. His ribs moved softly with his breathing. The air quivered in horror at what he had done. At what she had done. At the veto of it all.

'Ironic, isn't it?'

She spoke in unfamiliar southern English.

He moved his chin down and kissed her out of fear.

'The irony's in the geography. Not us.'

Us cut through the air like a hot blade.

*

Siddhanth ran through his world like words on a page. He was a skinny boy of twenty, caught awkwardly between manhood and childishness, with jungle-like hair and dark eyes. Greyish-purple scars ran along his shins and arms, and when people asked how he attained them, he laughed a white smile full of large teeth and told of his collision memoirs. He rolled his 'r' and warped his vowels. Siddhanth walked the streets of Bangalore barefoot and wild.

He changed like the monsoon winds.

*

His first impression of her left the smell of old parchment and ink in his mind. She said nothing to him. A tall, pallid European girl, longboned, sweetfaced, whiteskinned, trailing golden hair along her hips. He was stunned at her physical eloquence. The ease at which she moved through a country that clearly ran in the opposite direction.

It was a fleeting flicker of a moment. A flame of panic. Her shoulder brushed against his. I shouldn't have looked. I shouldn't have looked. I should not have looked. The market froze for an instant, twitched in disgust, and came back to life. The girl continued walking, white cotton frilling around her ankles like frothy seafoam.

As soon as he saw her, the politics of attraction jarred their foot in the door to his logic. Everything in Siddhanth's brain slowed to a viscous stream of unreasonable thoughts. A small part of him panicked. Another part stopped. Why shouldn't I have looked?