A Steady Situation, Part 2
Taking a moment away from the flickering and steady effulgence of the candles, she sifted around the perennial gloam of her office, combing through her various well-elucidated but half finished projects. Designs and scripts and procedures flowed through her hands like a ream of velveteen fabric, marked by mathematical and practical scrawls in a strange art. The candles seemed a room of moons, waxing and waning, dancing and resting, the draft from her doors sending their incandescence blazing into a bizarre and esoterically contorted symmetry. She folded her arms.
It was her own design that that space was devoid of any aperture to the outside, save the exit. But the inspiration in that room was something like a pool of underground water freezing into crystals, and she, like it, felt the need to expand outwards. Interrupting the reverie of that silent place, she quietly opened the door, and closed it behind her again.
Bright scents and bright sounds and bright textures exploded like a teapot on the boil for a week. And yet, these things intrigued her pleasantly- from a kind of receptiveness that she had denied herself for her work. Outside, branches waved and leaves rattled in a quaint tirade. As was her custom, she felt her eyebrow raise and the corners of her mouth turn up.
A sizzle of vegetables frying emanated from downstairs, and the sudden pang of hunger registered itself to her. It seemed a rudimentary question of what exactly was being made, but now much more intriguing than sundry manuscripts and their petty construction. There was, also, the matter of company.
The gears of her affect began to grind, and she started to reacquaint herself with the necessary mindset. Those basic social questions recommended their value to her and she felt eager to share, and their work was always a point of mutual interest.
She knocked on the kitchen door, opening it. Mutually beaming, they exchanged casual greetings and locked words. They joked about his pincushion fingers and her toilet paper scribblings. The scent of mingling spices made the room a box of firecrackers.
And, like a set of firecrackers having sounded out in a great midnight diorama, they noticed the silence and the subtle radiance in each other’s eyes. He began to dish their meal, and she set about a pair of glasses.
