Her Gentle Lands

It was a cold rough land where the winds raged in torment and the snows and rains fell as though the heavens were cursing the land that shuddered and shivered beneath them. It was not a land for the gentle and the graceful, for the delicate and the fine, so what she was doing there, so out of place in that harsh land, I never knew.

She had created a soft place, a world of diaphanous drapery and curtains. A slow calm place of warmth and peace where calm replaced the rough winds and the cold rains and snows could not penetrate.

I – from those tormented lands outside – was out of place there, too rough for her gentle world. My heavy hands tore through those delicate draperies and soft curtains. My voice set those fine hangings all shivering and shaking as though my words made them tremble in fear of my wrath.

She, though, stepped up to me, soft, naked and warm, scented from her bath, and took my rough hand in hers. It was like being touch by air, as though some gentle creature had taken me under its wing.

Later, she kissed the scars that creased my leathery hide and asked me to tell her their stories and how the world outside had battered my weary body. She promised to mend me, to heal me, to show me a new world far from those snows, rains and storms, far from the thunder, fear, death and cruelty that I had thought – up until then – was all I would know of this struggle we call life.