They sat on the shore of the lake, Boy and Girl. Everything has already been said, the last whisper echoed in the folds of the neighboring mountain, settling comfortably. Deafening silence laid their ears, only the skaters slid on the mirror with a cavalry tramp.

It was time to kiss. Both the Boy and the Girl knew that. Both were a little afraid of this minute, because she could scare away both silence and that weightless web of revelations in which they swaddled each other. The girl got up and went to the water. Silently went into her knee, shivered, squatted down and, pushing away, swam away. We must cool down, thought the girl. It would be nice, the Boy thought, and, leaning back, closed his eyes.

In the morning, half asleep, he waited for her return and was afraid of him. But more, of course, I waited, and even missed, counting the beats of my own heart. He threw a blanket over his naked body so that the dew would not dare to touch him first.

Finally, it splashed, and light steps caught up with his fleeing visions. She lay down near, wet, and silently laid her hand on his cheek. He flinched without opening his eyes.

Her hand touched and pulled back childishly. So schoolchildren, yesterday dragging each other by the hair, today suddenly squeeze against the walls and are afraid of touch, like an electric shock. He lay still, and waited for more. The hand came back and curled up into his neck. “Sleeping?” The hand asked. "No ..." - eyelashes quivered. Then the pilgrim fingers went on a journey through his body, and he was surprised how much they had to go. They attacked easily, walked in silence, their short steps were given to the blacksmith's battle in his ears. He knew where they were going, and the red-hot sun of his innocent flesh rose towards them.

Then suddenly the wind blew - warm, smelling like bread and wine. He recognized her breath and realized that her face was very close. Before her lips touched his cheek, he felt a burn in this place. But instead of the lips, a healing tongue passed over the burn, removing the pain, like a random memory. And only then came the lips, from the touch of which the body went circles, as if from a stone thrown into the lake. Pilgrims swayed in the waves, but did not slow down and continued to move towards the goal.

He squeezed his eyes tighter, afraid to scare off what was happening. His arms and legs froze like molded metal, only in the groin the blood strokes sweetly pulsed.

And she suddenly pulled away all the way, leaving his body in a chilly orphanage - and immediately returned, as if she had grown up and angry with her adulthood. Fingers left - hands came and searched him from head to toe, as if he had stolen and hid something belonging only to them. The skin was stubbornly, shafts of prickly chills swept across the surface. His mind was floundering in the waves, but the groin met them with a stone mole, about which everything was broken - a storm, excitement, fear ...

Then the pilgrims returned, marched across the scorched earth with a final march, curled up for a short time at the goal of their wanderings, and finally left for good, across the green plain of Memory - into the snowy deserts of Unsuspected.

Visions flashed briefly in his brain: a huge mom covering half the world, a piece of white wall, a beggar old man on the steps, a photographic flash from a snowball that hit the eye ...

In the meantime, her body, like a cloud in the heat, moved from somewhere to the side, from above, from all sides. The first drops fell on his cheek. She must have been crying. He did not know this and did not want to know, closing his eyes more and more tightly. His heat receded in the shadow of her body, so light and strong. She covered him as a club lady - a six of six. But the Pure Six knew that today is her day.

Day of Hearts.

And, in a trumping rush, turning the world backwards, he was on top.

They moved to the beat, half-crushed by silence, knocking off the rhythm of all the clocks in the universe. Shouting alarm clocks, astronomers recounted the distance to the stars, shaking coming from the eyepieces of their telescopes.

He ran like a black horseman on his swaggering mare, dirt, dust, pieces of furniture, marble chips of statues shattered from under their hooves flew ... galloping faster and faster, just to run away, forever, for good, from this sticky and sweet nightmare ...

He called his pilgrims, but only the crooked roots of the sorcerous oak greeted him in the place of their last halt. And these roots, indifferent to the ground, protruded from it and clung to it, rooted with a victorious champ, raising a flock of bats above the crown ...

Breathed damp, like from a cellar. And along with the dampness the wine spilled out - an unknown, bitter, deadly heady ... How many years did it lie here, among the moss-covered barrels, waiting for the first traveler? ..

The mare pranced under him, dissatisfied with the delay, and called forward, to a very close goal ... He tore out the roots from himself, together with his heart entangled in them, threw out an empty bottle - and rushed off, without looking back, already realizing that break and rejoicing in it ...

...

Looking back, the Girl saw that the fog had come down. She was frightened a little, but did not scream and call for help. She was a very brave girl. She managed to get back to shore herself and was only mistaken for a meter or two.

She did not scream even when she saw her Boy and realized that he was dead. She just covered it with a rug. Then she lay down beside her and closed her eyes.

And she was not at all surprised when she heard the splash and felt how someone's pilgrim fingers set off, bypassing the morning dew drops and passing the ford water drops from the quietest, quietest lake in the world. © Mr. Kiss, One Hundred Splinters of One Sense, 1998–1999