The Miko

He thinks she’s prettiest in the morning.

Her hair – normally wild and unbound and never as clean as she would like it to be – lies flat and smooth, and it curls lazily around her, framing her face as the fog frames the morning. Her skin – which gets darker by the day – is soft and pale and slightly creased with the lines of her nylon sleeping bag. Her lips – which are already far too red to be considered remotely beautiful in this day and age – are carnally red, and parted ever so slightly.

This is how her lover would see her, he knew, and it tore him apart.

He thinks she’s gorgeous in the afternoon.

She has brushed her hair and it has regained it’s bounce – a triumph, to be sure. The sun plays tricks on her skin as she darts beneath the trees, their shadows dancing with her as she plays with Kirere and Shippo. And when she walks in the open, she tilts her head to the sky so that she can better feel the sun on her face.

Like a flower, she blossoms in the sun.

He thinks she’s beautiful at night.

She makes a fire and fills their bellies – and they don’t have small appetites. Especially not him. She bathes when she can, and when she comes back from the water, she has a glow about her that steams from something deeper than her smile.

She treats whatever wounds they may have had inflicted upon them during the day’s travels, and reads stories to Shippo. She is mother to them all, and she secretly admits to him that she doesn’t think that she’s doing a very good job. She crawls in to her sleeping bag – a plastic nylon – and sometimes it can take hours for sleep to catch up with her.

He loves her when she sleeps.

Her lips curl in to a smile and her quiet snores come out as puffs of breath as she dreams. He knows that her dreams take her to a better place than this, and if something comes too close to the camp, he gets rid of it quickly, quietly, if only so that her sleep isn’t interrupted. Her skin turns that color of the moon and sometimes he is scared that she has died in her sleep, for her skin is pale and her lips are dark and she is cold to the touch.

But then she wakes up, and her hairs lies flat around her face, and her pale skin is creased, and her lips are carnal.

He thinks she’s prettiest in the morning.