Written for MirSan Week 2016, Day 1: First Signs

The first time he glimpses at her, he thinks he sees a ghost. She is nothing but the residual spirit of a warrior with one foot out the door, merely playing out her final act of revenge.

The first time he sees her, when he really looks, he sees a noble statue bold and broken. He wonders if he lays his fingertips to her skin, will he feel cracks in place of veins?

The first time he hears her, she's wailing with abandon, tears running down her cheeks. He expected them to wash her away, to erode the bits of her skin still intact. Instead, they fill her split seams with gold, and fill his heart with a forlorn longing.

The first time he touches her, he's surprised when his hand finds smooth skin instead of jagged edges or perhaps, nothing at all but air. His touch is the first solid contact between them, and it cements her existence in his mind, where he hoped she'd turn out to be a ghost after all. But, the spark he feels jolting through every nerve in his body means that she's corporeal and so is his uncontainable love for her.

The first time he tastes her, she's wrapped all the way around him and every inch of his skin burns as she seeps into all the voids in his soul, molten and shining like the sun, fusing them together. He turns her skin pink beneath his fingers, evidence of the blood that always ran through her veins, and he wonders how he ever considered that they ran empty or that the most reliable part of his life could be a mere specter.