“Aqua Vitae” is a latin phrase meaning “Water of Life”
That was the starting line of her journal’s entry.
She thought about it for a minute, weaving the words in her mind.
…Aqua vitae…
What really was her Aqua Vitae?
Travel?
Love?
Sex?
Her feet had left the solace of her red -soled espadrilles and her toes had found themselves toying with the cold of the concrete floor, curling around the lifeless box shaped pieces of man’s creation, as if willing them to live.
Her eyes darted around, anxiously fixating on the entrance to the café.
He should be here any minute.
Well, him and the others.
She was always the first to arrive to their monthly meets, having taken a liking to feeling the energy of the space before it was corrupted by the animated chit chat of her book club members.
She loved the tranquility of solace; the act of being removed from actively participating in the goings-on and instead being silently present in the midst of other people’s Sunday afternoons as they happened.
The café was alive with memories. Moments frozen in her noiseless musing.
At half an hour early, she reveled in the pleasure of observance.
There was the mother, seemingly in her early 30’s, expertly juggling between nursing and sharing in the week’s tantalizing gossip with her obnoxiously loudly colored girlfriends; one with purple nails and the other with a hurtful bright shade of deceased pink on her lips. Oddly enough, they all looked beautiful – in an obscene kind of way.
She loved watching lovers’ hands entwine; there was always a couple at the café on Sundays.
A warmth washed over her as she watched this old couple speaking to each other in hushed tones, she nodding and he somewhat nonchalantly toying with her loose strands of silvery hair, occasionally glancing away from her cheeks to look beyond at their grand-kids (assumed) playing in the open yard.
How precious.
PLUS she could get to admire the tall, dark and handsome man (from a safe and calculated distance), who always sat lonesome by the solitary table near the birds’ fountain, ever immersed in a copy of the Financial Times.
She could tell it was the FT because you really can’t miss it, with its size and color and she had watched him long enough to guess that he was fixated on the Life & Arts section.
She smiled at his ankles that boasted a pair of stylish richly colored mustard socks.
Mustard socks!
Her eyes peered at him with intermittent sips of wine, her gaze travelling up the length of his calf; marveling at his strong thighs.
Good, thrusting thighs. This fact announced itself from the peek of muscle teasing at the fold of his khaki shorts.
Mustard, khaki and a side of nuts. She could eat him whole.
Him and his jaws.
And from the way the glass met his lips and the ice cubes on the table, there was no mistaking him for a beer drinker.
Whiskey. Neat. On the rocks.
Another sip of her wine and a familiar wetness developed between her thighs, pulsating in tune with her breathing.
This time, her toes circled her ankles, at the spot where she was shackled to the bed and a knowing smiled interrupted her gentle sipping.
Her attention moved slightly towards her left.
“Your cake, Miss”
The dark, moist decadence stared at her from a crisp white plate.
How be-fitting of the moment, in her private jones of things rich, dark hard and delicious, she couldn’t stop smiling to herself.
Somehow, all she could think of was flicking her tongue across the base of his knobbed head and sucking,wondering if he was the type to pull hairs at the base of fragile necks or let himself get carried away in grunted moans…
The fork in her hand had voluntarily distracted her and the succulent moistness in her mouth interrupted her lewd trail of thought.
Then, she spotted him, half walking, half running towards her.
“Hey!”
A quick kiss on both cheeks and he had helped himself to the cake, the fork passing between them like a baby passed on from embrace to embrace, blessings scattered in mother tongue around its nervous young mother.
She frowned at him, she wanted the last bite.
With a chuckle, his hand traveled up her thigh, resting on her knee and a kiss found its way to her forehead.
There was a comfortable knowing between them.
He could read her like a book and she could destabilize him at will.
That was how they were, like fire and ice, existing in a delicate balance, for one could easily destroy the other.
Perhaps it was in their creative nature, him in films, her with words.
An explosive co-existence, their entwined lives were a holy grail of magic and reality, each state wrapping itself around the other, fusing into a modern-day fairy-tale.
This delicate merging of their souls was created by each of them building a conscious and awoke love in the way none of their coupled friends had managed; with a sense of wild-hearted freedom.
That was why he’d noticed her staring down the stranger who sat lonesome by the solitary table near the bird’s fountain.
“You’re not his type you know”
“Really? Why do you think so?”
He smirked, biting his lower lip, suddenly in deep thought.
He glanced over at Mr. Mustard socks.
“He would want to control you, my pretty little thing” A stroke at her chin.
She cocked her head so that her forehead touched his.
“You darling are an exquisite thing. A bird with wings that should never be clipped, your soul is betrothed to freedom”
“You are so melodramatic”
A chuckle.
“I know baby girl, I tried it once…”
He was talking about the time he’d proposed to her and she had broken up with him, panic having taken the better of her romanticism and she had embarked on a solo trip to Bali in the middle of the night, going unheard of for 4 agonizing months.
When she finally returned home, he was a wounded dog, licking his open wounds on the thighs of other women he’d tried to create from memories of her.
And she took him in, nursed him and healed his wounds.
With her lips, she had erased the sordid memories of his licentious escapades, the taste of his lost and forgotten loves etched in the memory of her tongue.
His attempt of forgetting her had left a destructive trail of broken hearts and pelvics stained with his loss of her.
He had inserted, with every thrust, a memory, a belonging of her, a bitter recounting of the damage that love can do.
It was a thick feeling.
Thick and heavy.
The type that doesn’t wash away with tears.
There were days she could recognize her words, mid-conversation, when she met some of those poor women still holding onto threads of him; at parties, at his film showings, on text messages on his phone, on e-mails.
“You’re right. No-one understands me like you do”
He bit her lower lip and flicked his tongue across it.
“You taste expensive”
She laughed, glanced at the bottle on the far right to the table.
“Perhaps it’s because I have no use for shallow living”
This was the problem with having an unbridled creative energy flowing hot and boiling in your veins; the human condition simply cannot contain the flow.
It hurt, an incredulous type of pain that meant it was impossible to be contained into societal whims and definitions.
She had grown past the point of crushing under cynicism and judgement.
She had embraced her weird, made home with it and she carried it everywhere she went.
So had he.
He suffered her as a consequence of his insatiable need to feed off her energy. She was intoxicating to him and he had learnt, in those 4 agonizing months, that he could do without her but could not fathom the thought of being without her.
So, here they were; loving and giving.
She had caught the disgusted sneer of one of the clowns at the table of the breastfeeding mother as she now watched him and her lock lips and hands and legs, all the while, basking gloriously in the curiosity of the café.
Aqua Vitae.
There it was.
Shauri Yao.
The Art of A 