Hello, cherished reader! Today I begin an experiment, a short story that I will publish in short bits, serially, as I write them. I have only the first bit written and an idea where this is going, so I’m leaping from the aeroplane and building my parachute on the way down. If you’re up for this kind of writerly adventure, watch your inbox, and please leave me comments.
There is of late a feeling within me such as I have never known. Something natural, certainly, and yet miraculous, rising within the very core of me, coursing through my limbs, invigorating me. I feel expanded, solid, vital.
It is love.
I feel certain of this, though the sensation is wholly new to me.
How can I, one who is naive to such feelings, be certain it is love that grips me?
I know its name because I know what inspires it.
Her name is Mathilde, and she is most lovely, with a plait of blonde hair switching about her shoulders as she appears, cresting the distant rise and descending the forest trail toward me, the afternoon sun at her back limning her lithesome figure through the linen of her simple sundress.
Does she glow? She does. Each time that same sun through the forest’s canopy finds her upon her way along the path — oh! — how that luminous vision does cause me to abate my breath.
Does she float upon the winds? I think not, though she is small, and so buoyed in her stride by an effervescent passion of her own — I pray that hers is such a passion as to requite my own — that she conveys to the casual eye the lilt of a russet leaf borne along upon autumn’s meandering breeze.
Thus does she approach now, as on most days, in apparent ease and possessed of no hurry, glowing by turns in patches of sunlight, floating almost, and that feeling that courses within me quickens as her eyes of gold-flecked hazel light upon me, and her mouth spreads into a broad and generous smile. Her steps hasten as she nears, she rushes, and she fairly collides into my immovable form, wrapping her arms around my middle and leaning her sun-blushed cheek upon me. She whispers my name:
“Florent.”
In this manner and by these means do I find myself enchanted.
Beautiful, Ed! My detailed comments on Alison Acheson's Substack. You've got me hooked!