The trees stood guard in silence on every side, their branches intertwined in protection above and around. Moss was everywhere. It wrapped the trees and their limbs, muffling sound and muting echoes. It padded the rocks, softening edges and rounding corners. It blanketed the log against which the two lovers rested, and even carpeted the soil beneath them.
Sunlight danced in the canopy above, and where it fell through, it played over the moss, never quite able to be still. When the air moved through the trees, a thousand branches and ten thousand leaves kissed and caressed each other, and the sound rolled overhead like an ocean wave in the distance.
The only air that moved below was a breath of warmth that mingled with the sunlight on the young woman’s cheek and provided counterpoint to the cool moss against her back. Her lover slept with his head in her lap, and her hand moved in his hair, feeling the heat of his skin beneath.
Earlier, her laughter had rung out like a bell when he had leaned in as if to tell her a secret, but had nibbled on her ear instead. She had tickled him and he had tickled her and they were soon rolling over the moss together laughing too hard to breathe. Then he had kissed her with such force and urgency that her lips were reliving it even now.
Their movements had mashed and torn the moss, and there was a smell like cut grass in the air that mixed with the scent of the topsoil rising from beneath. She realized that her clothes were probably stained with green and brown from all the rolling around on the moss and dirt. She smiled. If you are going to stain your clothes, she thought, you might as well do it like that.
The sunlight and warm air were almost enough to put her to sleep. As she sat with her eyes half-closed and his head in her lap, contentment seemed to flow from her heart, through her limbs, and out her fingers and toes. Overhead, a songbird caught sudden sympathy with her joy, and warbled of love to the breeze.
-J.R. Willett
