Cold kisses

“Cole, where are we going?”
Lili asked, rubbing her arms against her body, desperately trying to warm herself. Cole was walking by her side.
It all started with a peaceful walk at the park. Walking slowly, talking about whatever and simply enjoying each other’s company. But, before they actually had the chance to realize, they were no longer at the white park, surrounded by kids playing to a snowball war. They were walking between long pale trees, crying snowflakes.
“I have no idea...But isn’t it beautiful this place?” He asked, amused by the silence surrounding them. He couldn’t help but grab his camera and start shooting at different points, with different distances and lights. He was simply lost at the freezed views.
Lili let him alone with his photography. She knew how important it was for him, and how much he liked to take his time to find the best representation of the scene he had in front of him, desperately trying to find the connection between reality and his mind. It was almost hypnotic.
She started walking around, not really following any kind of direction, but just looking at the beautiful collection of red flowers covered by winter’s tears, making them look fragile, made of crystal. She got on her knees, not worrying about her pants or even the cold, she just needed to rub, or at least see nearer the reflection of the color in the whole white blanket that the night before covered their lovely park.
After a while, Cole finished taking pictures of the place. He turned around, placing his camera back, looking for Lili, when he found her.

She was in her own world, totally lost in her thoughts, slowly and softly caressing the petals of the red bright flowers placed in a schematic way. He felt his heart sigh, as if the oxygen suddenly wasn’t arriving to his lung and he was breathing the inexplicable feeling she was able to start on him.
Time seemed to freeze, standing in a tensioned rope. Everything seemed to suddenly paralyze but her; but the angel, unaware of the feelings of a mere human.
Her pale green eyes weren’t loyal to the empirical history of the greenery of the fields, but dethroned the legend of the spring’s magic of nature with the enigmatic bright of her irises. It was like seeing a car accident; you knew you shouldn’t watch, that you should look away...But some addictive chaos didn’t let you.

Was she chaos? Yes, she damn was. Mostly for him, who totally lost the notion of time whenever she smiled at him. She was the most poetic way to describe human’s stupidity; how we constantly try to find perfection in the most superficial and expensive places when we could actually find happiness in something as simple as a smile. As her smile.

And still, he had the immense luck of being able to declare that this girl loved him as much as he loved her. He didn’t possess her, because the simple and mysterious power of nature should never be possessed, but they loved each other, in the same infinite way the bull loved the moon. He loved the retained chaos in her, the one that she only allowed herself to show with him or when she felt confident enough to be free. She loved the way he saw what the sun didn’t reflect, what slept under the skin.
And although he was saddened by the condemnation to which such an angel had been subjected from the day of her birth by a society that judges and punishes without ever asking (she, his angel ... Blessed the way the words honored him with said term, but there was never a more realistic expression to refer to her, an angel ... Perhaps his guardian angel) he praised having the opportunity to see how her emotions went unnoticed by the world (even for herself) but not for him: the way her eyes darkened with the impact of a bad new, more human than half the crying he witnessed in his life. The way her pupils traveled from one end of the page to the other, of a book in which she had allowed herself to get lost in. The insane way in which she whispered his name between lazy laughter, being perhaps many things, but not exactly good under the sheets late at night. Her smile; Oh for the love of God, what a smile! The wildest and sweetest smile that ever had the pleasure of contemplating ... And even provoke. Her sing-song laugh and her sure tone of voice.

There were so many, many reasons why he loved her, that he felt that if he started, not even with a capacity for eternal life would he ever end up numbering the reasons why he loved her. Because, every day, he fell in love with her and with the savage simplicity of her existence. It was a miracle, a gift ... An angel.

Lili seemed to come back to reality; the cold, the silence ... Cole.
She shook her hands, the smothered echo of her mittens as she stood up. Suddenly, she remembered how cold she really was, feeling her nose really suffer with the icy contact.
"Cole, can we ...?" She began to say. Her voice softly muffled when she realized that Cole was looking directly at her with a totally unconscious smile, with the camera barely separated from her face. Then, almost like a mirage, she remembered what it was that brought her back to reality ... A brief and quiet "click". A spring, a mechanism returning to its initial position ... A camera.
Cole couldn’t tell if it was the cold punishing the softness of her face or if it was the shame that always invaded her when she realized that Cole had got lost in her. But a soft reddish tone, almost pink, was quickly invading her cheeks, and soon after invading the rest of her face. Her lips widened in a smile, red from the cold. Cole felt his heart clench, and jump, and bend over on itself.