Interhouse Fest 2016: In the Moonlight, Red (2 of 2)
At first Padma did not notice it. She had recipes to try, little baking explosions to contain. Parvati regularly sent photos of butterflies enclosed in glowing reports. Mum and Dad wanted to know if Padma had applied for a job yet. And Mandy had announced over Floo one night that she had proposed to Lee Jordan.
“We’re going to marry on the 25th of March!” Mandy had said, before cackling. “First day of spring. Isn’t it grand, Paz?”
Padma had dipped her spoon into the sauce pan with melted chocolate bars. “So that’s in two months?”
“Why not. We agreed we’ll be courting each other for the rest of our lives.”
“I’m so happy for you, you squirrel,” Padma had said with a smile.
“I’m so glad that you’re so happy for me, love,” Mandy had said, “because I have a request for my best mate in all the world.”
“She wants me to bake her an orange wedding cake,” Padma grumbled to Lavender Brown. It was a grumble of love, because Padma would always love Mandy and her inexplicable choices, amongst them: having vile raisins with cream like one would have strawberries with cream, and wanting an orange wedding cake. “Just imagine it.”
“I won’t,” Lavender Brown said, cheerfully. “I’d like for my imagination to remain untraumatised. D’you think this is a good potato?”
“It is.” Padma slid a bunch of celery in her own basket. She rather liked Muggle groceries, with their baskets and trolleys and plastic rolls for produce. “But - orange cake. It’s like a pink elephant.”
“Not for me. No pink elephants,” Lavender Brown insisted as she twisted the plastic bag with six potatoes and put it in her own basket. “Have you had lunch? Fevered imagination, I’m telling you. Alert the Rorschach constabulary!”
“What are you on about?” Padma said with mild amusement.
Lavender Brown shrugged. “Not much. No pink elephants for me, is what I’m saying. Although pink is my favourite colour.”
They advanced to the meat section. Lavender Brown ordered six steak cuts.
“Two weeks of rare steak sounds good,” she casually told Padma.
Padma almost did not notice but it had been two months since they started this. There had been a handful of chocolate cream cheese buns left in the basket, and Padma had insisted that Lavender Brown take home the basket. A week later Padma had pushed into that Muggle café with the plastic oranges to retrieve the basket and found Lavender Brown eating a “£2 chocolate cake.”
Lavender Brown had greeted her with, “Your chocolate tastes better. Thicker. More moist.”
That Saturday afternoon started with Padma surreptitiously Conjuring a fork of her own to take a bite of the chocolate cake slice and offer her critique, and ended with an offer by Lavender Brown to shop in the nearby grocery for dinner.
Padma had come and was introduced to a whole shelf of different kinds of butter. It had been almost orgasmic. Suddenly the world had been suffused with a gentle buttery glow. The glow had carried her and her armful of butter all the way to the till, where Lavender Brown had purchased three balls of yarn.
Padma kept coming back for the butter. And the eggs. Muggles did something with their eggs.
Padma stayed even as Lavender Brown had started chattering about knitting patterns. Padma remembered briefly wrinkling her nose. She also remembered trying to be interested since Lavender Brown had seemed interested with Padma’s solemn rant on cocoa to sugar ratio back in the café with the plastic oranges.
They had been really fun outings. Padma had to admit that she really how Lavender Brown could be so intent and determined in almost everything, from practising new knitting patterns to searching for a particular shade of nail polish.
It was only now that Padma realised how “grocery shopping with Lavender Brown” had sidled into her routine, four times a week at six in the evening.
It was only now that Lavender Brown alluded to a coming full moon.
“Take it with roasted potatoes,” Padma told her. “Roasted golden. Salt and pepper. A lick of butter as they roast. Buttered French beans, too.”
Lavender Brown’s wide smile was limned with the light and shadow of the contrasting grocery lights and the meat section’s lamps. “You love butter way too much. But yeah, okay, I’ll have buttered potatoes.”
“I’m despairing at orange cakes way too much,” Padma muttered.
“You could contrast it with white, I think?” Lavender Brown said. She pursed her lips in thought, glossed with the stick that Padma had helped her pick. Padma’s eyes flicked to them and she bit on her own. She did her best not to hack out the bitter taste of her own lippie. “Does she want it to be orange in flavour, too?”
“She didn’t say,” Padma said slowly. Well.
“Carrot,” Lavender Brown said. “Carrot, I’m telling you. All of my health-crazed mates are all about carrot cake.”
“Mandy’s not health-crazed.” Padma was curious about Lavender Brown’s friends, though. They had to be Muggles. She hesitated before deciding to talk about her own friends. “A big part of Mandy’s right cheek is burned from the Battle. She also likes the thought of investment banking.”
Lavender Brown said nothing as they loaded their shopping on the till.
When they stepped out of the grocery a light rain was pouring. The street lamps lined the rain in silver.
Padma persevered to connect with Lavender Brown. She had to admit that it felt nice to have someone new to talk to. She wanted to know about Lavender Brown’s friends.
“Lee Jordan is all right,” Padma continued. “A right laugh, and warm. He’s all right with Mandy’s burn since he’s also got a slash across his face -”
“Can we please,” Lavender Brown cut in, “just talk about cake?”
The fairy lights strung up above the shop’s doors sparkled against Lavender Brown’s face. Her eyes were hard, and there was no smile on her lips.
“I was about to ask about your friends,” Padma said, confused. She shifted her bags, the plastic crushing as they knocked against her leg. “I thought - it would be all right to talk about mine.”
Lavender Brown let out a humourless little laugh. “Okay. Even in small talk you’re always intense. Like, hmm, let’s see. A common topic between us: let’s talk about lycanthropy! D’you know my friend? She likes tea with no milk, and oh, she’s also burned!”
Padma could feel irritation rise up in her. “What in Merlin’s name are you on about?”
“I meant it when I asked you for things to be nice.”
“So friends are not a nice topic, is that it?” Padma breathed in. She tried not to be hasty with words even though this conversational turn was making her head spin.
Lavender Brown started to tug on her hair. “It is. It is, but not that.”
Padma breathed out slowly. Still she could feel the irritation simmering. She had been coming to learn that Lavender Brown was difficult to communicate with. “Did you also mean it when you said we will be familiar with each other?”
“Yeah, yeah I did.” Lavender Brown’s vigorous nod made her pile of hair bob. “I do mean it.”
“So I am also trying to be,” Padma told her. “I thought part of getting to know each other is to talk about each other’s friends?”
“You’re talking about unpleasant things just now,” Lavender Brown said through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to think about the Battle.”
No pink elephants.
“So all you want to talk about is nonsense things,” Padma said.
“Not nonsense!” Lavender Brown burst out. “Is baking nonsense to you? Is knitting?” An expression must have passed through Padma’s face because Lavender Brown curled her lip. “Oh, right. You don’t have too much regard on knitting, do you? Or nail polish, or curling your hair, or magazines, or any of that.”
“I don’t understand what you’re bloody on about!” Padma said. Passing people had begun to cast curious looks on them.
“None of the things we’ve learned about each other is fucking nonsense!” Lavender Brown’s voice had gone tight, and Padma heard the tear of the plastic of Lavender Brown’s bags. “I just want for things to be nice!”
“That’s not how friendship works,” Padma snapped. “It’s not all about nice things.”
Lavender Brown whirled around and stalked through the rain.
Padma was left standing there, stunned.
*
They didn’t talk to each other for two weeks.
On the afternoon after the full moon, Padma’s post included a letter.
I’m sorry I walked out on you, Lavender Brown had written. I didn’t mean to leave. I didn’t want to hurt you or anyone there. It was near full moon.
The green lace curtains behind Padma’s sofa fluttered. The pink stationery paper was thick between her fingers, and she contemplated it for a long time. Her coffee had nearly gone cold. Wendelin the Weird’s biography was momentarily forgotten, softly thumping back on the pile of new books by Padma’s apple-red sofa.
Lavender Brown had walked out on Padma twice now. First because Padma had been gross, and then because Lavender Brown had been difficult to communicate with. And before either of those, Lavender Brown had walked off the British Wizarding World.
Padma had walked off her presumed map as Arithmancer as well.
It seemed like the both of them were the types who leave.
Padma tapped the embossed silver flowers on the pink stationery.
But she had sought out Lavender Brown again to give her a basket. And Lavender Brown had sought her out to return the basket, and now a letter after a full moon. Besides Padma had really liked spending time with her.
Padma sat in her cluttered flat for a few more moments, mildly stricken. She didn’t have a map for this one.
She had had a map with Arithmancy but she didn’t like spending time with that one: it had felt more like a countdown. So she had left without looking back.
But Padma had looked back for Lavender Brown through the mists since that first night.
Padma knew this was not going to be easy. But really, not everything had to be all about nice things.
Carefully Padma folded the stationery and tucked it in her book. She picked up her nearly forgotten coffee, nearly gone cold, but she still finished her cup, chasing the warmth. Then she Conjured a piece of parchment and a quill.
After a beat, Padma wrote: How are you? Would you like for me to pop by?
*
Lavender Brown’s street had crumbly grey and white cobblestones. It was beyond the right fork of the road, after the right fork yawns into a residential area tucked beside the woods and cottages.
The first thing that Padma noticed was how neat and orderly Lavender Brown’s flat was. There were no piles of books sprouting like mushrooms: there were coffee table books and there were books neatly stacked in a bookcase. The curtains were drawn as wide as possible, tied together with knitted ribbons, as if to let in as much sunlight as possible through the casement windows.
Of course. Lavender Brown liked things to be nice.
In fact she was there lying on an aggressively floral sofa.
“Hello,” Padma managed to say. She pressed the parcel of brownies closer to stomach. She didn’t know how to pick her way across an orderly room.
Lavender Brown sat up on the sofa, and patted it. “Hey. Come sit. You can hang your cloak here.”
Curls had escaped from Lavender Brown’s hasty bun. There were deep shadows under her eyes and her jumper-clad shoulders were drooping. She had been cuddling a little white rabbit.
“I brought you brownies.” Padma sat on the flowery sofa after laying her red cloak on the sofa’s arm. The rabbit sniffed curiously. “What’s the rabbit’s name?”
Lavender Brown opened the parcel and smiled. “I don’t know. I met it last night. Fancy a cuppa?”
“All right,” Padma said, and was assaulted by an image of a werewolf making friends with a rabbit. She didn’t know whether to find it fascinatingly horrifying or too adorable.
Lavender Brown made fetched her wand. It was resting on the artful and precise doilies covering the coffee table.
“You know what,” Padma said, “I can do it.”
Lavender Brown’s lips quirked. They were pale and chapped. “I can manage it, you know. I just feel, like, sluggish. Everything I do will be tortoise-paced.”
“All right,” Padma said briskly. “So you just sit there. You can tell me how to navigate your kitchen.”
Lavender Brown’s tea cosy was a bright knitted creation studded with large buttons. Padma couldn’t help smiling at it as she set down the tray on the coffee table.
“Did you knit this?” asked Padma, taking Lavender Brown’s proffered brownie.
“Yeah.” Lavender Brown bit into her brownie and gave a happy sigh. “All the knitting you see is by me. This is delicious.”
“Thank you.”
Padma catalogued the tea cosy, the doilies on the coffee table and in the kitchen table, the ribbons for the curtains, the lamp wrap, and the sprawling piece framed on the wall across the bookshelf.
Just looking at those on the coffee table made Padma curious. The patterns were so precise and looked like a lot of thought and effort went into them. Knitting looked far from trifle.
“Your knitting work is amazing,” Padma said at last. “They’re actual pieces of art.”
“Oh, well, you know,” Lavender Brown said with pride. “I love nice things.”
“They’re more than nice,” Padma pronounced. “You have a deft hand. And a great eye for colours and patterns.”
Lavender Brown tilted her head with a soft smile. “That’s such a nice thing to say. Thank you. I’m growing flowers in my balcony, too. My friends often tell me I’ve got a green thumb.”
They smiled at each other. Padma rather liked the curve of Lavender Brown’s lips.
“There’s a saying that good gardeners are also good with weather,” Lavender Brown said. She poured herself another cup, and drank with neither milk nor sugar. “So I like making my home pretty. Most people, they think homemaking isn’t that worthwhile. I think there’s an art to it.”
“I never thought of it like that before,” Padma said with a bit of awe.
“I don’t know if it’s like - the high arts,” continued Lavender Brown. “I can’t say that it’s a low art, mind. Whatever, I don’t fancy referring to art as high or low. Do you - do you get what I’m saying? Am I saying it right?”
Padma looked at the faint crease between Lavender Brown’s impeccable dark brows. “I get what you’re saying.”
“Okay, that’s good.” Then Lavender Brown let out a little laugh. “I’ve never been good at saying what I want to say. Especially the important ones. They always come out wrong. I had to think about how to say all that.”
Padma hesitated. “I misunderstand a lot of things.”
“You’re very smart,” Lavender Brown said, frowning.
Padma shook her head a little. “That’s different. I misunderstand a lot. Mostly that’s because I judge too fast. So, please tell me.” At Lavender Brown’s puzzled look Padma said, “Whatever you want to say to me, you can take as long as you like to say how you want to. Or you can just throw it all on me and I’ll do my best. I just - want to understand.”
Lavender Brown turned her face away to pour more tea. She was silent for quite some time, so Padma fussed with the hem of her red cloak as the shadows from the windows lengthened.
Then she heard Lavender Brown suck in a breath.
“Right, okay,” said Lavender Brown. When she turned to face Padma half her face was touched by the shadows but there was a burning, intent look in her eyes that jolted through Padma and made her quite weak in the knees.
“Okay,” repeated Lavender Brown, her mouth a determined line. “So I have this - thing. That when I have a problem, or when a situation makes me feel really sad and heavy-like, I do this thing where I, um, block it. I refuse to entertain the sadness. It makes me feel lousy. I hate that. So I do all I can to not think about it.”
No pink elephants, Padma fleetingly remembered. That couldn’t be healthy.
“That’s your coping technique,” Padma said, slowly.
Lavender Brown appeared to consider this. “I suppose.”
“Is that healthy?” said Padma.
Lavender Brown lifted her shoulders. “I’m happy. I reckon. I’ve got mates from work. And ones I’ve met from uni. Great people. My family knows and they’re supportive, and that’s all that matters.”
Padma set down her cup and shifted on the sofa so that she was fully facing Lavender. “You can talk to me.”
Lavender peered at Padma from between her escaped bright curls. She tucked a lock behind her ear. “You know, I’m getting that impression. It’s - lovely.”
Evening had fallen now. The shadows mingled with the flickering on of the hazy street lamps outside, and here inside Lavender pulled on a beaded cord to turn on the lamp.
After a beat she said, “Speaking of art - what, what’s so funny?”
Padma lowered her palm from her mouth. “That’s quite a shift.”
“Are you starting with the werewolf puns now?” Lavender asked lightly. “I am a woman of talents. But speaking of art, your baking is art. Have you ever thought about turning it into a business?”
“It’s just a hobby,” demurred Padma.
“You told me people loved your baking,” Lavender pointed out. “I love your baking. It’s truly great, by the way. But anyway, people loved it enough to request more baked goods from you. There’s a demand, I’m telling you.”
Padma was a bit dubious. “I’ve got exactly two demands. That’s not exactly a clamour.”
“Well, see what they think during the wedding,” Lavender told her.
*
It would be quite a while before Mandy’s wedding. Padma had time to despair at Mandy’s colour choice and still feel suspiciously teary at her best friend getting married. Padma had time to experiment on carrot and cream ratio.
During the days when she and Lavender didn’t go to the grocery, Padma had time to slip out of her carrot-stained apron and give Lavender a Floo call.
“I had the worst day,” Lavender was complaining one night. Padma could see her swing her purse on the floral sofa and shrug out of her blazer.
“Tell me about it.”
Lavender sprawled by the rug in front of the fireplace. “D’you know how vital the Muggle underground train is to Muggle mood? They call it the Tube.”
Padma frowned. “There’s a Muggle mood called the Tube?”
“No,” Lavender laughed, “the Tube’s the Muggle underground train, sorry. When it malfunctions especially in the morning it’s not very pretty at work. I don’t take it, but my office do, so. Tempers! Flying like pigs!” She leaned back on the rug. “So how are your carrot adventures?”
Padma had more adventures in the Muggle world when Lavender took her along to a pub just off Brompton Road. Around a cherry wood table, with her hand curled around a mug of hot chocolate with spiced rum, Padma met Lavender’s friends: Sarah had a shock of pink hair and discussed Muggle music magazines with Lavender. Arianne knew a lot about earthquakes, septum piercings, and also crocheting. Rob was a very tall lad who got very excited about Bulmers and candy floss. Juhara seemed to know what book to recommend at all occasions and had an armful of bangles which clinked when she leaned on the table and addressed Lavender and Padma with, “So are you two dating?”
Padma nearly choked on her tiropita.
Lavender was in the middle of picking off the raisins Padma had left on a napkin, having known about Padma’s aversion to raisins for months now.
They glanced at each other, and Lavender laughed.
She had such a glowy laughter, Padma thought as she hurriedly sipped on her mug. Padma loved overcast days: she didn’t care for sunshine much, and she came alive the most when night had fallen. So she couldn’t say the Lavender’s peal of laughter was bright as the sun. But it made her feel like she was tipping her head back as the glow of the moon melded with the sturdy lights of the street lamps.
“We didn’t see each other for nearly a decade,” Lavender was saying.
Padma didn’t say anything but she could feel an unhelpful smile tugging at her lips.
Lavender’s friends was a great lot, Padma decided as they gathered their coats and in Padma’s case, her red cloak. They made Lavender laugh and they knew almost all the things Padma had come to learn about Lavender. Except for the werewolf bit.
“I can’t wait for warm weather,” Lavender said when there were just the two of them on the pavement. She had a sparkly blue scarf on.
They found themselves aimlessly ambling around as people hurried by them and as the sky spilled an indigo winter evening, the city lights all coming alive to drown out the half-moon distant in the sky.
They Apparated behind a telephone box so that Lavender could show Padma the Muggle university she had attended, which was in the same city.
Old London Road was glowing, the foot traffic a steady clacking against its sandy-grey pavements. They bought candy floss near the archway, and as they walked on Padma haltingly told Lavender about Arithmancy.
After a moment Lavender said, “Baking could be your thing, you know.”
Padma shuffled closer to Lavender so that she could hear her clearly over the din. Lavender angled herself towards Padma, thoughtfully chewing on candy floss.
“Think about it,” continued Lavender. “You’re great at it, and it makes you happy. I mean, it sounds like you feel fulfilled when you described it?”
“Yes.” Padma nodded slowly.
They paused by a sculpture of telephone boxes falling over and onto each other, like a bunch of brightly-coloured gits.
“Do you really think my baking’s great?” Padma said.
“Sure.” Lavender smiled at her. “The best I’ve ever had. It’s true. When I tasted your chocolate buns I thought I might cry because it’s so good. Even your brownies. They’re magical.”
Padma ducked her head and huffed out a laugh. “Thanks.”
Then she felt Lavender reach for her hand. Padma looked up from Lavender’s bare fingers around her red-gloved ones, and into Lavender’s face.
“You are great,” Lavender said, carefully. She looked and sounded tremendously sincere. “I really like you, Padma.”
Padma shouldn’t have eaten too much candy floss. Her throat felt dry. After a beat she turned her hand palm up so she could hold Lavender back. “I really, really like you, too, Lavender.”
“Would you like to date me?” Lavender continued, as if it were the easiest thing to say in the world. Her long-lashed marble eyes were intent on Padma.
Padma could feel her fingers tightening around Lavender’s. She’d never been as bold as that. She wished she could be.
“Yes,” Padma found her voice. “Yes, that would be lovely.”
A grin bloomed on Lavender’s face, and she drew closer, still holding Padma’s hand. “Is it okay to kiss you, then?”
Padma couldn’t help but laugh a little, something burbling in her chest coming out as a little laugh, before nodding. She thought it sounded relieved. She thought it sounded happy.
Lavender was soon leaning forward.
Lavender was so bold, was all Padma could think about, a heartbeat before feeling Lavender’s grinning lips on hers. She could feel her red cloak fluttering about her ankles. Her cheeks were shielded from the wind’s bite by the fall of Lavender’s tight curls. Lavender’s boldness might take Padma by surprise, but Padma had always been a quick study. She drew herself closer by their joined hands. When she felt Lavender grip her back and hum into their kiss Padma could feel her heart soar: she liked that she viscerally affected Lavender.
When they broke apart, but still close enough that their giddy breaths warmed them, Lavender said, “I’ve always loved your lipstick. It’s so red. It looks so warm.”
Padma laughed and leaned in for another kiss.
*
“Won’t you consider?” Padma said not for the first time.
“I’m not invited, so nope,” said Lavender.
They were in Padma’s flat the morning of Mandy’s wedding. The carrot cake had been finished, carefully shrunken so that it wouldn’t lose flavour and freshness. Padma was balancing her leg on a chair as she put on her red silk stockings. Lavender stood leaning against the door to the kitchen, still in her pyjama bottoms.
“That robe is so amazingly cut,” Lavender commented.
Padma flashed her a smile and returned to rolling up her stockings.
But the sight of Lavender sleep rumpled swiftly followed by the stockings distracted her a bit. Last night Lavender had slowly rolled up Padma’s stockings, trailing each inch up by an open-mouthed kiss. It had left Padma breathless and sweating, naked in nothing but her red lace stockings.
Padma cleared her throat and straightened up.
Her hair fell in a black sheet around her shoulders. She still had to dress her hair and put on her lippie, but she approached Lavender first.
Lavender had never taken off her glamour, not even when the both of them were tumbling into bed at four in the morning after delicious orgasms. Padma had thought that maybe this wedding would be a chance for Lavender to consider coming back to Wizarding society, but Lavender was resolved not to.
She cupped Lavender’s glamoured cheek now, and pecked her on the lips. “All right. I understand.”
Lavender caught her wrist in a gentle grip. “Have a great time,” she murmured. “Don’t be too nervous about the cake. How many guests?”
“A hundred.” Padma’s heart thudded. “Mandy said they wanted an intimate setting.”
“Okay, then.” Lavender’s thumb ran soothing circles on Padma’s wrist. “Okay, so a hundred people about to be blessed by your cake.”
“What are you doing today?”
“I’m finishing a chapter on your book,” Lavender said with a sudden grin. “Wendelin the Weird’s biography. She’s got this diary entry waxing on and on about a cake, but it’s not a cake on a plate at all.”
Both of them started to snicker like children.
“I know that,” Padma said. “The cake under Lucia’s skirts. I can’t believe you’re making me think of cakes like that.”
“Then I’ll check on my plants,” continued Lavender, “feed the rabbit.”
“Will I see you later?”
“If you like.”
“I’d love to,” Padma promised.
With a last look over her shoulder at Lavender’s encouraging smile, Padma departed for Mandy’s wedding.
Mandy’s wedding made Padma tear up a bit. It was intimate, with honeysuckles dripping from the marquee and heartfelt speeches and Mandy and Lee both doing an interpretative dance.
Padma got a lot of compliments on the cake, and soon her red purse was full of scraps of parchment scribbled with people’s Floo addresses. Her purse felt heavy with hope.
It was a lovely time. She saw Teddy Lupin chasing the blue bubbles that Harry Potter kept Conjuring. Mrs. Longbottom was deep in conversation with Mrs. Tonks over glasses of sherry. Mandy was dancing and throwing flowers whilst Cho and Luna chased the flowers with their wands, soon unravelling a giant flower wreath.
“You look good,” Parvati told Padma at one point, and added, “You look like you’re not telling me something.”
Padma turned to consider Parvati and the pink glittery butterfly clip perching on her twin’s hair.
They’d always known each other well. And Parvati had been Lavender’s best mate.
“Maybe some time,” she told Parvati.
*
Lavender did not sidle into the wedding nor did she stalk about nearby only to be inevitably discovered by the party, like in storybooks. Padma found her in the park near Lavender’s flat, knitting in the spring sunshine.
“Well?” inquired Lavender as Padma took off her red cloak and settled on the blanket.
Padma felt her own cheeks lift, and Lavender answered with a grin.
“See? Your baking is an art.”
“I’ve missed you,” Padma told her, and Lavender’s grin softened to warm smile, her eyes shining in the sun.
Still smiling, Padma laid out her red cloak over her patch of the blanket and laid down on it. She nuzzled at the orchid scented cloak, kicking off her shoes and stretching her legs. She watched Lavender knit for several minutes, feeling the restlessness of not having a map waft out of her.
Eventually Lavender put down her knitting. She shifted over to where Padma was laying, gently straddling Padma’s thighs. Padma watched Lavender watch her.
“I’ve missed you, too,” Lavender said, and reached for her wand.
Padma blinked. There Lavender sat without her glamour. The sunlight touched on the thick rope of scar clawing from Lavender’s ear to the tip of her chin, on another scar from her jaw and forking down to her collarbones. Scratches painted Lavender’s bare arms beneath her pink T-shirt.
Padma felt a breath of relief leave her. It was still her Lavender. It was only Lavender.
Padma ran her hands up and down Lavender’s arms. She peered up at Lavender’s hesitant eyes, and smiled. “Kiss me.”
She saw Lavender’s lips tremble on a bright smile, before she felt them on hers. Padma put her arms around Lavender’s strong shoulders, drawing her closer. Padma buried her fingers in Lavender’s thick pile of her and showered kisses on her scarred face, until they were both laughing.
When Lavender sat up again, her thighs like steel on either side of Padma’s own, she tipped her head back and basked in the sun. Her face was as scarred as the moon, but infinitely more beautiful than the combined glow of the moon and the streetlamps.
Padma sat up as well so she could draw Lavender’s face close to her again. When they kissed again, it was more languid, like coming home to something familiar, and all around them spring’s new leaves fluttered, murmuring hope and promise.
fin
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