The sunlight bounces off of her sepia skin, reddish-brown glowing faintly in the weather’s caress, as though she is a photograph held up to the light.
Pale sunshine washes away the technicolour she adorns; mutes the petunia pink pashmina pinned half-up her hair; deepens the modest curls framing her face to an onyx black; bleaches the whites of her eyes until they sparkle like freshly polished diamonds.
Her pupils constrict under the permeating rays that flock to and gather at the crease of her nose like she’s seen something cute (as if there’s anything that could ever be called cuter than her, he admires her unfounded humility), the hollow of her cheeks, the bunny teeth in her pearly smile.
A gaggle of girls awaits her by the lake’s rippling waters. Lily’s shock of red hair sticks up at her approach, Marlene’s choppy brown teased through a finger, as they beckon her excitedly.
A chorus glides through the summer day; grasshoppers belting, students chattering, trees whistling; a harmony unique to the season.
Laughter like fireflies, she obeys the summons that layers above the cacophony of the day, thunderously, needing her. Like she’s the last piece of a jigsaw, the sought-after image preceding their game and ending it. Like she’s everything. (Or maybe that’s his bias)
(Beneath the pandemonium, this is what he hears, in the soft thud of her kitten-heeled boots: magic friendly and playful and stripped to its naked core.
He watches as she goes from beneath his archway. He bears witness to how mint-green blades are left preciously intact in the wake of her mist.)
One truth is stark amongst the impossible translucence of her painted skin, the haze of her outline like paranormal static, the vintage nature illuminated when burnt brown turns to ash in the sunlight.
(Raspberry popsicles and morning dew smell like incense. Robes run like water over skin, light-weight armour to the heat. The dog day’s curse makes him want to drop to his knees, to indulge - in his exhaustion, in his transfixion, in it all.)
Mary Macdonald is haunting.
(And Kingsley Shacklebolt is haunted.)