Dust
By Fewthistle

Author's Note: Written for Challenge Ten, Prompt Three at the Livejournal Community even_angels_. First and last lines written by flying_peanuts.

Carefully, she stepped over the cracks. The sun was directly overhead and she could feel the prickly heat along her hairline. Rivulets traipsed down the reddened flesh of her neck to disappear beneath the low collar of her shirt, as they ran in warm, ticklish tributaries to the small of her back, soaking into the waistband of her pants.

The earth reflected back the light of the sun, a landscape of prickly shrubs and blood orange dust that coated her black boots, and left a pale golden second skin along all of her exposed flesh. Tiny flakes of silicate shimmered among the hairs of her arms. She could taste the dust, the sharp tang of metal and mineral, the chalky, slightly bitter flavor of the past an aftertaste on her tongue from which she could never quite cleanse her mouth. Not that she really tried.

She was content here in this land so far from home, the background babble of voices talking, laughing, jeering in tongues that she would never learn, their cadences so different from the slow languor of her own language, with its swallowed vowels and curled inflections. She didn't need to listen, to be aware, to know who was saying what, to whom. She was a foreigner, unschooled in their patois and she liked it that way. So much simpler, less encumbered. Words only complicated things.

Shading her eyes with one hand, she stepped lightly from the edge of the jagged piece of marble that had once been part of the temple floor, to the hard-packed ground a few feet below. All about her, the scattered, broken pieces of columns and arches lay, the bleached bones of what had once been a mighty monument to wisdom and power, and to the eternal need of man to find someone to worship.

Hoisting herself up a bit, she settled on the edge of the heavy stone slab. From where she sat she could see out over the rooftops of the nearby village. The gilt of a cross rose up against a sky that was the color of the bluebells that lined the road that led to her house, thousands of miles away from this place. Little had changed over the millennia, she thought, the bright beacon of the church spire gleaming in the sun; different god, same human frailty.

Often when she came here, she felt the weight of the past crushing down on her, squeezing her lungs tight in her chest. Too much had happened here, too much pain, too much sorrow. The ghosts of all those who had trod this smooth floor rushed through her, brushing her skin like spider webs in the garden, invisible threads that clung to her face and hands, whispering of sacrifice and urgent, unanswered pleas for salvation.

Today however, the sun indeed a shimmering god in the late Spring sky, she felt only the peace of this place. The voices of other tourists faded to an indistinct buzz as she tilted her head back and let Phoebus' full glory shine down on her face. She felt the skin grow tight across her cheekbones, as behind closed eyelids the sweet, elusive shadows of memory danced. The warmth that filled her chest had nothing to do with the blazing heat of the sun, and a secret smile just graced the corners of her full lips.

The palm of her hand brushed gently over the smooth marble beneath it, the feeling as familiar as her own skin. Perhaps just today, stirring the ghosts might not be such a bad idea after all. Perhaps today, she would find the joyful shade of one she knew, so long ago. And perhaps that would be enough, come a deep winter's night, alone in a bed a lifetime from here, with only the murmur of waves against the stone and sand for company. Perhaps it would be enough that she lived, brushing against time, enchanted.