SatSnap Challenge - Locked Out

She sighed and leaned against the wrought iron. Her face almost fit through the space between the rails and the cool of the steel felt calming. She inhaled deeply, sucking in the heavy air. "God, this place is damp" she said, her voice muted as the words traveled across space on the other side of the fence. He stood alongside her, watching her watch this place.

"So this is it..." he said. Without taking her face away from the rails, she replied, "Yes, this is the place. The old place.".  She saw herself running around the grounds in happier times, in sunnier weather. She pulled her coat around her and blew hot breath into her hands.. She scolded herself that they should have come in the afternoon when the sun would be high in the sky and would have burned the mist away. She continued to breathe deep through the rails, smelling the grass and the tress and some other scent she remembered, but couldn't quite place.

"Those rails are going to make lines on your face.." he said gently, taking her arm. She gave him an annoyed look, but touched the two distinct impressions running vertically down her cheeks and smiled. "Melodramatic" she mused and leaned into him.

He whispered into her hair, "It doesn't have to be over. One chapter is ending, but there is always a next, always a new beginning; maybe even a new book. We can continue if you choose it." He was such a good man, her man. She hadn't made it easy to live in her life, but he was quietly stubborn. Damn, but he made it difficult to feel sorry for oneself, or wallow. And at that moment, she wanted to wallow. She didn't like change, she didn't want a new chapter. She wanted the old chapter, the one where the garden smelled of lilacs and not of wet leaves. Where the gate that separated her from her past would swing open at the sight of her, and not sit in it's current  impolite stillness, locking her out of the life she once knew there.

They stood that way in the quiet, and as the wind picked up she turned and looked at this man, saw his strength, saw she would never be alone here with him. He would help her return to the memory of her time here and make her whole, patch her wounds. She smiled at him, and touched the back of her gloved hand to his jaw. He smiled back at her, and said over his shoulder, "We'll take it.".

SatSnap Challenge

The task is to write a post in 300 words or less using the image as inspiration. It could be anything at all: a setting description, character study, poem, essay, dialogue, short story, scene, etc. ANYTHING YOU WANT. Use your imagination. See the others at Thumbin' My Way