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Janice's consciousness flows as waves. In and out, like breathing.
She's made room within herself, burrowed deep, and now every so often she experiences the feather-light brush of Melina's pure, raw energy against her. She's soft as an exhale, gentle, careful, awkward, but the more Janice moves out of the way, the more Melina inhabits her, until she is seated fully.
The sensation of Melina sends heat searing through Janice's body.
Finally, Melina is tangible again, caught within the confines of Janice. Janice's body has become a vessel for them both.
She feels Melina like another heart, faint but ever on the offbeat. Her echo, her reflection.
She didn't know she could hold two souls.
But there is little Janice wouldn't do for Melina.
Happily, she covers her own eyes and lets Melina use her as a lens to see through
Time moves strangely from within the depths of Melina's spirit.
Every once in awhile, Janice will breach her own shell, and her soul will gasp in a breath of the outside world: such colors and sounds, such vibrant sensation, so strong it pains her.
She is present for the highest moments of Melina's singing, when the euphoria breaks through Janice's body, dragging her back in.
She is present, sometimes, when Melina wakes in the morning, and Janice recognizes her own hand reaching for the covers in glimpsed fragments before Melina becomes fully conscious.
She is present when Melina makes her be, which happens more and more as the months go on. She feels the guilt beginning to taint Melina's energy, darkening the joy that had first claimed her, all solar yellows, now curdling deep and sour.
She is present when Melina asks herself whether what she's doing is right, and Janice urges, Yes, yes, live like you couldn't, live through me, and Melina's mind falls silent.
But what sends her surging through her own skin is Melina's touch, ghostlike, on Janice's flesh. Melina takes such care not to touch Janice's body that when she goes out of her way to do so - dragging the pads of her fingers across her forearm - Janice's own breath clutches in a gasp.
It is Melina's fingers on Janice's skin, drawing up, up, up her forearm. Tracing her cheek. Melina's fingers on her lips. And how Janice revels in the feel of her, those cold, careful hands, so pale against her mouth.
Melina, she breathes, and Melina whispers her name in return. They're both enmeshed inside of Janice, inseparable.
Melina touches Janice's stomach, and Janice's body rolls backward onto the bed, laying down.
Her stomach, slowly tracing upward. Curling under her dress and reaching higher. Her chest. Cupping her breasts, squeezing.
Janice gasps - or maybe it is Melina. Both of them.
It is Melina's name that escapes her mouth in the dead of night when those slender fingers curl in between Janice's legs and begin to search with a clumsy, earnest tenderness. But she hears Melina whispering to her, too, Hold on, and, So close.
In the morning, Janice wakes dizzy and euphoric, but she reaches for Melina and doesn't find her. Cold emptiness. Not until she's reached the shower and let its hot water pour over her head does she feel herself begin to slip backwards again.
But in their dreams, Melina's cold, certain hands reach for her once more.
She is present when Melina asks her for help.
An image floods Janice's mind of the man she always went to when she was most desperate, of the Professor who would listen to her through her tears and would offer her a soothing cup of tea.
It is Janice who writes the letter to the Professor, Janice's hand gripping the pen, Janice's sloping script on the paper.
But once it is done, a wooziness overcomes her, and she shuts her eyes and lets Melina catch her.
It is her - some of her - on the Crown Petone. It is her and it is Melina and it is both of them seated within her, not warring but moving together, breathing the same air, housing the same flesh.
And isn't this love, Janice thinks, lightheaded, swimming in the sensation of Melina all-surrounding her. Isn't this love? Growing so close you no longer know who is who, sharing all?
She thinks she could live like this forever. She thinks their love could be immortal.
In the end, Melina decides she does not belong within Janice.
No matter how much Janice screams at her, howls, tears at the sensation of Melina, Melina moves like a fog. Incorporeal again.
The sensation of Melina unspools from Janice's flesh, leaving her cold, devoid, full of new echoes.
But then memories of Melina that Janice can't name keep catching on the edges of her vision like errant butterflies. The vestiges of Melina's singing voice continue to rotate throughout Janice's mind, steady as a phonograph.
And her heart grows so warm, nearly too hot a burden to bear.
And she realizes that Melina is eternal, long after her farewell.