The bark scraped against my bare back, as he pressed against me, kissing me. I opened my mouth to him, returning the kiss, then ducked under his arms with a laugh.

“Hannah,” he smiled. His hair shone in the sunlight, its gold the brilliance of the autumn leaves that surrounded us, that crunched beneath my naked feet. I skipped back to him, my fingers teasing with the buttons on his dress shirt, pulling it loose from his pants, tilting my head to kiss along his jaw line, and dance away again when his mouth sought mine.

“Chase me!” I cajoled, and hid behind a birch, playfully peeking out behind it to watch him approach. My hair was the rich dark brown of the earth, tilled and cared for, fertile and rich. He approached, and I spun away again, laughing. I wanted nothing more than to be caught, and held, but it couldn’t be easy. That was the game.

I flitted from silver tree to silver tree, flirted. His fingers reached me for a moment, and pulled at the strings of my halter top, almost untying it, and I let him, then dashed away again, falling leaves between us. Hugging a grand old oak, I heard a child’s laughter, a sound from the cluster of buildings that nestled in the valley nearby. A shout, something said, and he used my distraction to catch up with me, embracing me from behind, trailing petal soft kisses along my shoulders.

“Come with me,” he whispered, breath hot against my skin. “Come to my room.”

Suddenly somber, I nodded. These trees – these were playful trees. Happy trees. Their mood too light for the size of my feelings. I didn’t know the darkness yet between them.

He reached for my hand, and I laid my palm in his, his fingers wrapping around mine. “Come.” He whispered again, and led the way to a small outbuilding I hadn’t noticed before. For a moment, as I followed him through the shining forest, I felt another presence, even whipped my head around to look, but there was no one there. No one I saw. Just a vibrant flash of blue I took for a jay, fluttering from branch to branch.

He opened the door with a key from his back pocket, and turned to me, blocking my view of the room beyond. “Close your eyes.”

I did it, instantly, raising my chin for the kiss that he bestowed on my upturned lips before he led me, carefully, into the room. Smells, familiar but out of place, assaulted my nose. “Can I open?” I asked.

“Wait.” He stepped away from me, and I heard him move about the room, felt a warm bath of sunlight across my skin, and knew he’d opened curtains somewhere. “Now,” he murmured, and I turned to him, opening my eyes.

I was in the forest again.

No, different this time. Surrounded, I saw now, by huge paintings of those self-same trees I’d so recently hid behind, been pressed up against. Their colors were richer, more expressive in the shaft of sunshine that poured in from a skylight that made up almost the entire ceiling.

He leaned in a doorway, eyes on my face as I gazed around me. “You like?”

“I do,” I replied, though that was a pale response to the depth of my feelings for his art. I approached the nearest painting, my fingers reaching. A hairsbreadth from the canvas I stopped, and looked at him through my tangled hair. “May I?” I asked. He inclined his head with a welcoming smile, and stepped closer, behind me as I approached the canvas, touched it.

The birch in the painting felt rough, its bark scratching against my skin. I turned to the artist. “How?”

“Maybe it’s magic…” he whispered, and pulled at the loosened knot at my neck. My dress tumbled to the floor, and he wrapped his arms around me, his body pressing against mine. At my back, again, somehow, the rough feel of the silver bark. We kissed, deliriously, and I was lost in his embrace. My head spun from the combination of his kisses and the sharp scent of turpentine and incense that filled the room.

He stepped back, and his calloused fingers ran through my hair, pulling it forward, so that it covered me, a sheer modesty that made me blush at his gentleness. I reached for him, but he eluded me.

“Thank you, Hannah. I couldn’t finish it without you.”

“Finish it? What? Come back to me.” I couldn’t go to him, couldn’t… couldn’t move, suddenly. My bare feet curled in the rich dark soil of the forest, and I couldn’t step forward, couldn’t step out of the painting.

He picked up my dress from the floor and hung it, carefully, on a rack with a dozen others in a cherry wood wardrobe. I retreated, deeper into the forest, stepping behind a tree and peering out at the dimming light.

The painting hung in a hallway at the hotel, across from a room filled with books and a grand piano. The windows were bare, and looked out on the same forest that was depicted in the massive work of artistry opposite. A young musician, blonde curls the color of autumn leaves, sat at the black piano, running his fingers over the keys aimlessly. He’d found the hotel after a long and trying tour, and was happy to be unrecognized, unknown, and undisturbed for a short while. As music spilled forth from his hands, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a figure with long dark hair the richness of newly tilled soil dart from tree to tree. He heard a whispered, “Catch me,” and glanced up, but the room was empty. And the forest, in winter, was bare.

by ktbuffy

• The Studio?
• Tour dates include Peekskill, Portland, Paradise