The damp book

The key in the lock turnes with a gentle motion, controlled and simple, and the door is then opened to admit the tall man in to the little house. Darkness meets him in the hall, and the cold. No one had bothered to turn on the heat in the house for the fall and it smelled cold, but at the same time attacked a sensitive nose with hundreds of familiar scents, scents that hurt a little and makes a high forehead crease under the silvery blond hairline. The dark eyes looking through the darkness where he stands on the mat inside the door. Welcome home it said on the mat.

The hand up to try to tame his hair with a couple of long fingers running trough the touseld strands, he had at best been able to sigh over the wild hairstyle on the men's restroom at the airport. He brings two large black roller bags over the threshhold and in to the hall and leave them there, without bothering to remove neither the black men's shoes, or the long black cotton coat that he wears over the usual whiteshirt and tie with suit pants and a vest. He does however unbutton a button in his collar with long elegant fingers to loosen the tie as he moved trough the hall and into the mainroom of the cottage.

His shirt bears the traces of wrinkles and there is lint on his coat. But there is urgency in the dark eyes, while he is looking around the room, this worry had made him forgett for a moment how he hated to look dishevled. It didn’t matter anymore. He steps into the house, the dark eyes search for signs of life? He had heard the rumors, and he had heard whispers about what had happened, but he had not been able to get away from his duties untill now. Something of a growl grows on his upper lip when his thoughts return to it, but something draws his gaze. Everything is strange and cold and nothing is familiar, except this.

He stops at a bookcase where the books are just as icy as everything else in the cottage, almost moist with the cold. But his gaze is fixed on it, he picks it up and cracks the spine to let the well worn pages flip trough his fingers while he looks through it. Does not care about lighting a lamp, he just lowers his head a bit so his hair falls down in his forhead again when he looks in the book and the smells start rising out of the mist from the pages, and the menories with them, the words that form a familiar ease in his mind, “There once was a land, far far away... “ and he falls into an icy armchair with it in his hand.

He turnes to the middle of it, he knew this story, he wanted to read the part about the prince again, the best part, his eyes move as they follow the words, when his long fingers pull at the fabric of his pants to get the room to hang one long leg over the other and in the darkness in his little cottage. The Doctor, The Surgon, allways burdend with the weight of responsability, forgetts for a moment, one single tired lonely moment that his husband is missing, that the anger he felt all the way home from India made him want to rip seats and eat stewardesses for lunch, and that his house is empty and cold. For a breif moment the book grabs him, captures him, wraps him up in a warm hug of welcome, a magic place, danger and adventure, everyone knows the hero will win and the bad guy gets it.

That’s how it works, in stories. That’s how the world should be. For a moment he forgetts again that this is a lie as his eyes glow skyblue with light in the darkness, only the moonlight shines through the windows a bit out beyond the cliffedge and above the sea. The rage subsides and the tall and slender man is a siluette in his old armchair. Just one moment.