Chapter 16: The Language of the Hands

Chapter 16: The Language of the Hands

I stood up slowly and he did the same. His blue eyes were slightly reddened by the wind, or perhaps by the same cry that I had just let out. I grabbed my backpack, pulled out my thermos, and poured some steaming coffee into the lid. He, following my movements as if we were reading the same score, took out his own thermos.

And so, for the first time in almost a month since I set foot in Vik, I shared a coffee with someone. We stood, looking out over the vastness of the North Atlantic, enveloped in comfortable silence. A silence that did not weigh, that did not demand explanations or cheap condolences; a silence that said much more than a thousand words. We were two survivors giving each other a truce.

When the thermoses were empty, he put his away, turned to me and held out his hand. I looked at her for a second before reacting. It was a large, broad, weathered hand. I took it. As I closed my woman's fingers on hers, a warm, protective sensation ran through my arms, a warmth that rose straight to my chest and scared away the chill from the cliff.

We begin to descend the path together without letting go. We walked slowly, exchanging subtle glances out of the corner of our eyes. Neither of us said anything, but we both knew perfectly well what was happening there: the lines of our loneliness were crossing.