They walked, talking and laughing through a sun splashed wood before coming to rest in a glade.

She sat on one hip, leaned on a hand, her legs bent at the knees. The back of her thighs rested on her calves.

He half lay, opposite, almost mirroring, he leaned on his elbow.

As she happily talked, he noticed how her hair cascaded over one shoulder and down her arm.

The wild flowers behind her were stepped, as in a shrine.

It seemed however much she moved, the grass under her always lay flat with the symmetry of a crop circle.

From the corner of his eye, he saw how wild feathery grasses were perfectly bunched in the clasp of his knee. How he could so easily grasp and gift them to her like the most exquisite of bouquets.

She had stopped talking and was viewing him with abrupt irritation.

He seized on some words like a child's excuse.

'I'm sorry, I was just looking'

Her reply treacled like that reserved for whom the penny had, at last, dropped.

'Exactly'

He gathered his face into an expression of understanding but . . . .

he didn't.