They sat face to face in a room filled with people and noise and yet the feeling for them was they were alone. This was a familiar phenomena to them both since they’d met and in many ways even before that when they had chatted. The connection both had felt was of this nature and so powerful that it regularly seemed to consume and eviscerate all around them. It shut the real world outside when they communicated, when they listened and heard one another and it felt sacrosanct to both of them and something that they had nurtured between them. When either spoke to the other they felt warm fingers and hands caress them and comfort them in a way neither could fathom and had long since elected to forgo attempting to understand. Trusting in their feelings was a natural thing for both of them. The air inside the coffee shop was still chilled this morning and the condensation from their drinks on the table rose slowly in two columns from below them. His eyes held hers within this place and he felt immersed in her. As always the details of life faded entirely for him as he drank her in and this morning was no exception. She had shared the details of her life with him and in kind he had shared elements of himself that he could, knowing and trusting in her and hoping she would honour him and his trust. He watched as her hands reached for the cup on the table below, how her arms extended and how her neck and head moved, her eyes leaving his before lifting the cup and returning her gaze to his. The way her lips prepared and shaped to blow across her coffee cup as she raised it mesmerised him and he savoured every nuance of her now as he always did when she was close to him. His body was familiar to hers in every way and yet this morning she struggled with her sense of him. It had hung heavy within her and there had been no comfortable way to tell him but she felt in every way that he already knew and she wanted to share it with him and speak with him about it. His body sat still, his green eyes on hers and caught glimpses of his mind moving endlessly below as life does underneath the stillness of the sea. The questions who ? how ? why ? and when ? were not his to ask and the reality was he had sensed the reasons long before this conversation had begun. Her need to explore, to loose herself, to feel more than the stereotype, to take back control as a woman from the places she had languished in the pain of what was and to simply have fun were all the things he sensed. He had felt humbled to have been given insight but he also knew that these feelings and needs were his too. Our feelings are often entwined with another that has long since left the emotional intimacy of a relationship but remain physically governing and controlling restricting us from growing and exploring. To heal and grow and take back some of our selves it is necessary to reach for those experiences that were once impossible and he understood this better than most. The dichotomy of his feelings were known to him and he had mused to himself deep within for weeks at this part of his journey through life. He was attempting to satiate his own nature that he had learned to listen to with those influences throughout his life that were dictating the paradigms of his relationships with another. The phrase ‘to play’, to have ‘fun’ was just that and very apt given the freedom to explore, to grow, to seek out heightened experiences pushing boundaries far beyond those previously defined for him. He had enjoyed and knew the physical and intellectual benefits of this freedom but was also painfully aware of the dangers within this place for him and others. His ‘play’ was in line with his ‘nature’. It had always been to observe and to hunt for as long as he could remember. Rather than feed regularly he had always elected to starve himself, heightening his senses and waiting until he knew that his tongue, his appetite and his psyche would be flooded with the most succulent meat of another given time. The obvious and rotting carcass devoid of life presented held nothing for him. All of him knew that it would simply detract from him and his strength and experiences than empower and so he went hungry. He knew over this period, by design, he had moved away from influences that he had been nurtured by. The tearing away of ones own flesh to reveal layer after layer of what really counts, what really matters felt necessary and the physical pain was never something he paused to consider for himself. He had spent several life times conforming to directives society dictates and it had scarred him because of his own nature and needs. The wounds were all there for those to see or those able to see but he knew he was not alone or the sole owner of loss and pain. He looked all around and saw those suffering because of both hope and expectations but as always he viewed it from the periphery, from his quiet hollow where he lay alone. When he saw her, he knew her. Learning through scent, watching how she moved, the lines her body made, the shapes it held and how the air around her seemed to suspend oscillation and time were things he enjoyed long before he’d ever heard her voice or they had spoken face to face. The scars he wore where he had ripped the hooks of the past away were still there but covered to protect his self, but there for her to see. In order to heal and to grow he knew that she had to move free of what was for her, to enjoy her freedom now, to hunt and play and learn about her, her own nature and he would only encourage and support. The external influences throughout both their lives varied over space and time. No two people are born into the same circumstances and live identical lives with identical experiences for decades so it can be said that social constructs and ethics and morals that surround us, that we are told to adhere to or strive for pull us from our natural instincts. He knew that we are all animals, pre-wired by genetics for good and bad but that had the power and intellect to learn and to choose. His desire was always to grow and to encourage and enable others close to grow without dictating or controlling and if they chose one another above others it was of a natural choice rather than to conform out of fear. Their connection and desires that consumed the peripheral around them was unblemished, untainted by her confiding in him what he already knew. He would respect her, care for her and listen knowing that to do so was to grow further with her, in synch and into a future that neither of them could see but knowing they wanted to walk side by side along this path. The young barista was tired, her morning only beginning and it had been only hours since she had finished in the club before coming to her morning shift. As she paused adjusting the pressure of the boiling milk, she looked up at the sun streaming through the coffee shop window now. It had been a cold winter here and she missed her family, her friends, her life and most of all the sun rises in Sao Paulo. The silhouettes of two children facing each other appeared at the window seat as her eyes adjusted to the light and she blinked to see that they were the couple she had served earlier that morning. Sitting, smiling towards one another. His hand reached out as she reached to take his as they stood to leave and continue their journey together.