well, that's a very useful coincidence.
you see, today is my wedding anniversary. also, my first-day-of-being-together anniversary. the former is 6 years, the latter 15, and tonight, we go out to eat lovely foods. so i won't really have time to do any blogging tonight - therefore i blog at work. but what to blog?
it just so happens that i was inspired (and challenged, by the by, by @catinabaglady - hi, princess! :) *waves*), to write a little something inspired by the ubiquitous ladder in my tights. so i shall post it for today's 30 day challenge offering.
Ladder.
It’s dark, and cold, and I’m bleary. Slumping into my usual seat, I scrub my face with a gloved hand and yawn. The rumbling of the bus’s engine is soporific, and I resist the urge to close my sore eyes. Damn winter mornings.
Yawning again, I glance around at the other passengers, and my eyes widen a little in surprise. The bus fairy is here.
Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Indeed, I feel stupid thinking it. But that’s the name she’s earned for herself in my head. In her early twenties, her hair a permanent and artful birds nest, her make up subtly fantastical, and her clothes the ultimate in hippy chic.
I mostly see her in the summer, haven’t seen her for months now. I was beginning to get the weird notion that she was a creature of the warm weather, and that she was hibernating in a den of soft furs somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, the lights of the aurora singing pleasant dreams to her as she slept.
But no – here she is. I steal surreptitious glances at her as the bus begins to move, and she crosses one leg over the other, left over right, settling deeper into her seat. Looks tired, no make up, and her torso is bundled up in many scarves and an old army jacket against the biting chill. My eyes travel down her body to where her legs poke out of the bottom of the swaddled mass of her clothing. Feet and calves tucked up warm and snug in the most enormously shaggy furry boots I’ve ever seen. She wears them in summer, too, but they’re far more suited to this bitter cold, and I envy her undoubtedly warm feet.
Incongruous to the rest of her attire, though, her legs are encased only in mustard coloured tights. Sort of a soft, yellowy brown colour which, on anyone else, would look awful. Somehow, though, her fey charm carries them off with aplomb and certainty. I’ve seen them before, of course, and they must be favourites, because they are a little the worse for wear. I notice a snag, here and there, and a ladder. On the inside of her right knee, it starts just below the top of her calf and travels up, only a quarter of an inch wide, and disappears underneath her crossed leg and the hem of her skirt. I find myself staring, and quickly flick my eyes away as she moves, settling her body a little, burrowing a little further down into her protective cocoon.
I know it’s rude to stare, but gradually, my eyes make their way back to that tiny, exposed strip of soft, creamy flesh at her knee, and I marvel. I wonder what it would feel like to run the tip of my index finger slowly along that gap. To feel the yield and warmth of that beautiful, pale skin. My eyes half-close as the reverie overtakes me. Half-dreaming, I watch her shift uncomfortably, and re-cross her legs; right over left this time. Those tights must be near the end of their useful life, as the movement causes the ladder to grow. As her right leg settles in place, the ladder widens slightly, and a pinstripe run bursts from the top. I can almost hear the faint zipping noise, as it races along her soft inner thigh, and into the darkness under the hem of her skirt, ridden up now to mid-thigh. Now I have a perfect view of the ladder. It’s a cliché’, I know – or a bad chat-up line – but just at that point, my ethereal finger is replaced my the tip of my tongue as I gently trace the path of the ladder along that soft, sensitive flesh. Would she be ticklish, I wonder? Would she giggle as my tongue’s tip traced its way around the bend of her knee, along her inner thigh? Would she sigh and open her legs a little, to allow my tongue to continue its journey? All the way to the end of that ladder? How far up does it run, I wonder? All the way…?
The bus jerks and hisses as we reach a stop, shaking me out of my head and back into the real world. Even as I feel a blush heating my face, my traitor eyes follow her body as she stands and prepares to leave the bus. Just before I force my eyes to the floor, though, I swear I catch a glint in her eyes.
A half-smile quirking the corner of her mouth…
.
Must have been a step ladder.
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