TERMITE - SAYANTINI

There were women and then there were women. The women of the first category were never a problem. Truthfully speaking, they didn’t even matter in the scheme of things because they wouldn’t remember a thing he wouldn’t want them to remember. But they were a weakness of his. And that little weakness, and the very faint strain of loneliness which was all that was left in him that reminded him that he had maybe once been conceived as human, was what gave rise to the problem, which was the second category of women, who were a problem. But sometimes, one simply needed to feel that there was someone there, swimming in the unending fabric of space and time who would know who you are, maybe love you, or that, simply, exist.
Adan Garcia, though, being not what one might call completely a normal specimen of homo sapien sapiens, knew what happened when one felt that way. But he had still made that mistake. And now there was a woman named Cybele Kouris, with eyes which looked like slate from afar, but melted into the different shades of a stormy sea when seen intimately, constantly shifting, proclaiming through her actions that yes, someone could indeed tamper with the Script, and more than that, practically shouting out aloud to him, that yes, she knew who he was and was deliberately flinging out a challenge to his face.
I know who you are.
Come out, come out, wherever you are...
He could feel the changes, the very nuances of what made the universe and all its dimensions function. A little shift in the fog surrounding his cottage told him volumes. And today, as he sat under the old elm tree, the shadows had lengthened and suddenly the little oasis in time, with its green meadows at the edge of a forest with a perfect wooden hut and a placid lake with flowers of unnamed colours growing on the border, had suddenly turned cold, and cloudyfrom the warm golden spring it had been, in a span of seconds. The evergreen trees of the forest had suddenly turned coniferous and he could see icicles forming on the top branches and leaves.
***
The day he had left her sleeping under the grunting ceiling fan of the dilapidated room in the old abbey, it had been hot. Hotter than anything the suffering poor of 19th century Mexico had ever experienced. And to put it one way, temperate wasn’t a word that came into mind. But it had been something in the eyes, those damnable eyes which had drawn him in. And he had gone, knowing with the knowledge of one obsessed one too many times, this one he would have trouble wiping out. And so it had been. When it was time, he had hesitated for that one crucial moment, and had chosen to disappear while she slept rather than have never existed in her mind at all. He had failed to notice those silver eyes following him into the darkness and the steady gaze that remained on the spot where he had been.
***
And now those steady eyes, silver, melting and glowing, looked into his and said nothing at all, when once it had spoken epics. She was still as a statue, as she stood on the cliffs, seemingly undisturbed by the white spray of the waves crashing on to the rocks not two feet from her, as her long black hair billowed in the wind as did the blood red gown she wore. Her only ornament was silence.
“ So, you came.” She said, her voice soft yet with razor edges. Irresistible.
“ I think the effort you put in telling Caesar he was going to die, and not to mention who was going to do him in, makes the question redundant.”
“ Well, you always did believe in grand gestures.”
“ That shows how little you know me, darlin’”
“ Well, it worked didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did.”
There was a silence. Both thought the same thoughts, yet both so distant. They looked at each other and the drama of quiet unfolded. Battles were fought and wars were lost. The furious music of the sea pleaded and raged and demanded the demands each made in their minds.
Then the calm reinstated itself with force, and she smiled at him once more like she had done the first time he had seen her, mysterious as ever, in her domino and mask, dancing recklessly at the carnival, the name of which had eroded from both their memories. It was a smile of knowing; of knowing that the inevitable couldn’t be changed, and even if it could, some choices had to be made.
A step here and a tilt there. They were now close, close enough for him to see the lines beside her eyes, and the fatigue in them. And he wondered what she saw when she looked into his.
“Nothing.” She said. As if she had read his mind. “The shadows are too deep. And the glint of something electric is all I ever saw.”
And that was how it should be.
“There is nothing else, you know.” He said. “There can never be. It’s stupid to hope for more. There can only be one.”
She smiled a smile of misery and torture, and she bowed her head for a moment. Then she looked up and her gaze was steady again.
“Go on, then.”
With a flick of his hand, she was gone. He sat down on the rocks on which she had been standing, and turned to the sea with unseeing eyes. He gazed into nothing and said to himself;
“I’m too old for this shit.”
(ends)

AVY COMMENTS
Your writing is fluid and I like the way the sentences flow into one another. But what you have to test for yourself is the easy way you fall into certain cliches and avoid those pitfalls. It is one thing for a story to flow, it is another to edit it ruthlessly thereafter.
I think you are ready to do your sci-fi story.