She was utterly unremarkable in every way. She was born on a Thursday afternoon, curls slick and diaphanous; mouth wail-shaped, and hungry. Like her birthgiver, and the woman before that and the woman before that, she was a sculptress: she ran a fine-toothed comb through her character, trimming and shaping until she was whittled down to the satisfying mold of the objectively bearable. Her adolescence was inconsequential, consisting merely of the obligatory acquaintance with her role as female–she who vanishes.

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Fortunately, she ripened into an ordinary woman of ordinary routine–dull, vain, and insipid. She too quickly forgave herself for lacking adventure with excuses of having staled beyond adventuring age, and paid penance with rigid routines of meager satisfaction and mediocrity. 

She sweetened her scones with butter and marmalade, and her evenings with vapid romantic comedies and amateur stargazing, tracing shapes in the sky with the prowess of a finger-painting toddler.  

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She was contentedly absorbed by her trivial town, taking far too much fancy in the futile attempt of distinguishing it: “The weather here is truly like no other!”, “Oh, aren’t the trees just beyond comparison come autumn?” Such pride was only sensible considering her dwellings, perched upon an ocean-cresting hill which she would gleefully descend each morning to graze the coastline. Some days, her return would be punctuated by grains of sand tracked from the shore, a coarse grit that would stubbornly embed itself in her proudly knitted rugs, but a reminder, she mused, of the side of her that was once wild and reckless. 

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And the trees were decidedly appreciable come autumn, branches sun-dipped and outstretched, their eye-catching nature remarkably surpassing that of her own qualities. 

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Upon each monsoon, she took credit for the rain, and thought herself particularly adventurous each time she would wrench ajar the glass pane beside her nightstand and welcome the drowsy dew. She would hold her robe fast to her chest, but allowed the wind to nip at her ankles like her mother before church–of “etiquette” and “modesty”–and revelled in her whimsy.

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She fancied herself a chef, taking far too deep of pride in the identical sandwiches she would heavy-handedly assemble each afternoon (swiss cheese and two slices of cold-cut turkey on rye), tossing the occasional crumb to a bluejay whom she addressed by name (“Francis”, although she could hardly tell whether he was one bird or multiple of the same), and privately preening in her benevolence. 

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After her meal, she took to crosswords, or knitting, for no purpose beyond remembering the utility of her fingers, thin and nimble like chopsticks; or she would dance in her kitchen, delighting in her silliness through timid, feminine motions–incessantly mindful of her own womanness, even whilst alone. 

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She existed no further than the borders of this panopticon, priding herself in her meticulously groomed lack of any undesirable trait, and dismissing the fact that, in such preoccupation, she similarly lacked all discernible identity.

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It was such plainness, such lack of subscription to anything notable or distinctive, which rendered her character so paper-thin and soluble; and, thus, the ideal object of his fancy.

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He is a pleasant, marketable man. He carries himself with proud stature, each limb placed precisely upon the next–a looming cairn. He is prompt and impervious. He radiates all which is virile and fiercely caffeinated (one cream, no sugar). He is a dependable importer of Italian suit jackets, each iron-creased sleeve studded with a silver cuff link. He wears his tie ticked two notches to the left, and matched precisely to the color of his socks. He is inconspicuously sharp and pervasive, like sand. He is the perfect width for embracing her and the perfect height for changing the batteries in her smoke alarm, and she was positively taken with him.

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Expectedly, she dissolved into him like tea leaves to kettle-scorn water. 

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Together, they were indistinguishable. They tasted of toasted rye and one cream, no sugar. They cracked every window, taunting the weather, and greeted Francis each morning. They indulged in a few too many romantic-comedies and teasingly sabotaged each others’ crosswords and all too eagerly ridiculed all which was peculiar, or, rather, different than themselves. 

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Together, they fused like vertebrae, no longer able to discern where one ended and one began, dividing only into the distinct form that was him.

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And when morning comes, he emerges from his dwellings upon the ocean-cresting hill, remarkable and satiated and whole.

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He tightens his tie two stars to the left, and counts the notches in a marmalade sky. He holds his suit jacket fast to his chest, for the autumn brought a bitter, nipping chill–but, oh, aren’t the trees just beyond comparison?–and begins his descent.