words by Murielle Müller  – muriellemueller.com 
photography by Marina Reich – www.marinareich.de

nubivagant

‘ciel’, she said, that’s what the french call it, the ceiling of mother earth –
she looked up.
it was incredibly white from the red, the blue, the yellow; white as the sum of the spectrum, white as the desolation of something terminated. they were laying in a field of weeds, caressed by the blades of grass that were whistling away old secrets.
they were nowhere near lost and even further from found.
their only source of warmth was a petite roll-up cigarette, the smallest spark hardly staying lit in the soft rage of an autumn day. with summer gone, coldness was punishing them for dreaming a little further than the end of september.
she was blowing the smoke in his face, unintentionally.
they had tried to figure it all out, none the wiser; playing hide and seek between rocks of oblivion, running between branches of eternity, stumbling to the top of cascading mountains, drowning away in crystal clear lakes, obscured in all the inebriated, early mornings; but they didn’t know each other in spring and they won’t be knowing each other once the leaves have fallen.
they had allowed themselves to kiss hastily, to hold on to each other, to bluntly believe that summer would make an exception solely for them.
he looked at her. she handed the cigarette over and turned away. the breeze blew her hair into her turquoise eyes.
what were you expecting? she asked.
nothing, and then everything.
they continued smoking in silence.
neither of them knew which question had been posed at the very beginning of summer, and it was hard to remember now. but when they met, they were at least sure questions had been posed. for where to go, for where to leave, for what to dream, for what to conquer. their lives tangling up almost as fast as their sweaty hands and their cold feet.
they had shared too many cigarettes, talked too deeply, fallen in love with the idea of each other too fast. they had been moving through clouds. clouds of smoke and affectionate illusions.
now, the clouds were transforming to something more substantial – pouring rain.
their last shared cigarette was being extinguished.