![]() But me and Brother, when she not there, is that Englishman name we call her by. Her people magic, for all that she will box you if you ever remind her of that, and flash her blue, blue y’eye-them at you. She say never mind the name most people know her by is a name some Englishman give her by scraping a feather quill on paper. Say it don’t make no matter which, for she could never remember one different from the other, but she know one of them is her real name. She tell me say I must call her Scylla, or Charybdis. If you ever hear how she gnash her teeth in her head like tiger shark if you ever hear the crack of her voice or feel the crack of her hand on your backside like a bolt out of thunder, then you would know is where the real storm there. Wheeling and turning round her scalp like if it ever catch you, it going to drag you in, pull you down, swallow you in pieces. If you ever see her hair flying around her head when she dash at you in anger like a whirlwind, like a lightning, like a deadly whirlpool. You know who the real tempest is, don’t you? The real storm? Is our mother Sycorax his and mine. She’s decided it’s time for breakfast instead. “I thought I’d make some oatmeal porridge.” “You hungry?” she calls from the kitchen. You linger in the bathroom, staring at the whimsical shells she keeps in the little woven basket on the counter, flouting their salty pink cores. “I’ll go and brush my teeth,” you tell her. You try not to sound grumpy. “I’ve got morning breath,” she says apologetically. “Will you be my slimy little frog?” she whispers, a gleam of amusement in her eyes, and your heart double-times, but she kisses you on the forehead instead of the mouth. Her hair’s too straight to hold the plaits they’re already feathered all along their lengths. She comes willingly, a fall of little blonde plaits brushing your face like fingers. “You could kiss me,” you tell her, as playfully as you can manage, “and make me your prince again.” “Well, it’d be a way to start over, right?” “You said you wanted me to be your frog.” Say it, say it, you think. ![]() She’s lovely as she was the first time you met her, particularly seen through eyes with colour vision. It had been an awkward third date a clumsy fumbling in her bed, both of you apologizing and then fleeing gratefully into sleep. “Did you sleep well?” she asks, and you make sure that your face is fixed into a dreamy smile as you open your eyes into the morning after.
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