She peeled her eyes open, head muzzy with sleep. The light was still on, the TV droning in the background. She smiled. Trisha was looking down at her, a matching smile on her face.

Michaela moistened her lips. ‘You’re a vision,’ she said. ‘I fell asleep and now I’m dreaming. Wish I could dream like this every night.’

Trisha started laughing. ‘You always did say the most ridiculous things,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you remember how to shut me up,’ Michaela remarked, a smile playing around her lips. ‘Do you remember, Trisha?’ The smile disappeared. ‘I remember.’ 

Trisha slid down onto the bed next to her, propped up on an elbow. She reached out a hand and touched Michaela’s face, hesitantly at first, the expression on her face now one of concentration. Then she smiled, just a lifting on one corner of her mouth and flattened her palm against Michaela’s cheek. She nodded.

‘I remember too,’ she said.

Michaela reached up and touched Trisha’s face. Drew her down to meet her lips. Brushed them against Trisha’s own and whispered against them. ‘I never stopped remembering,’ she said, then kissed Trisha properly, pushing her back against the pillows and flipping over until she lay on top.

Trisha twined her arms around Michaela’s neck and Michaela was undone completely. She kissed lips, eyes, neck, lips again. She ran her hands over Trisha, seeking the heat of her skin, slipping under the tee shirt Trisha had changed into sometime and sighing against her as they found the warm silk of skin.

Trisha squirmed and pulled her tee shirt off, Michaela sitting back to watch, eyes dark with wanting. Trisha’s skin was pale and perfect. Michaela’s eyes looked over everywhere her hands wanted to go. She leaned forward and brushed the strap of Trisha’s bra off her shoulder, then kissed the gentle slope of breast. Trisha reached for her, and Michaela let her pull off her own tee shirt so that she sat before her in only her underpants. They smiled at each other.

‘It’s good to see you baby,’ Trisha said.

Afterwards, Michaela lay sprawled and very pleasantly exhausted across Trisha’s chest. She was listening to the delicate beat of Trisha’s heart. Trisha lay against the pillows, a hand stroking Michaela’s hair, shoulders.

‘When did you get the tattoos?’ Trisha asked.

Michaela held up a wrist and looked at the blue snakes entwined around it. Two of them writhed around her forearm, twisting around so they each held the other’s tail in their mouth. Trisha ran a finger over them.

‘Few months back,’ Michaela said.

Trisha placed her thumb over the pulse in Michaela’s wrist. ‘They’re… fascinating,’ she said. ‘And kind of awful. You’re obviously not planning to get any sort of job where you have to show your arms.’

Michaela lifted her head and laughed. ‘Since when are you so practical?’

‘Since I started waitressing in a small town diner. Do they mean anything?’

Michaela rolled onto her back. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Snakes are this pretty loaded symbol, of course. Most people when they think of the snake think of Adam and Eve and the snake in the garden of Eden.’ She paused and looked at her arms. Sometimes she couldn’t decide whether she’d drawn something true on herself or actually disfigured herself. She snorted and Trisha raised an eyebrow.

She carried on. ‘But the symbol of the snake is much older, and it’s a really matriarchal symbol, you know? It symbolises birth, death and rebirth. Change and growth.’ She stopped and shrugged.

‘What about them eating their own tails?’ Trisha asked.

‘That just means that everything’s connected; life, death, the universe, it’s always changing, growing, but the fact that it is always changing is invariable.’ Michaela stuck her arms behind her head.

Trisha cupped her chin in a hand and laughed, but it was a strangely humourless sound. ‘I would be tempted to say what a load of bullshit, except I’m becoming more and more aware that the world is full of really strange, scary shit, so I’ll go along with you, no problem.’

Michaela pushed back a stray corkscrew curl from Trisha’s face. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Strange, scary? What is it, Trish?’

Trisha lay her head down on Michaela’s breast and licked a lazy tongue over a nipple. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Not yet, okay. Let’s just make this reunion night, enjoy ourselves. Get some sleep even.’

It was Michaela’s turn to run her fingers through Trisha’s hair. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Sure. Come here then gorgeous.’ Trisha wriggled up the bed and they lay face to face on the bed, fingers exploring the planes of a face, lips meeting and kissing and talking their own language.

Sometime during the night someone got up and turned off the lights and they lay back in the bed, silver limbed in the moonlight, arms and legs entwined, both breathing the soft air of sleep.