Uilleann Girl

“Look,” she said, pointing with a strangely childlike arm. “It’s laughing at you.”
He turned. The sun was hanging woundedly in the air, wavering and smudged like tears or watercolor. It did, indeed, look like a smiling mouth, and the red-tinted cloud above it like two eyes.

The sun set quickly, to the tune of the uilleann pipes that he played when she wasn’t paying attention. Her fiddle was waiting for her in its careless case, but she just sat on the stone wall over the sharp drop of rocks and green grass, watching where the rim of the sun still shone like a lip of neon blood.

“You know why, don’t you?” she said suddenly, when the sun had surrendered to the turn of the earth. He thought she looked distractingly like she was going to fall, balancing with her arms outstretched on the uneven stones.
“Be careful,” he said, going over to her. He had to be ready to catch her. “Why what?”
“Why the sun is laughing at you.” She danced away from him, teetering and twirling precariously. He leaned over the edge- heights scared him; he stayed away from the edge whenever he could, loving the view of the fields but hating the steep cruel half-cliff that let him see it- to remind himself that she must not fall.

“Why?” he asked, when it began to seem as if she wouldn’t explain.
She came over to him as unreasonably as she had gone.
“You think your pipes are a substitute for a voice.” She whirled around again; the ragged, uneven edges of her soft brown dress struck his arms as he reached out involuntarily to catch her.
“You think I will fall,” she added, jumping lightly down from the wall. She was barefoot. Perhaps that was why she could balance so easily. He looked at his stiff black shoes, and followed her.

Still careless, she took her fiddle; tuned it.
“You know?” she said. She always strung out conversations as long as it took for him to join, but he always took as long as he could. He nodded and joined her song. He didn’t have to look at her to see the familiar jerk and rock of her body as she moved with the music, but he watched anyways.

She walked over to the edge of the wall. It was dark in earnest now, and she was only a silhouette. He followed her. Wanted to watch her, guard her from falling. She stopped at the edge, and he came close enough to see her. Her brown hair fell over her face and caught in her eyelashes and lips. Her face was deep in shadows.
“Of course,” she said, leaning over the wall, still playing, “It’s laughing at me too.”
She sat down again on the edge of the wall, lilting out music. He played along so he wouldn’t be able to speak.
“For the same reasons,” she said.