Chapter Eleven

                                    

                                          
HIS BEAUTY was as mysterious and as hard to describe as the gust of air we call "the wind" is: always shifting, always fascinating, and hard to grab onto and force it to put itself into words graspable by the human mind. 
Therefore, I hope the following description does his glory justice, for surely, I am not talented enough with wording to find the suitable phrasings.
His hair was both sand-colored and silvery, a pale hue that looked airy and ethereal, combed back to reveal a perfectly sculpted square forehead with the slightest hint of a widow's peak.
His face, lightly turned away from me, chin down as he stared at his flying fingers on the harp strings, was lean and had all the right angles and proportions. I found his cheeks a bit too sunken in, and, as my gaze naturally trailed down his nearly naked body, I saw he didn't harbor even a droplet of unneeded squishy flesh on it; it was like made out of firm marble.
His torso, sculpted and wet, as if he had just gotten out of the river's waves, glimmered in the sun, the drying droplets resembling gems that lay all over his upper body.
His pointy elbows moved in and out, and out and in, as he relaxed and tensed them to produce the best quality of tone. His fingers, long and agile, plucked the strings quickly with astonishing accuracy, the melody rising like an elysian chant above the quiet accompaniment.
Just as my eyes glid even lower, taking in the elongation of his legs and the toga carelessly tied around his waist, dropping below his belly button and creating a shadow with its fold, he lifted his gaze, perplexed, as if he had first felt my presence, then noticed it.
His eyes were pools of molten silver, not too large, just right for his face, even a bit narrowed, yet it suited the harmony of his features. Those eyes surpassed even mine in their magnificence. They looked both luminous and abysmal; their gaze made me weak in the knees.
I felt it before I knew it; this man had something divine in himself.
Yet I chose to ignore the gnawing feeling in my stomach that screamed at me to back off while I could, while he still had mercy.
While he stared at me, fingers still absent-mindedly, yet perfectly clearly playing the flurry of notes, I became aware that I was still walking towards him, step by step, as if my legs were disobeying me and voluntarily guiding me nearer, contrary to any common sense.
My heart hammered in my chest so violently I thought it would climb to my throat and jump out of my mouth, and I felt both disturbed and relieved when my feet finally stopped their own-minded stride, just before the entrance of the cave where the harpist man played.
He carefully lay his harp on the smooth rock he was sitting on, so gently, as if it were a fragile baby. 
Then, he stood up, and I noticed he was tall, extremely, inhumanly, his head nearly reaching the very high ceiling of the cave, at least seven feet of pure muscle and optimal beauty, though it was surely even more.
We stood, looking at each other, me feeling small before the entrance, him, the most beautiful, gigantic man I had ever seen until then, and I thought I would ever see.
If I was blessed by the gods, he must have been sired by them. That was the only reasonable explanation.
The wind blew all around me, my hair was spiking up like the flames of a fire, and the gust covered my whole body in a chill, passing through the thin layer of the linen peplos I wore hunting. 
I felt strangely vulnerable, exposed, grains of sand rising from the river banks and getting in my eyes, that felt cold and scratchy.
His voice echoed throughout the huge stone cave before reaching me, and brought with it all the reverberated responses, sounding like a choir of mellow low notes.