menthol

She pushed the menthol deep down into her lungs, pulling its heave into her very centre.  "It's like brushing your teeth," she said.

"Yeah?" he replied, with that laconic uprising at the end, the one that she had grown to recognise as his filtering of every aspect of her into him.  Details saved for a later date.

"Yeah. Like when you're on school camp and you brush your teeth with just a little bit of paste on the end of your finger."

Their hands were rough from the afternoon's activity.  The ice of an early July's night had yet to settle in, but everything heralded its presence.  The clear sky, dotted with seldom precious stars, and the carefully formed clouds that gently escaped from their mouths but were too young to play with.  Perched on the smooth concrete step which had weathered with time, suburbia stood removed from the quiet square in which they sat.  The flecks of its composition glittered in the soft light.  Their palms kept warm in each other.

Smoke littered the atmosphere.  She thought these clouds somehow cleaner, more pure than the usual, the ones she had grown accustomed to and the ones that smelt like him even when he wasn't around.  It was mint but it was not pristine; the English language toying with itself.  Their dirty undertone swirled in the air and got trapped within her veins.  She ignored the tingling.  They gazed into the darkness, the tangibility of existence only as far as their eyes could reach.

He noticed the light glazed the virescence in her eyes.  He hadn't moved but it was like it was stuck there, feared to be caught behind her pupils forever.  Her mind in tandem darted for freedom and for safety, their race pulsating through her.  She took one last drag.

"Imagine if all of this got stuck in you and you had to float away with it," he said.

She slept so well that night.  Details saved for a later date.