Stricture It didn’t seem fair, he thought, that the clothes could lie. Or, at the very lea

Stricture

It didn’t seem fair, he thought, that the clothes could lie. Or, at the very least, that they could only tell part of the truth, leave convenient gaps that he would fill in with an overeager imagination, and then inevitably stumble upon some shade of disappointment at some future juncture.

It was the cloth that stretched over the chest that he resented the most. The way it strung out from one breast to another, leaving the suggestion of… well… anything. That was the problem. It suggested without providing evidence, and that meant that anything was possible for a little while.

The swell of her chest could surge upwards, curve to a point, be full or slim, pert or soft. The possibilities were narrowed by the way the fabric hugged against her at certain points, but it would never give the whole game away.

His largest concern was with the nipples, the parts that the cleavage never revealed, didn’t even acknowledge. They could be large, almost obscene, great dark discs that sat across her possessively, claiming as much skin as they could grasp, or they could be dainty, pink, adorable. Anywhere in between.

He’d know, eventually. If he was curious, that meant he was interested, and he tended to find out the answers to the questions that bounced around his head. But even then, something would be lost. To open that box would be to let all the other possibilities, every falsehood that could have been, flushing out into the world, so many Pandorian evacuees lost. 

He liked to think it was a holistic way to look at things, that he not only saw the best in people, but every possible person they could have been, but really it was just selfish greed. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, enjoy the person and every permutation of them at the same time, despite the fact that they could only occupy that single space, that single personality. The disappointment didn’t last long, it would be insane if it did, but that didn’t stop it cutting, just for a moment, a single slice against his mind. A sorrow for possibilities lost.