Triptych - working title
an excerpt

His eyes clenched closed and he turned his spine to the virgin.
Rationalizations wrestled with truths. Desires entangled with needs. In the silent moment that followed, the darkness of his thoughts heard the quietest whisper of light cloth falling to the floor.
"How do you wish me?" the girl asked with a voice on the edge of womanhood.
One more deep breath was taken before Montaigne accepted the revelation. She was only a model. She was only a subject. She was a sack of potatoes. But she was not and he could not escape his thoughts when his eyes did turn to her pale, pink, and wholly naked flesh, bared brazenly for his designs. Her bone thin hands made no attempt to deny her nudity but instead clutched at the stool to reveal hard white knuckles. The girl's chin, slightly trembling, remained raised so that he could see the smooth flow of lines that described her slender, splendid throat. He watched that flesh quiver as she swallowed breathlessly and his gaze remained held there as he marvelled at the layers of colour that made up that unblemished childish skin. The girl's breasts, palest of white where they stretched the flesh, tipped with petite, pink areola, marked Ghislaine as verging upon her adulthood. There was the slightest vague line beneath those orbs. The precious flesh beneath those breasts, riding upon her upraised ribs, had yet to be creased and remained innocent, naïve, of that weight that would one day descend to doom it. And lo, she had no External Oblique that he could see. There was only a simple, smooth transition from Gluteus Medias to her rib cage. It was almost as though, if he squinted, he could see a concave line. Impossible. She shifted, less than a whisper's worth, and he saw in that instant the precise parallel to that elusive curve form on the other side of her waist and when the line rose up it pinched the skin so perfectly where pectoralis met the interior arm that a deliciously delicate, unnaturally natural 'V' was forged.
The artist took up a pencil from on hand but franticly failed to find a clean piece of paper. It mattered not. He folded one over, found a clean corner, then leaned in to study that pocket of pink flesh.
Ghislaine's boney knees rubbed against one another as she nervously marvelled at the sudden intensity that was overcoming Montaigne. His eyes darted from paper to her and back and forth and back and all the while his pencil-bearing hand flitted and flicked seeming senselessly. She looked down, seeking to see what had enraptured him but could not discern the feature. It seemed not, to her surprise, to be her bared bosom. The draughtsman's head then angled hard over like a hanged man and he simply peered with hand hovering over the page. She tensed… and in so doing lost that sweet bit of unique beauty that had been there at the nearest edge of her right arm.
Montaigne took a breath and studied the quick sketch.
"A fair start." he said.
She wriggled a bit, freshly awkward. "Monsieur Montaigne, tell me what you see."
The painter took a bit of time before he answered. There was proper paper to find and pencils to sharpen. He had to clear away space so that he could move around as required. He had to find his light. Could he get a better primary light source from a window without risking Ghislaine's modesty or, more importantly, her secrecy? Instead, he drew a heavier curtain over a southern window. That would diminish the secondary source. The diffused sun was working well enough upon the light skin of the naked schoolgirl. He was getting his tones and he was seeing dazzling layers of colour. Her veins were a fine blue.
"I see…" he began after too long a pause, "… a beautiful young lady…"
She stopped him abruptly, saying "No! I'm serious. Tell me what you see! Tell me what you are looking for."
He stopped short and studied her mouth, watching her words form and tried again to answer. "I see young Ghis…"
"No." she insisted and moved her arms to vainly shroud herself. "Teach me. Teach me what you are looking for…what you see. Tell me about the body…my body."
Montaigne commenced to explain about the insertion of the pectoralis major into the exterior end of the clavicle and how when this muscle abutted against the conjoining of the deltoid and bicep in an underdeveloped figure it could, if the flesh was soft enough, form a magnificently architectural structure of symmetries that spoke of passive tensions. He noted how this phenomenon is similar to what can be found when the thumb is carefully brought into the abductor of the index finger but in a much more sublime manner. Ghislaine, for her part, nodded and tried to appreciate the physics of it but suddenly Montaigne's attention was once more fixed upon her naked femininity.
"What is it?" the girl asked.
"Nothing. Don't move…. your knee."
She froze. She tensed. She relaxed. She tried to find that precise level of tension or relaxation that she might have manifested that moment earlier. She must have maintained it for Montaigne was again almost insanely intent upon her flesh and bone. He knelt before her bare legs and Ghislaine could see then what had caught his eye, almost. The curtain must have slipped a bit for bright gold light had fallen strong upon her joints and the shades and shadows on those jagged low elbows were painting a rocky landscape that unveiled secrets of twisting muscles, powerful knots of tension at rest, and bones that made sturdy foundations. In considering it, Ghislaine herself marvelled at how her sweet, simple body that so often seemed so smooth and feminine, could conceal such a conspiracy of powerful, precision clockwork. She instantly appreciated the narrative possibilities of this.