Lips are such inconsequential looking things. Two puffs of skin surrounding an opening in the face. They have no mind of their own, and despite the large number of muscles in and around them, very little physical ability to hold weight.

And yet, lips could move mountains. They open, and the words that pass through them order armies, bombs and missiles. They move, and lives are made and broken. Lips can smile, frown, pout, seduce--God can they seduce! They become familiar, their expressions--even the tiniest change in shape--can easily be a marker of what a person is feeling. Eyes may be the window to the soul, but windows can be shuttered, or boarded up, or painted and marked up to give false evidence.

But lips can never quite be controlled. Even painting them only serves to accentuate every single movement of muscle. We lick our lips when nervous or excited, bite them in fear and both pleasure and pain, press them tightly together in anger. Even the most controlled person can't quite manage to hide a slight instinctive reaction in their lips. Often it is only in lips we know well that we can spot such tiny changes, but they are there, when the right eyes are watching.

After five years, Napoleon's lips are more familiar to me than my own. I know where to look for each muscle, and what the movement of that muscle means. At times, I know more than he does of what he is feeling. Which is how I know so much better than he what is ahead of us. As he can read me almost as well, I try to control my smile. Others accuse us of reading each other's minds, but we don't.

We read each other's lips.

---

END