10.10.00 - 07:12:00

This will be a long entry. I roleplay on the web, because I love to write, and because I am a lazy writer best suited to the instant gratification of writing in conjunction with someone whose prose I adore. We wrote this scene tonight, and it was lovely.

[Valerai]

Tue 05:26 CEST The time is night, the place some small hamlet by the calm and boundless ocean. It is quiet, the only sound being that of the rhythmic sea outside. He awakens, though he knows not why, and even before his eyes open he knows she is not there.

He finds her outside, a slender and fragile shape in a shifting white shift at the edge of the shifting sea. The night is starless and cold, the ocean a sprawl of briny darkness. A few scraggling patches of grass stirs and whispers in a fresh gust of the salty wind. Beneath, all about, the presence of the sea pervades, slidingly subtle, a slow unintrusive, gentle rhythm that nonetheless stirs the blood and rocks the soul. No wonder she comes here to calm herself after--after those dreams (for that is all they are, all they must be...not visions...not prophecies...). No wonder she stands at the edge of the ocean and listens to its haunting soft melody. No wonder...

No wonder he sometimes thinks her a creature from another world, an angel, a faerie queen lost. Wreathed in seamist, her unbound hair and her trailing hem blowing softly in the wind, she is an ethereal thing, something his unworthy touch might debase. So it is that he waits long moments at the door, hesitant, indecisive, unsure that his presence would be welcome when she seemed to have her own holy convenant with the salt sea. So it is that he only stands and watches her, a strange burning springing to his eyes, a strange ache to his heart as though she were something as unattainable as the stars, or the sea itself. Sometimes, he wondered if this was not all a dream; if he would not awake one morning and simply find her gone, disappeared with the night; if he might not blink now, and find that she has dissolved into a dream, and a wisp of curling cold mist.

It is not until she shivers, just so barely, and wraps her arms closer about herself that the spell is for the moment dispelled. He dares come to her then and slides an arm about her waist, lending her his warmth. In silence they stand for many moments, man and woman, lover and beloved, bearing witness to this body of water so ancient that it dwarfed even their long lives, this body of water that was once womb to life itself.

[Genevieve]

Tue 06:17 CEST There is nothing to be said. There is nothing to say.

Strong steps, and sure now, certain, carry him from his lingering voyeurism, his hesitant and wonder-drenched observation across the scree and sand, the scrub grasses clinging to the dunes that crackle brown and sere, ready for the onslaught of winter season. Sure steps, and strong, carry him to her.

It is ever thus, for she is more than a dream, more than the wild thing he once glimpsed tangled in the mists of a distant isle, more than forbidden, she is the beloved, and he knows her breath to be a real thing, a warm thing, a fragile thing, a miraculous little thing - solid and cored with heat, and real, so real, so achingly real. He knows the measure of her sleep, and the soft gleam of her awakening, he knows the toll of ache and the reward of small joys - the hidden bloom of her smile, the shy acceptance of her gaze, the crisp, bitten gasp of her breath (as if she were sudden-surprised by her pleasure) and the tangled luxury of her hair, sweat-kissed threads, and golden, spilling about their nigh-sleeping forms like swaths of sunlit silk. He knows her - fae thing, human thing - as well as he knows the measure of his own hand, or the leap of his own pulse.

She gives herself to his warmth without thought, though the gesture is far from merely thoughtless, and completely. She sinks into the curve of his enfolding body and drowns herself in his warmth. The poets would say she surrenders herself to him, but sometimes poems are shallow things, and nothing more than thin scratchings of ink upon paper. Sometimes the width of wide-aching world in not to be contained in a prison of words, and there is nothing so passive surrendering in the blessing of trust.

Say rather, then, that she gives herself to him, a gift, whole and intact and willingly heartfelt as the sky gives itself to the sun, or the first tender shoots of green to the warming spring, or the shore to the laving sea: softly, inevitably, sighingly sweet.

Troubled hands, restless and chill from the sting of the cold nightwind, curve about his own, and are warmed. Slender shoulders, shaking like the last leaf in winter, like a newborn birdling alone in the cold streaming dawn, still and drown in the protective circle of his warmth. Her golden head drifts gentle against the anchoring solidity of his chest, and together they watch waves.

Together, together - there is power in the word, a gifting power, an absorbing power, the sacred commune of souls in (almost) perfect synchronicity, and so she does not speak of distant prophecy, nor the events of the day. She does not speak of the aching sorrow they share for one lost to both, nor the sky, nor the strand.

They are enwrapped in a shining veil of sorrow-tainted joy. The morning found them upon a rutted track graced above its station with the term 'road'. Please, she called, her voice clear and carrying through the morning's voice. Let us stop here, milord. Noon found them yet there - found him pacing the mudlashed length of a courtyard, between henhouse and swine's den, just without the confines of the small, villainous little hut where a nutbrown woman screamed curses against the perfidy of Eve as she strained with troubled new life, where a shaggily disreputable peasant whose scent was distinctively less pleasant than even the filth of his single sow fretted over his wife's agony while a large-eyed, lame little girl clung mutely to his leg, overawed by the presence of golden knight and his sunlit lady. And, goaded by a sudden roar of outrage and pain from that self-same villein, the almost-warmth of the watery autumn afternoon found him surging from his almost-comfortable crouch toward the interior of the disreputable hut he had not yet seen fit to breach, half-a-hand upon his sword, ready to defend his love.

There was no need. There was no need, for the gutteral shout faded to a faint keen of wonder before the knight even darkened the door. He saw the babe, wrinkled and blue, flecked with the gore of birth, and so dauntingly tiny, tangled in the cord that gave it life. He saw the peasant woman, too exhausted to cry, bleeding, bleeding, and the little girl slack against the hearthstone, too stunned by disaster to make a sound. And he saw, too, the miracle of her touch, the blessing of her breath, which coaxed a gurgling, then lusty cry from heretofore still form. Evening found them departing, not so cruel as to refuse the peasants' token of a gift - a thick slice of good white cheese, a cup of precious beans, a tiny, precious pot of creamy amber honey. Call him Alain, she had whispered, to the exhausted mother's query, and he saw the slant of sorrow across her features, memory and regret and everblooming hope. Call him Alain.

Every gift has its burdens, every miracle its cost. And yet, and yet, wrapped in the sacred circle of his arms, dwarfed and humbled by the vastness of the unfurling sea, she does not speak beyond this silent, sacred gift of trust. Sometimes, there is nothing to be said. Sometimes, there is nothing else to say.

[Valerai]

Tue 06:41 CEST Every gift has its burdens, every miracle its cost, and he is not so dull as to overlook this. It is not a coincidence that so many saints are martyrs.

Standing there beside her, holding her as though his mere presence might protect her from the night and the darkness and the cold of the world, he wishes it were indeed so--that the touch of his hand might chase the secret fear from her heart, that the sound of his voice might quell the storms that invade her dreams. But it is not so, and so he must speak of it, haltingly, uncertainly.

"Milady, I have seen--I know miracles are born from your hands. Yet it seems, after, you are troubled, as though every miracle drains something inside you--or--"

It was not coming out the way he meant it to. He falls silent again, drawing away to stand at the very edge of the sea, so that the incoming surf sometimes washes over his bare feet. It is cold, numbingly so, and he turns to face her. "Every time you heal someone this close to the sea, Genevieve, you dream. Every time." He looks away, down the dark strand of the beach in the moonless night, and back to her. He wades up to dry land again, sand clinging to the soles of his feet. Catching her eyes, searching her eyes for some hint of what lay within, he says softly, "Sometimes I wake to find you weeping, though you think I do not hear. Sometimes you cry out in the night, and I cannot seem to comfort you, even when I wake you. What is it you dream of, that is so terrible you cannot tell me of it?"

[Genevieve]

Tue 07:11 CEST The moon should be so lovely. The curve of her lips is a small thing, a smile wreathed with the peculiar, skewering ache of sunset. The moon should be so lovely, or the hesitant face of a misted sun so temptingly shy. She is skittish as doe, a new-born colt, and her gaze shies away from his regard to the cloud-cast stars above. Shifting clouds reveal the Milky Way, strewn like diamond dust across heaven's road, and only when they are once more concealed does she find the hidden wellspring of bending strength within to glance once more upon him.

That single, singular meeting of eyes is as flashing bright, as inconstantly eternal as the flare of starlight upon dark waters. It swallows doubt with the dark richness of wisdom, feminine and secret, of womb-tides and coursing seasons, of the times of decay, and the inevitability of rebirth. The moon who haunts the night should be so achingly lovely as the inevitable sad little twist of her smile.

"It is nothing, milord," she murmurs, her forested gaze shifting once more to the width of the sea, away from him, and his concern, and his eyes darkened by troubled protective need. She cannot meet his eyes. "...merely some shadow of sorrow jealous of our present dawn.

"It is nothing milord," she whispers, transfixed upon the distant closeness of waters wild. Her arms clasp tight around her torso, and already she mourns his warmth. "It is -" The lies burn bitter upon her tongue, are ash and nothing more, and finally she whips about to him, sudden wild as a mother wolf and fierce as the dawn. She meets his gaze once more, and the troth is inevitable, unbreakable as they are not.

" -- winter turns ever to dawn, and someday the rising sun will dispell these shadows. I pledge to you, Valerai - whatsoever comes - whosoever betrays - whereever you may roam, and no matter how wild the storm, how fierce the night -- oh, know this, know this always," her eyes are shining with unshed tears, and her voice is vibrant with conviction to rival the stars' own light, and she knows this, as suddenly and necessarily as she knows the measure of a child's breath or the last fading of her own. The fickle moon should be so lovely. " -- dawn will come, my lord, my love. Dawn will come again."

[Valerai]

Tue 07:39 CEST Caught--caught upon the moment, in her eyes, in all the mystery of woman and sea and mist and tears--he cannot move, he cannot speak. He does not know what she has seen, that drives her to speak this way. He does not know what she sees, even now, with the distant rhythm of the sea echoing in their ears, and the rising fog unraveling white and ghostly over the black water. He cannot know she sees her own death.

"You speak as though night has already fallen. You speak as though you are going away--" his voice catches and he stops. Instead he reaches for her, he takes her hand, he watches the careful enmeshing of their fingers. He draws her to him, kisses her hand with all the fervent, shuddering trust of a sinner to his saint.

He cannot know she sees her own death, and yet as he raises his eyes to hers there is some part of him that understands whatever night that is dusking will be, that neither he nor she nor all the stars of heaven can prevent it.

"I know," he says instead, some measure of a vow to her. "I will remember."

He will remember. He will remember indeed, a hundred, three hundred, five hundred yets from now, when the sun seems as lost to him as she will be. He will remember, and perhaps he will believe her, even then. Likely he will not. Likely he will think her a liar, a beautiful liar telling lies to soothe him, to calm him even as the reverberating boom of the surf calms her. Likely he will seem hopeless, and think the dawn lost forever--but it will not matter, because he will still remember. And as long as he remembers, as long as he holds deep within himself some tiny guttering flame of her, some precious few handfuls of moments such as these, his hope will never truly die.

He will remember her. And even when he ceased to believe, he will still know the truth: that no night is forever, that the sun will always dawn.

[Genevieve]

Tue 08:19 CEST Never, she will vow, though the night steal her breath, though shadow dim her smile, even as the mothering sea rises to claim her slender form once more. She can no more desert him than the shore the sea, or the sea the slanting shore, for he inevitably threads through every pulse of her beating heart, and she through every draw of her breath, and they are small, yes, against the night. They are dwarfed, yes, by the breadth of the world. They are swallowed, dimmed, by the brilliance of the sun, and they are fragile things, drifting upon fate's hoary, shifting wind. But still they shine together - some starbright skein of tangled souls - some small shard of the divine that slumbers ever in the broken mold of the human heart.

His gesture is a small one, a bright one, this twisting truth of hands entwined. Even stars do fall, and angels, consumed by the whitehot burn of time, for the eternal is fleeting as a breath breathed in wonder. And this - sacrifice or absolution, beautiful lie or breathless truth - this communion of hands, this shell of fleshed warmth that enrobes a pair of tainted, shining spirits, is instant-passing and endless as hope.

She savors his warmth as a thirsting man savors the first cool kiss of clear cool water, as a devout man breathes the midnight divine. And though he dream her ephemeral as the mist-wreathed dawn, with his touch she is made solid and sweet-solemn and clarifyingly real. Skittishness dispelled by his vow, troubled nightmares banished by his tender touch, she draws him once more into the shining circle of her arms.

Tonight she will sleep untroubled, for the phantasms of the future have become mere ghosts, feckless and meaningless, their troublesome shadows banished by their recombinant light. She presses a chaste, burning kiss upon his knuckles and the wild tangle of her golden hair - wet with spray, fragrant with woodsmoke and saltsea - brushes his arm, light as a dewshining web. She presses a kiss upon their clasped hands, and then the untroubled width of her shining brow, and all is prayer and sanction, communion and sacrament, ache and fulfillment defining a perfect circle, unbroken, unbreakable.

Sometimes the truth does not matter, for there is a truth greater than words. And sometimes words do not matter, for there are words greater than words.

[Valerai]

Tue 08:45 CEST He watches her as she lays a kiss to their entwined hands, as though to seal them forever together. His grasp tightens on hers, and then he is stepping forward to fold an arm about her slender frame, to gather her delicate form close to his as he drops a kiss to her halo of sun-gold hair.

He holds her thus for long moments, the circle of his arm echoing the shape of wings yet to come, the sacrament of their embrace echoing their final embrace at the end of time. He holds her thus and his eyes sweep the darkness of the ocean before them--a darkness as wild, as unknown as the night she speaks of, that faces them both.

It is closing in on him, the future. He can feel it though he cannot see it. He knows their time together is not endless. He knows, perhaps, that it will end, and all too soon--and beyond--what lies beyond? What lies over the farthest horizon?

No matter. He holds her as though to draw her into him, as though to siphon her essence into his heart. She pervades him, and he drinks in her warmth, her presence before him. No matter--no matter what should come, or how long he must wait for the dawn. She is be his sun, his dawn--she is his guiding star. Her, now in his arms, or the mere memory of her endless ages from now. The thought of her fleeting smile, always so laced with sadness, with foreknowledge of the worst of fates. The memory of the sunlit days, the times they stepped among a meadow wild, the summer days, the nights, the nights. The few shining instants scattered like jewels upon a sea of time, like stars in the sky.

She will sustain him, give him strength, even as he gives her his.

"Come inside, beloved," (and let me love you), he murmurs, lowering his eyes from the dark, dark sea. "The wind is rising. You will catch your death here in the cold."

[Genevieve]

Tue 09:09 CEST She nods to him, and he feels the tender joy of her flashing smile as a movement of curving lips against his shoulder, a thing at once coy and aching. The crescent curve of her lips is as the horizon, at once bounded and ever-shifting endless.

Perhaps he does not know it yet, but he is already winged. He lifts her thus - with a word, a chaste and fiery kiss, a sunwarm blush of breath upon her lips - from the mists of her shying reticence to soar in the neverending real.

Thus they leave the lonely ocean, with all its mothering promise, with all its hidden threat, to sigh against the yielding shore. Thus they cross the sere scrub grasses, the scree littered dunes, and pace - silent and in perfect step - to a tight little hut more appropriate to a fisherman than a knight and his lady. Thus ( - now a hint shy, even after the passage of a lifetime, now shyingly giving, even in face its loss - ) sink together into blankets still soft with sleeping warmth, and their love is an innocent, vibrant passion, a golden thread that sings - defiant of fate, and circumstance, and their lovely, fragile fallibility - aching, achingly bright until the first kiss of dawn.