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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  Let me sing you a song of heartbreak and ruin -- Garbage
    #1



    It seems an eternity has passed, and then some. She has died and been reborn, loved and lost and given too much. Always too much. She has been shredded and sown-back together again like a ragdoll. And she is star-spun now, distant and venerable. 

    She has tried tying herself to the intricate politics of Tephra, a drowning sailor’s last attempt at breathing, and though she is grateful to be offered a home among its shores, she has yet to find peace there. Oh, she is elated to be reunited with her first love; the sea. And she had sung its praises in a language none but a seagull would understand. But to them she is dream-song and star-shine, the aloof girl with forlorn smiles and kind words in tow. They do not know of her secrets; the way her eternity-eyes always seem to stray in search of dark-skinned boys with self-loathing and angst in their eyes.
    She has avoided the meadow like one would avoid the plague. Never again has she visited that magical place, never again has she sought the company of the willow with his tears and the chipper faces of wildflowers. For to do so would be to admit that he is gone forever, and it is a dream she cannot bear to part with.

    To clear her mind, she shakes her delicate, noble head. The silver-wire mane she spites flitters, above her neck, and there is a soft black scar etching its way across her crest. A small keepsake to remind her how dying feels like.

    She wonders then, what he would think if he happened upon her now, broken, marred and distant as the stars that cover her body. Would he still think himself so unworthy, or would the tables have turned? Oh, she strains! – Strains with all the power of the stars; bound now and infuriated in her blood, to not think of him. But her eyes are galaxies of hurt and despair, and she knows then that only nightmares will dog her footsteps tonight.

    So she leaves beach and sea and kingdom behind and instead she seeks the comfort of the leaping laughing streams of the river deep in the forest. But the river is a study in war-torn grey tonight, mirroring only the cold twinkle of stars. She approaches solemnly – listless, if not exhausted, with a humble hang of an otherwise proud head. This was not the sea-goddess, she thinks as she watches her own reflection in the still waters. This was not the daughter of star-glimmer and moonlight; this was a child with the world upon her shoulders, with regret hanging languidly from her features – a child seeking a redemption which would now never come, for never again would she pass the borders into that other world, the other world which had expelled those miscreants, the other world which had delivered her into the arms of death.
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    #2
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    He’s made many mistakes in his life, and this had been yet another.
    He shouldn’t –
    Shouldn’t have left her.
    Shouldn’t have touched her.
    Shouldn’t have spoken to her.
    He knows all this, the way he knows he shouldn’t have done a hundred other things, but logic is a poor barrier to the memory of her skin and her eyes, their brightness when she looked at him. She had looked at him and hadn’t seen the sins, she hadn’t seen the proverbial scarlet letter in his eyes (orange, not scarlet, but the meaning was the same, the warning was the same). She had seen – what?
    Someone who might make her happy.
    He wouldn’t, of course – who has he made happy? He is nothing but a harbinger of misery, of misfortune, he is a black spot, damning them with his presence. But she had believed. And her belief had been enough to make him believe for a second, too.

    He hadn’t looked back. This is what haunts him. He had left and had not looked back at her. What if she had watched him go? If he had looked back – what? Might she have spoken? Asked him not to?
    (And what would he have done, if she had?)

    The meadow feels strange now, so he goes elsewhere, to the darker realms of the forest where moss and lichen grow and he moves in the shadows like some wraith, and he does not look for wildflowers.
    The babble of a river intrigues him, he follows the noise into a place he has not been. He wonders what the moon looks like on the river, if the reflection appears at all.
    But he stops. There is no moon on the river, but there is a galaxy, starlight in the shape of a horse.
    Of –
    He inhales, a sharp gasp of breath, as if he is suddenly drowning.
    “Saedis,” he says, before he can stop the word from leaving his mouth.



    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.


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    #3


    Saedís has been rewound; her heart cast out to sea and spat back by the tide. Unwanted. All that is left to tell the tale is the spider-scar on her chest where before the flesh was unmarred and pure. She has lost her purity, the telltale glimmer of unbridled hope in her eye. Replaced instead with the hurt that threatens to drown her, swallow her into some bitter abyss of seaweed and dark waters.
    She is an array of nerves as she stands by the river, trying desperately to bury her heartache in the arms of starlight and silence. But the stars are jagged diamonds in her veins, cold and austere. She shivers, begs peace from the still waters of the river instead. And she can almost grasp it there in the nothingness. Until…

    Until she sees him, standing there like it is the most common thing. Like it hasn´t been weeks and weeks.
    Saedís freezes, and then she walks and stops again, at a loss of what to do. Her breath hitches behind her mouth, and finally she starts walking again, her steps deliberate and wondering. Those layers of peace tremble, thin as paper-maché now. He is the only one who could slip between the hurts and the sadness, into the very heart of her, as easily and casually as slipping one´s hand into their pocket. She doesn´t know whether she should love him for it or to fear him.

    ”You´re still…. You´re… you´re you –“ the words tangle in her throat and they are not enough, not nearly enough. She stands before him, at last, and only looks at the familiar darkness of him for a moment. Slowly, Saedís reaches out and touches her nose to his, a gentle, tentative movement. She doubts – will he mind? Is this real? Does he remember her still? But these thoughts slide from her mind, and she exhales her joy so that it falls like a four-leaf clover between them. ”Garbage” she says, the only thing she could say, and those syllables hold all the things brimming in her heart that she cannot say.
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    #4
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    He wonders what happened to her, what magic or malice set upon her – new scars, a new glow about her, all adding to her beauty. They are multipliers, new stories on her skin, ones he wonders about, ones he’d die to read. His own skin lacks scars, though sometimes parts of him ache, as if there were once wounds there. Ghosts of wars past.
    He is ready to fall to his knees in apology (even as part of him screams and gnashes its teeth, telling him to turn away, that no good can come of this), to promise not to leave her in such a way again. To explain himself, not that the explanation makes sense – little of him does – but whatever he can to eke out forgiveness.

    But before he can fall to his knees, she’s close, nose extended, brushing against him. Time has only strengthened the electricity of her touch, and he shudders at it, overcome in gratitude and fear alike.
    “I’m sorry,” he says, and he touches her, nose against her cheek, “I shouldn’t have left.”
    Still touching. Mapping her. He is terrified.
    “You look beautiful,” he says. It is an understatement, but he is no poet. His touches say what he cannot, still touching her with such reverence, as if she is a holy grail long-sought.


    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.


    Reply
    #5


    I´m sorry

    She is caught so off guard by the statement, by the recognition of these words, that for the second time tonight her breath will fail to escape her lungs, but sits quietly and still, afraid to move for fear that this was all just an illusion. Surely, he is soon to be on his way again, never did she fathom the weight of this reality, and hope springs painfully anew from somewhere inside her. It is like being brought back from the dead with all your death-scars still bleeding.

    ”I am glad you came back” and the sound of it is so small, so whispered (like an urgent secret, begging for freedom), that she is sure he has not heard her. But in some way he has released her from her torment, from the agony of not knowing where he was or why he drew such intimate memories from her, and this has regrounded (if not, astonished) the sea’s child. He is beside her then and she is comforted by the heat of his body; the sour taste of her sorrow has passed but is replaced by air that seems too thin to breathe. Somehow, she does not feel betrayed by his absence. Somehow, she understands.

    ”You came back.” She does not ask – this time, she knows. This time the clarity of her voice has returned Spring-sweet, yet the airiness of it is uncharacteristic of even her most gentle tones. She shifts away from him so that the haunted depths of her gaze read more deeply into his, seeking the reflections he hides from her just below the surface. Their patience and girlish beauty harbors beneath much deeper longing, and without losing the sugar-soft veil of her voice, something stronger within her emerges. Someone stronger.

    She lets her pale, pale mouth trace the blackness of his shoulder. Plants a soft kiss on his withers; feather-light and promising. She wishes that she could carry his fears on her slender shoulders; that she could soften the trembling edges of his skin, dim the burning fire of insecurities in his eyes. And she would – he need only whisper a quiet plea into her waiting ear. Love begets trust.

    ”So are you” she whispers then, and there is a tear falling from the corner of her eye.
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    #6
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    He is ready to apologize again, say it a dozen more times, a hundred, but then she speaks. I am glad you came back, she says, and the way she says it, oh, like she is truly glad, like he is something to be glad for rather than something shunned, something terrible.
    “I-” he begins, an unfulfilled sentence. What follows could be dangerous. He plows on anyway. “I was scared. By how you make me feel.”
    Scared is almost a laughable word, he is
    terrified. Because some part of him knows he has been on such precipices as these before, and it has never ended well. That he is not a thing to be loved long, or often.
    A monster. A sick boy.
    (those goddamn eyes)
    But all the fear in the world cannot stop his stupid, foolish heart. It cannot stop the way she looked in the wildflowers or the petal-softness of her laugh. It cannot stop her scent from intoxicating him.

    (He never learns.)

    Her touches rain over him like stars, and his eyes closed. He tries to anchor himself in this moment. Pretends there is no past pounding at his door, no terrible things.
    (If you don’t remember them, do they exist? They are the trees falling in the forest with no one around, these feelings, these memories that once existed but everyone who participated has since died. Strange and stupid.)
    “I won’t leave,” he says now, a promise every part of him wants to keep. “as long as you want me to stay.”



    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.


    Reply
    #7


    She is silent; awash in the emotions that rose, unbidden, in the wake of his confessions. The deep breath before the plunge into disaster.

    But in her silence, there are words: Darkness and shifting sea; water-kisses and salt-spray; gull-cry sea-cry bird-cry in mourning tones of shadow and lightness; cloud cover with sunlight dappled dune and air-shifted reed; lost moments, slow moments, sea-moments with wind and air and slow-moving intensity; a wonderland of tastes and sensations which even the stars and ocean cannot give her; nightscape meeting seascape at the horizon in the distance, filled with novelty and a moment´s worth of time: silence, silence and words.
    Like this she stands as he makes his promise; unmoving, befallen by a sudden fear and hushed quietude; a bone-white girl spun of intangible dreams and hopes to shatter. Oh, how his words inspire within her a whimsical passion, how she longs to take them for truth. But it is a truth born only from the corruption of lies. And the part of her that is her own, the connection with the stars and the universe, entangled itself in the labyrinth of her soul.

    Still she held the flame in her eye that promised of a new tomorrow as she turns to him. Still, she cannot tear herself from the warmth of him. Still she cannot bear to pick up the trembling heart that she has laid bare before him and within her eyes was an ensnarement of it all.

    Still; she aches for the torment in those strange, strange eyes; fleeting as time itself; fleeting like the retreating waves upon the stormy sea. She is his and she is lost – irrevocably, undeniably, lost.

    ”Stay” she whispers and her voice is starsong and lament; longing and dreamlit. ”Stay with me, Garbage”


    @[Garbage]
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    #8
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    The thing is, here’s been here before.
    He’s made such promises before, and with every intent to keep them. But the others – they lose interest, or leave, or die, and he is back to beginning. Back with a worthless pledge.
    They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But ah, he is mad for her, and those times – those are the times he can’t fully recall. The old, distant aches. Blurred faces.
    Her face, though, is crystalline.

    The whole thing feels like magic, he keeps expecting some veil to fall away, for her face to turn from kindness to cruelty. But she is the same, star-lit, looking into his eyes, touching him, and underneath her nose his skin is smooth and free of scars. Because this is a new body. A new chance.
    “Always,” he says, such a heavy word, though he means it. The fool, he thinks himself strong enough to bear such a weight.
    “I love you, Saedis,” he says. Maybe it’s too soon to spill such words, smothering. But the words have been at the back of his throat for too long now. Ever since he left. And he isn’t strong enough to hold them back.
    (He is not so strong, after all.)


    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.


    Reply
    #9


    She is molten mercury under his touch, and thus ignores everything in her mind that screams she should not press nearer, and brushes coyly against him, in response, in reassurance – in hope.

    It is too uncomplicated, too painless to be anything but castles in the air. Oh, how easy it is to meld her skin into his; white to black and oblivion. How easy it is to forget the world, to lose herself in that voice, those eyes, his lover´s touch. She should run – she knows this, here lies nothing but heartbreak and ruin. But when was she ever a creature of logic and reason? She is Saedís – star-spun, starry-eyed, and star-crossed. What else can she do but capitulate?

    I love you Saedís
    ”I love you, too”  she echoes into the unkempt tangles of his hair.

    Because you do, don´t you, dreamer? You always loved too easily.

    And like that they stand – basking in the frail grasps of a love that was nothing more than the dying laughter of a child.


    @[Garbage] - I suppose this is where we wrap up and throw Sleaze into the mix? I almost feel sorry for them Tongue
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