#White Translucent Black|Misha and Beth

[brooklynislandgirl]

14. What is a song you’d listen to during ̶s̶e̶x̶ other intimate activities?

Spicy and Sweet || Accepting

“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?” Andy asks, face pinched in it’s overprotective brother is overprotective way. “Yeah.” She practically rocks on her heels as she leans against the counter to keep herself from shooing him out the door. “Don’ worry, gonna have a quiet night in, an’ if all goes well, mebbe stay da weekend in bed.” “You have been looking pretty pale lately.”  He presses the inside of his wrist against her brow though they both know even if she is sick ~and Beth hardly ever gets sick~ she could hide her symptoms away if she wanted to. But he can’t help himself. He’s been taking care of her for over twenty years and that’s never going to really go away.

She doesn’t shy away but the look on her face curses him seven ways to Sunday with its exasperation. And the irony of the moment is that the one of them that can read minds? Has no idea what she’s thinking. His mouth thins to a line. “Maybe I should call Tabby and reschedule. I’m sure she’d un-” “Don’ you dare, Panda. Oddahwise dey gonna send some one down from da Six-Eight an’ charge me wi’ murder only nevah gonna convict wi’out a body. Cause if you bail on her, I’ma feed ya t’ my tree!”

Andy shudders. He knows what she means by that. It is a euphemism for turning bodies and particularly blood into mulch for what she calls her world tree, her axis mundi. And though he’s never actually seen her do anything like that, he also knows better than to push her buttons that far. He sighs as if it’s his last breath.  “Fine. Fine. But... look. I left the number of Tov Umai on the fridge with some petty cash for a tip. You should do the chicken soup. I promise it’s nice and kosher and the chickens were killed humanely. If something comes up call me and I will literally be here in seconds. Dad’s conference is in Geneva. If you can’t get a hold of me, call Jay. Groceries will come in Monday after noon, so I should be here to receive them, if I am running late just have the lobby sign for them.” The longer he talks the more she wilts inside. She puts her hands on the bottoms of his shoulders and looses a little traction but eventually pushes him toward the door. He scoops up his duffel bag and shakes his head. “I mean I can-” “Get out my face an’ my hale, Andy. An’ offah Tabby my condolence her bein’ stuck wi’ ya.” He steals a quick kiss before the door gets shut a little too quickly behind him. Beth waits a whole fidgeting twenty minutes. Once she’s sure he hasn’t double-backed because he forgot something, she gets down to business. Her thick, fluffy bathrobe gets tossed in her closet, as do the Disney pyjamas she was wearing. Which in turn gets traded for something a lot softer and more feminine, that will accentuate certain features ~her throat, her wrists~ while still remaining...modest. Not done to by coy or fake something, but because she’s still nervous. And there’s only two ways this goes... a wordlessly sublime culmination of desires that have so very little yet everything to do with the body, or so catastrophically wrong that the world will shatter never to be the same again. It’s a lot of pressure for a first time. No candles are lit, the fireplace doesn’t burn winter’s chill from the apartment. She does, however, manage to weave the idea of light into being where it can’t possibly exist, diffused in certain places to give the living room and her bedroom a romantic ambience like she sees in the movies all the time. By the time the sun has set so fully that not even a memory of it’s brilliance exists, she’s finished with the rest. A glass of chilled red wine with a few sips stolen out of it, the sweet and the bitter coursing through her veins. The brand-new blackout curtains hang over her bedroom windows so none of the city’s neon can pass through, which means neither will the dawn.

The last thing that needs doing, besides fighting the jitters that have suddenly given her breathless pause...is the music. ~*~ 1. Closer || Nine Inch Nails || Instrumental 2. Love’s Death || Richard Wagner 3.  Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune || Claude Debussy 4. Ocean || John Butler 5. Sister Luck || The Black Crowes 6. Devour || Marilyn Manson 7. Release ||Pearl Jam

[brooklynislandgirl]

Gluttony (from Mikhail)

Cardinal Seven || Accepting

She rises the way a dream does, coming to the surface of still struggling to open eyes, languid and soft in all of the proper places, modestly proportioned as she is. And in doing so she sets a ripple in the thick, viscous bath. It pours off her tawny skin to pool back into itself, igniting a hunger all of it’s own.  She doesn’t ask where it comes from; perhaps she is beyond caring, perhaps it is a token of trust between them that shines through. It is enough.  She licks her lips clean, takes a renewing breath. In the flickering candlelight she can easily be mistaken for a different woman, a self-created goddess from a more primordial time. Perhaps they are one and the same. But she does not slash at him with accusation, does not curse him as a betrayer. She does not cast him down but beckons him closer with outstretched arms, and poetry sitting between her teeth.

“For food, for beauty, for company of many kinds, My hunger was eternal. My hunger is eternal And I devoured myself To sustain myself.”

A remembered snippet from an ancient parchment she found among the tomes and papers he left her to devour at her leisure. Which she did. Which she will always do. This particular fragment though was different from the rest. Part of a larger tapestry of words, one that speaks of origins for them both. Clear eyes burning like the fires that raised her islands from their sea-bed, she tilts her head and smiles at him as he wades his way closer, through the copper tang shading his pallor with life. His voice is far softer than hers, but with a weight and depth to it that she cannot match, for it is the voice of the void, spoken with all the years that have fallen behind him. “I dance the dance of the fool And pray you find me mad For if you lay hands upon the root You'll know me without illusion And find me guilty of the truth.”

But the blood on his skin isn’t enough, not for the little witch, just as the curses upon his brothers was never enough for her dark mother. She runs an elegant and thorn sharp nail just below her collar bones and it wells up thick, full of power. And when he bends to drink from the cup she’s made of herself? Her teeth sink into his throat.

Fair is far, after all.

[brooklynislandgirl]

Hate me, Love me, Miss me.

Love And Hate and Everything || Accepting

This is the moment where it all comes spilling out, thoughts and ideas that have broken through the dam and will now flood their space until there’s no where to go but to drown or swim, and she isn’t sure which it will be. And it wasn’t like he could keep up the masquerade ~she thinks that’s what they call it~ forever. And a part of her ought to be furious. A part of her ought to be terrified. He can destroy everything she is and could ever be. One uncareful moment could pull her thread out of the Tapestry forever. But it isn’t fear and it isn’t anger. No, the spaces inside of her are filled with different things, though by no means lesser. There is sorrow and grief that come into her hand as she puts it around the back of his pallid neck. “I hate dat ya shyin’ away from me now like ya nevah have before. I hate dat you are dis t’ing dat ya nevah wan be. Dat ya t’ink ya some kine monster...and maybe ya are. I dunno how much blood is on ya hands...or in ya mout’, but... I don’t...I don’t wanna t’ink of you like dat. An’ mebbe I no can. Maybe da only kine I really hate is ya part of dis t’ing, dis darkness dat scares da life out of me. Scares me dat I wanna be born in your kiss. Feel da way ya teeth graze my skin. Wanna wake up in Paris an’ talk music an’ poetry an’ tiny cups of coffee while da city starts to wind down around us an’ lights up to rival da stars.”

She breathes out a small sigh and shakes her head. Tries to start over. Finding words was never her gift and maybe that’s why she’s always borrowed those of others, from their first conversation to this moment. “I love dat ya unflinchin’ in da face of all dat’s happen t’ ya. Is brave an’ beautiful an’ a lil frightenin’ cause I don’ know I can live jus’ as fully. Or as brightly. But I wan to. Because your...” That isn’t it either, not completely. How do you explain to someone that they make you feel real when your whole life you’ve felt invisible, something that should be ashamed and apologetic of its own existence. That the most vibrantly alive person she knows has been dead for ages. “You’re in my veins, Mikhail. In my dreams. My day-lit hours, anticipatin’ sundown like nevah before. An’ now. Ya sittin’ here in my bed an’ all I can t’ink of is how I would miss you if ya no stay. I would miss how easy it is t’ be here, wi’ you. I would miss late night talks, ones ovah wine dat ya don’ have t’ fake any more, ovah blood, or da ones jus’ lyin’ here t’geddah. I would miss ya honesty. Talkin’ about fears an’ dreams an’ future plans we have no real intention of makin’ but jus’ wanna see where we bot’ fit in. I would miss how ya push me t’ become da bes’ I could be, an’ doin’ da same for you. So...I... I don’ even know wha’ I’m sayin’ an’ it probably sound crazy an’ mebbe you should say some kine, any kine an’ stop me.”   

[brooklynislandgirl]

Mikhail - would one lifetime be enough for you?

Honesty Hour || Accepting

“Of course,” she says softly. 

Too quickly though, and the rest of her face gives it a lie. She doesn’t particularly want the life she has already. It is too heavy for her to keep carrying, she’s made a mess of most of it, and she doesn’t bother to really think beyond tomorrow for reasons that are too terrifying to consider.  But she also knows down in the marrow of her bones that one life...isn’t in the cards. That there is a part of her that will carry on when this mortal shell sets down it’s burden. That it will recycle itself into a hundred other Beths that aren’t Beth, just as there are many in the ages past that were her and not her as well.  So maybe the question isn’t a fair one. And neither was the glibness of her answer so she takes a breath and shakes her head. “Dat no...” she stops. Starts again. “That wasn’t fair. You...and I...have a very different sense of the finality of death, and the knowledge that...it isn’t an end, not really. I think that is one of the reasons we have tied life so strongly to the idea of the sun. It dies every night only to be reborn in the morning. Nothing that has ever lived dies. It changes, a cosmic metamorphosis. But it doesn’t die.” She closes the space between them and puts a hand on the pallid flesh of his cheek, not an ounce of her fearful. “Does brevity make it any more special than existing for aeons? I don’t know. But whatever time there is, I will measure it in days and in nights. The moments that string them together.”

That’s all they can do, as anyone can. They are not so extraordinary that they can subvert the way of nature for very long and in time all things must end so they may be renewed. She has learned this the hard way, and she suspects he has too, whether he knows it or not.

[brooklynislandgirl]

Borrowed nonsense for my beloved sprite.

Happily, happily passed those days! While the cheerful Jumblies staid; They danced in circlets all night long, To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong, In moonlight, shine, or shade. For day and night he was always there By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair, With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair. Till the morning came of that hateful day When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away, And the Dong was left on the cruel shore Gazing — gazing for evermore, —

   

The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem— To grope, with eerie fingers for the window—then— To rest to sleep, enfolding me, as in a dream Faith—might I awaken! And drips the rain with seeming sad, insistent beat. Shivering across the pane, drooping tear-wise, And softly patters by, like little fearing feet. Faith—this weather! The feathery ash is fluttered; there upon the pane,— The dying fire casts a flickering ghostly beam,— Then closes in the night and gently falling rain. Faith—what darkness!