He was felt in the ripples of the sheets, the echoes of the form that so recently lay there, and in the condensation upon the air of the large bath, the blue towel that was folded on the sink. The slightly ajar closet door. The air of subtle disruption to the order of the clothing within, two shoes gone, one shirt, one pair of trousers...
...Upon the air, fusing one atom to another, one molecule at a time, this energy, this hum he has left behind him, like the trace of some cologne. It has no flavor, no certain flavor, though it has a taste, a prickling on the back, a tickling in the groin. It the bedroom that is His, the sitting room that now seems to be an echo of himself rather than a comfortable museum...
Down the stairways that seem to spiral more than before, twist and turn, feeling without end until the first floor is suddenly reached. Where the familiar becomes a labyrinth, the hallways altered, everything before that was real is unreal, everything that seemed unreal is ordinary...
But he can be found easily, immediately, almost as soon as the thought of him occurs to you, as if you should always have known where to find him, to put your hands on him, encircle him with your arms and whisper his name. As if he has always been there, waiting...
Davydd stands upon the third terrace down, the Aviary Terrace, the flowers blossoming behind him, the birds flying in and out, calling to the evening, calling to their mates, and he is the stillness amid the blossoming, orgasmic world, standing beneath the flowering vines, his hands upon the red stone of the terrace's railing. Beside him, a bronze cup filled with mead. His bronze-copper-burnished hair short and wavy, jagged layers to his liking, sported with by the wind and cast this way and that way.
Dark green eyes are turned to the west, not the east. Turned to the departed sun. Turned to deeper Wales. It's like looking in a mirror, only without the vanity. He closes his eyes, arms spread upon the stone, fingers over the edge of it. And the wind moves the dark navy shirt, unbuttoned. The navy trousers a shade more midnight but still a rich blue makes it seem he is closed in Retreating Day...
Waking takes more time than it used to, this past few days. It's taken her these small handful of days to recover from being driven by her own version of the war god's steeds, her own personal horses of fear and terror - Phobos and Deimos - her skin is unbruised by them, though perhaps not so unbruised by you, these days. The most striking bruise is one upon her hip in an arc inwards over one thigh - an incidental bruising of flesh meeting flesh. She has made no complaint of it.
This night, Fiona's risen unhurriedly (and unworriedly), feeling the hum in the air and smiling to herself. She doesn't need to turn the hunter to find you, though sometimes it's an attractive notion (and wouldn't all relationships be healthier for the occasional turning of the tables? but in some relationships it happens so often that it becomes a Tilt-A-Whirl; the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in EuroDisney; something of such a sort). She rises, and music comes to her lips as she examines herself in the mirror, a flow of liquid notes, meaningless syllables as she reaches for power of her own. Disheveled locks of tumultuous hair smooth out into waves of cornsilk, tassels brushed out and then braided in a smooth motion. Hours of work done in moments, though not as quickly as you could and have undone it.
She feels you, and she moves through the corridors of your castle, your House, where crooks and turns change from where they used to be. Her steps hold less hurry than they might. Even when she almost stumbles, there is no agitation in her, just a dreamy melody (and, to be fair, just a momentary irritation and glower at the step which dared to almost trip her) and she continues down. She is dressed, but it isn't quite what she's usually been wearing, lately...
When she finally comes down the steps to the avian call of flight to flight, her feet are bare, her hands are bare (save for the Fucking Red Rock of Gibraltar), her face is bare of cosmetics. She wears a white t-shirt paired with black jeans, she's wearing a scent of musk and early jasmine soaps, she's wearing the evening air as if it were a cloak, and she's wearing nothing else.
She stops, halfway down the steps, watching you in your receding from sight and from day. Fiona clears her throat (fairly sure though she is that you Know she is there), then speaks.
"You look," she observes, "as if you know where Dylan Thomas is buried."
"Everyone knows where Dylan Thomas is buried," the voice lilts as he turns, giving his side and a hip to the stone, the bronze cup in his hands. He looks at you for a moment more and the expression goes from introspective to droll in moments, like the shifting of illumination on a cloudy day. "In a drunken stupor... of course..." And when he turns, he waits for you to come to him, and when he turns, the dark blue shirt, unbuttoned as it is, gives away the view of Gwydion's marks on his torso, hazel at his chest and ash at his stomach. Brilliant. Powerful on their own. Stirring.
"Want a cuppa?" he asks, tipping the cup just slightly to you. "It's from last year. I unearthed it from the basement floor. For proper mead, it has to sit out of sunlight for a good year, buried in the womb of the earth, to be unopened and reborn. Everything is such a fucking metaphor for my people," he cracks blithely. "I'm as guilty of it as the next Welshman. Come on," he murmurs.
Come on to me...
"I like this deck the best," he shares quietly. "The flowering bowers and the birds...it's a great view of my country..." Still leaning against the body of the red stone railing, Davydd turns to look out over his land and over his shoulder. He lifts the cup to his mouth and takes a thoughtful swallow. He looks to you as he lowers the cup. Dark green eyes show a denser-wooded world, thick with growth and life, with bushes full of thorns, and berries. The bite of life and the sweetness of life.
Well, you'd know all about the bite of life now, wouldn't you...
"How are you feeling, girl," he asks, 'girl' an endearment, like lass, but in English not sounding so antiquated.
"I love you," Fiona answers with a small grin, twisting her head so that her braid is tossed forward over her shoulder. She runs it between her hands, aware that the answer doesn't really answer either of the questions you've asked. She remains standing there on the steps for the time being, looking down at you - a cat may look at a king? "Maybe in a few; I'm still liking the waking taste of the world on my tongue and I don't want to chase it off just yet."
It's a little difference in her. Something in the way she holds herself - but she isn't being particularly aloof, for all that she's not running down to you. There is no distance in her voice, or in the surprisingly sweet smile she offers downwards to your red hair...
"I feel as if I've been going riding too much lately," she adds in, then sits down on the steps, hunching forward companionably to prop her chin on her hands as she watches you. "But you should know that, you Welsh bastard. But I agree - the view here is lovely. How are you tonight?"
The fiery brows waggle a bit. Yes, what man would not be pleased to know the discomfort he can cause. It is, like impregnation, a badge of honor. For most men, if they achieve even this, it is like to be the only medals they earn. That look softens after its humorous moment in the sun, so to speak, and Davydd looks to you, seemingly unbothered by the fact you haven't come down to him. When you deny yourself the nectar of Wales, first there is a look from him to say 'Girl, you're mad', but he chases it off with a smile. And the mead is chased off as well, finished with a clearing sigh and the cup is set on the wide stone rail.
To look at you is to recall the song: Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon. There's something that is changing, subtle like the changing of the seasons when they first begin, the transitions always missed until the leaves are already gold and awareness sets in. But you and he move to a different meter than most others. He recognizes it, and then with arms folding across his broad chest, he studies it. And you.
There is no separation between himself and the woods and gardens (or castle stone) at his back. They seem all a part of the same structure, the same being. You ask of him and he smiles at the pleasant simplicity of the exchange, the ... normalcy of it. Tipping his head, Davydd looks at you. "I'm fine, slept like the dead," eyes widen a touch at the humor, and he tilts a smile, "... happy to be back in with my lady and my dogs and my earth. I'm... happy to Be," he adds. Whatever 'Being' may mean. It doesn't much matter anymore. It never did. It never did.
A glance to the wilds of a tamed Wales, and he smiles, his attention returning to you. The smile softens a bit, his arms unfold, resting back outspread against the stone. "I found something of yours... I hope you meant for me to read it, because I did," he admits it easily, tone easy, his expression is one of compassion, one might call it. Understanding, more than sympathy. "If you want to talk about it, we can. If you want to come over here and hit me," he winks, "...for poking in your diary, you can do that too..."
On the surface of it, she's really not so different from what she's been - but she seems calmer. It's not the uneasy calm of resignation (though how often has she ever simply resigned herself to anything). But there is an air of recognition to her, almost of understanding as opposed to mere comprehension. I Understand Now...
The look is one she recognizes - hasn't she seen it often enough from you? "If I really need a taste and there isn't any more left to be had," Fiona points out with a quirk of her lips, "I'll just kiss you and then I'll taste it all morning. Night. Whichever." There's a certain logic to the statement. "Glad to hear you slept well. And that you're happy to be back." It doesn't need to be said. She knows it doesn't need to be said, but sometimes things which don't need saying need to be put upon the air...
Now, finally, she comes down the steps, the heavy braid thumping against her hips with every sway and twitch of them. It isn't that she's altered utterly. It isn't even that the fight is gone from her entirely. It's just that you've never seen her without some undercurrent of tension and uncertainty before.
"You look like nothing on this earth. Or maybe everything on this earth." Fiona walks carefully, as if each footprint needs to be placed with the sort of precision a surgeon might use, as if each step might mean something more than a conveyance of motion. "I did mean it for you to read, actually. What else would I write it for? I know what happened. Seems pretty silly to write it down if I didn't want someone else to know." Her smile to you is warm and easy, and she lifts her hand, balled in a fist, and lightly taps it to your shoulder. "Pow. Since you seem to be trying to get me to hit you - giving me permission. As if I'd ever ask your permission to assault you bodily. When have I ever..."
"I wouldn't mind talking about it," she continues a moment later, closing her eyes and letting herself fall forward against your chest. Gravity - the ultimate cheat. "I've never talked about it. But it doesn't hurt the way it used to. Which is all your fault." Fault, as if it were something to take blame for? But her tone holds no recrimination.
"We all have our Moments," Davydd murmurs in your hair, bending to place a kiss upon the crown of your head. His arms surround you, thickly through the veneer of dark blue fabric. A hand goes in your hair, gets tangled, but that's alright. He smiles a little at it, his other hand at your back. Fingers tap to the rhythm of a song not yet sung, perhaps not yet given life upon this earth. But it, like all things, exists Somewhere. "If we are lucky, or smart, we learn from them. You're not alone in that. Some lessons are more bittersweet that others."
And from the tone of his voice, he should know. But then, he does have eight centuries on you.
"Talk about it if you want to," Davydd murmurs, you more hear it with your head against his chest than hear it in the air. "What's important," he leans back a little to look at you, "...is why it no longer bothers you. That's the real point. Events are... merely that. It is the reaction and the alteration that occurs because of them that's significant."
And he takes his own advice on that. Quietly...
A sound emits from his chest, and he holds you close. A snug fit, and it's a good fit. His hand appears beneath your chin, tipping it up, and you taste the wild honey of the mead of this valley, the nectar of the flowers that grow upon these hills. It is a simple kiss. No spilling of blood, and no desire to. The moonlessness is receding. Soon it will be waxing again. When it begins to wane, he will begin to Thirst. When the moon is dark again, he will feed. And he will cycle in power like the phases of the moon and the seasons of the year.
Davydd strokes his fingers along your cheek then lowers your face again, his arms wrapping around you snugly and he turns his face toward the sky. "We are both changed, Fiona-bach," he murmurs. "Like the world changes." His hand pats you. It's natural, even when it's supernatural...
"I'm not sure what there is to say about it," Fiona half-whispers, eyes closed. She doesn't need her eyes open to sense you, to See you on levels that are more than skin deep. "I was an idiot, and it hurt my pride. I'd really been willing to do just about anything, and ... well. I suppose there's something about the wrath of a woman scorned, but I didn't even think like that." Her shoulders move under the thin shirt, up against your chest. "As if I were someone else then. I'm a little more like I was then, these days, but I haven't had to give anything up in the process."
The calm repose in her is almost peaceful - the stillness before a leaf trembles to the earth, to fall and cause ripples in water. "It changed me, and while normally I might not forgive him that, the person who I became was who you needed - who I needed to be. If I hadn't been Drancy, if I hadn't been angry, I wouldn't have been there that night... and as a result, neither would you have been. I can forgive Paul anything if it means I've got you. And - well, I do. Because you're not Paul."
Bordering on incoherent, perhaps?
She sighs, arms going round your waist and then up along your spine. "You're earth. You're fire. Things change, but they do on some levels stay the same, and you've helped me figure out a few things just by being. So I suppose I should ask you some questions, but the questions which keep popping into my mind, I don't think they're the questions you'd expect."
There is a chuckle there held deeply, just as you are held securely in his arms. "I like unexpected questions," Davydd lilts, the voice -- for it is still his -- taking that familiar quipping sound, the Welsh inflection lifting, as if the statement were a question. "We should take a seat," he murmurs. "There's a comfortable hammock over there," and he gestures to it with a nod.
If you've ever seen 'Camelot', then you've seen something of this kind. A hammock that doesn't need a tree; a hammock that can easily fit two. So long as the two don't mind being in close quarters. Though it is beneath the archway, and thus protected should it start to rain, the view of the sky and its silver clouds moving over a moonless, midnight backdrop pocked with distant stars would still be visible, and still be amazing. His arms loosen around you, and the large hand pats you on your hip: Let's go...
Davydd's arm comes up around your smaller shoulders as he pushes off the railing, takes the cup in his other hand and starts to head toward the hammock. "You're right, I'm not Paul. We'll have our moments, too," it's not a warning, it's just a fact. "We've already had a few. And no one can promise you that they'll never hurt you. They can only promise not to try to hurt you. And I'll do my best," he says, looking at you.
"So," he says at hammock's edge, stopping and offering you a hand to help you on. "...what would you like to know...?"
"That looks comfortable," Fiona agrees, glancing up to meet your eyes with her own. Everything seems significant to her right now, but without the usual fear and worry under it. She shifts away slightly, remaining in contact but beginning to move for the archway.
"Oh, I don't deny we'll have our moments - in a way I'm almost looking forward to them, Davydd." She accepts the hand up, holding onto your hand for a moment and brushing her thumb over your knuckles, over where calluses used to be. "You would never do to me what he did. You wouldn't leave me in the lurch - wouldn't lead me on. Maybe some day you'll replace me, but I really doubt it, because who would you replace me with? No; you're stuck with me, and I'm stuck with you, and that's the best life I could imagine for myself."
Then she climbs into the hammock, holding on for a moment as it sways with the addition of her weight. "Well, some of them are questions, but some of them are statements, I suppose. You've come into your own now, haven't you. How will this affect the border between our kingdoms?"
"Well," he rumbles in that way he does when he's joking, a Celtic sound that, "... at least until the fairy concubines show up and the thousand virgins I was promised for helping to liberate Grenada. But who knows, you might want to get rid of me for a few nights by then..." Dark green eyes sparkle with a wink, a wink that is the flicker of moonlight through a dark and dense world. Rivers run full there, cascading over moss colored rocks. It's a dark place, a midnight place, but it is not an evil place.
The hammock sinks more than it sways when he adds his weight to it, your bodies falling together in a pleasant, swinging heap beneath the flowers and the stars. Davydd looks up to the sky between the blossoms and then over to you. "I've come into something," he jests with a grin, "...that's for certes. To be serious for a moment...and to answer that question...yes, I am what I should have been those many centuries before. It is complete, so... now things can begin. I was... it was like being under an enchantment for nearly a thousand years, held suspended. Like being in limbo, I guess. It was a weight I felt on me, like the whole world. I don't feel that now." There is an old man's wistfulness, like nostalgia, that shows on his face. Almost as if for a moment he misses it. But it is natural to miss what was once familiar.
His hand finds you, fingers splaying at your side. And he grins, "I like this... everything I want is in easy grasp...if only I had a hanging bar and a television set in the ceiling, life would be perfect." Davydd chuckles at your mouth, hands teasing and tickling a little. What were you thinking, to get him horizontal. But it doesn't last long, that distraction. Soon, he's giving his face to the sky again and reaching over to the ground, giving the hammock a push to start the gentle swaying. For a moment, he closes his eyes, seeming relaxed. At ease. "Our kingdoms will one day have a road that runs between. For now, my world is a closed world. When you go to your kingdom, when you get to that moment when you embrace who you are and you come into your own..." He turns his head, eyes upon your face and mouth. "...when you have our first child, I think the way will open. It will be clear as daylight, or as moonlight, then. Now, along the borders of Avalon and alongside the Perilous Forest," you've heard of that from Arthurian legend too, he supposes, "...there are trees of thorn that bar the way..."
"If the concubines and virgins show up," Fiona answers companionably, "I'll just ask you which you prefer to have in your bed. And then I'll remind you of all the reasons why the only correct answers all involve my name in some way." She rolls over, curling into your chest and leaving herself half propped there, as if convinced of your ability to take her sharp elbows like a man.
"Your weight and mine seem to have both gone at the same time, Davydd. I've been dealing with Paul's ghost for years, and it took you going away to exorcise that - took you changing into what you are now to change me into whatever it is I am." Her smile is almost playful, and then she lightly slaps at your fingers. "No changing the subject!"
She relaxes a moment later into the hammock, against you, into the world of it all. "I am going to enter your world sometime sooner than you think, I suspect. Because you're fire and earth, and I complement that. Where earth and fire are, air and water isn't far behind." She leans in to tickle your ear with her lips, then grins against your face there, half-hidden, felt more than seen. I am already in there - I just don't know enough about it to figure it out. I will, eventually. We have an awful lot of time."
She shifts, closing her eyes again, one arm thrown out now, over the edge to dangle downwards. "Where does the river end, Davydd?"
"It doesn't end," he notes simply. There's no riddle in that. It's uttered as simply as it Is. "And duly noted on the concubines. They'll be disappointed, of course," he rolls out, grinning lopsidedly. He smiles as you tuck yourself in against him, his face still turned to the sky. It doesn't end. Time passes, seasons change, worlds are born and worlds are destroyed, but It doesn't end. Not life. Not love.
"Hmm... sooner than I think?" Davydd murmurs. "I wouldn't be surprised. Of course, the timetable isn't mine. When you are meant to be there, you will be. When you are meant to bear my sons and daughters, you will. I ... have stopped trying to control things, to get them to go my way. They will be as they will be, when they will be. I have to trust in that."
And I have to trust that what I destroyed once will be whole again someday. That those I hurt, will be soothed. That the wheel will come around and I will be there to witness it.
Davydd looks to you again, tipping his head and giving his weight to you so he can kiss your forehead, then the bridge of your nose. "You will sort it out. We both will. Over time... and I hope we will be amazed at what we see, and what we discover. Even after eight hundred years, I have learned that life is ...more that what you see and sometimes more than you can ever know..."
"I believe that this is what was meant to happen," Fiona answers. Her voice is lazy, only half-aloud, half speaking to you and half to someone, something else. "I'm feeling a bit adrift right now - groundless. All I've had to cling to for so long was my fear, and then for a little bit - not even half a year, not even a quarter of a year - to you and it. And now it's gone, and ... well, it's another transition, I guess." Her arms go automatically, instinctively up and around your hips as you turn against her. "Mind you, I'm still clinging to you. But now I'm with you because I want to be. I'm not desperate. I'm not running from anything. And that is an entirely mundane notion, but it has something else to it, you know."
Her hand comes up to touch to your forehead. "You always struck me as wise and playing the fool, and now I may know you weren't playing, but you're still wise. You're an Old Man who does bad things, and sometimes I'm the one you do those bad things to. I only complain because you want me to... Which brings up another matter, Davy."
Her smile is sweet, but now there's an edge of that feral sharpness which you know her capable of, even in jest.
"What are we going to do about the damned wedding?"
"Elope," he grins the madcap grin, the sharp-toothed grin, the Gypsy's grin and he chuckles against your mouth and your throat as his turn into you is complete. The tangle becomes a knot. "Run away with me," he whispers there. "There's no one to please but you and me. You and me... is all we need. And that, we already have." What do weddings even mean, but a symbol offered up for what the couple already knows. A symbol shared between themselves and, if they care, their families. But it is a construct perhaps ill-fitting of this union.
"We'll throw a feast in your kingdom," he says at your lips. "...the first fete for the newly crowned queen. Tables full of gold and food beyond compare, we'll invite the heads of state and heads of other kingdoms there. We'll make love in the tower," and probably on this hammock before the night is out, so says the kiss he leaves upon your chin, "... for a night and a day, as much as I may manage it," he twists a smile, "...and we will return here fully wed in all the manner we need be. For... we are not creatures of a normal earth, a nine-to-five universe where what you wear still has any meaning..."
He leads your nearest hand in his hand to his chest, to feel his skin, he sighs at the sparks against the marks that you always make. "It's just a thought..." Among others he has...
There's a soft expulsion of breath as your weight settles against her, and then she smiles as your mouth is there to hers. She presses her lips to yours, to either thorn without apparent worry at the sharpness which could do her harm. She isn't afraid of a little pain.
"A wedding at this point would be almost a letdown," Fiona murmurs, a laugh held in the back of her throat. "It couldn't compare to the courtship. But then, nothing could. We can elope, yes. But I think it should be done when the moon's darkened her face again - then we celebrate until it's come fully round. However, I have one alteration to make to that. The first fete may belong to the other world - but we need to have a grand party here as well. Something which we can invite everyone to - a sop to my family, and to yours, and to our friends. And because, let's face it, we both like parties in moderation but only in moderation, so if we do just two or three large ones, then we're done for a while and we can get on with figuring out what it is we want or need to do next."
You begin to play at her flesh again, and this time there is no scolding slap - however playful - to ward you off. She shivers as the sparks recur, smiling as she looks at you. "You are a beautiful creature," she whispers. "I want you, Davydd. I want from you everything to fill my appetite - I want things that I don't even know what they are. I," she adds with a sudden low laugh, "am greedy, and I know that you and I if we chose could probably conquer the earth. Except it'd be too much work and we wouldn't have time for as many snacks and naps."
Her mouth lifts to yours, fastening there as if she were to try and steal the breath from you, then pulls away. "Take me," she commands with a sudden imperious note, "into your woods, Davydd. Lay me upon your altar and ..." Her lips quirk, playing into a smile. "...sacrifice me to yourself. Not tonight - we've other things to do and," her hand glides to your hip, "I don't want them interrupted. But I'm yours... and I'm putting my mark on you where only you and I can see it."
Her mouth comes back up, and then she settles back with a small, satisfied sigh. "You're a bad man, Davydd," Fiona murmurs. "Now come do some more bad things."
Posted by rowan at July 01, 2004 12:56 PM
