How long the night lasted...
Headlong even into day...
The shadows recoiled only after the sun rose above the line of the earth. And he slipped from your body and slipped from your grasp into a deep sleep, into the deepest sleep. Like a knight enchanted, like a male version of Sleeping Beauty, he lay upon the bed unmoving.
A point for which, after such a night, you could be thankful...
It was, of course, intentional. There was no letting up. One romp merely led to another. Food seemed to hover suspended in air as frequently as he hovered over you. Somehow hours were spent with carnal abandon and two plates of rabbit pies disappeared. It was to tire you. To keep you sleeping in shadows as long as he would...
Dreamlessly deep...
There is no moon in the sky, and spring evenings are dark in the wild wood of Powis Castle and its gardens. The windows have been opened to let the cool night air in, the fragrance of the blossomed valley, the song of the nightbirds. There are other sounds that call to the sleeping senses and coax them to wake. The sound of feet landing softly on the floor. The smell of something slightly evergreen. The sound of water running.
You can't stay tucked in all night...
His voice moves beneath your skin, slipping within you in those secreted ways of his, the intimate insinuation of his presence against your blood. There is something serious there. Something firm to his voice, and something slightly gentle -- as if he has great sympathy for you and what you have been through....
As long as the night lasted, there has always been something to night that has had her reluctant to give it up; the sight of the dawn not an infrequent one, but seen most and best of all following another long, long passage through the sun's lack. Granted, her past sunrises have been most of all without others' embraces.
The bed could be made of sand as easily as of silk and linens, and the sleep it provides would be just as sound, just as deep, limbs in a midden state beneath the covers.
The day has come and gone, leaving traces across the sky unseen, unheard, unattended in that sleep. The shifting distance of that departure only makes her stir slightly, eyelashes sticky against the lower lids as she slowly moves from sleep to that state which presages wakefulness.
"Watch me," Fiona mumbles, draping an arm over her eyes. But she's not resistant of the notion of rising; not fully, at least. She drags her forearm sideways against her eyes to dislodge the dust of a long and deep slumber, then luxuriously she rises, sitting up with linens spilling away and a palm to support her among the creases. She blinks owlishly away the remaining sharpness from her eyes, looking around the room, to the moonless sky beyond the window-drapes. "Time to get up, then?"
"Yes... another long night," the Welsh lilts with humor, but beneath that is the timbre of a man intent upon something. And certainly up to something. He is suddenly there, at the lintel of the door to the bathroom, the sound of water still running behind him. A bath. But he is dressed. He has bathed already. He smells of honey and rosemary, something of evergreen, and his short curled hair shows the lingering evidence of water.
Davydd turns, glancing behind him a moment, before looking to you as you rise. He moves from the doorway and to the bedside. "I have a bath preparing for you now, roses... milk... apples," he informs. "I've laid out a robe for you as well. Just that," and nothing else.
Bending, Davydd places a kiss upon your forehead and then your mouth. "Leave your hair unpinned," he continues to instruct you, and that is exactly what this is... instruction. "After you eat," Davydd quirks, eyebrows opening upward and outward. "And eat until you are full. I spared no expense, Lady ap Owain... and you will need your strength..."
If last night was any indication, yes. Yes, you will...
One eyebrow crooks upwards as she looks from the edge of the bed to you in the doorway. "You look good," Fiona says simply. Normally, compliments are dragged out of her by wild horses, accompanied by insults and criticisms so that they don't grow too large - hedges of thorns to block out excessive light. But she lets this one stand for itself, on its own...
"Mm. That's it, then." She stretches, gathering her hands behind her head and tipping back, flexing her shoulders with eyes closed versus the ceiling. "I hope the milk is room temperature. Otherwise, I can see myself laid up with a cold in the future." One corner of her mouth quirks in a faint smile. Mundane notion, that. She hasn't gotten sick in ages, and she isn't entirely sure that she will this time, either.
Her eyes open, irises shaded a stark grey as she looks up at the touch of lips to her skin, to her own lips, blanched of colour save for smoke or shadow by the night. "I promise not to pick at my food, father. - I won't waste your effort and expense, my lord," she adds, more soberly, pulling back down and resting her chin on her hands. "I'll let you fatten me up a little. As long as there's no gingerbread involved."
Then she rises, leaning up on tiptoe to press her mouth to your ear before she brushes past. "I'll try not to drown. Or get lost..."
"I'll be downstairs," he whispers, at your skin it seems to echo, a word and then a breath. "It will be lukewarm, it's better for the skin. Don't be afraid to soak awhile, darlin', there's no rush. We have all night." Another kiss, and he starts to slip away again, like the shadow of a man and something more. Power resonates through the open room. A hum of crickets in the forest outside, a hum of energy here inside.
There's a wink to you, a quick smile and he's through the door, down the stairs to the sitting room. Maybe he'll be waiting there dressed in his dark greens sweater and the grey-black pants. Maybe he'll carry you down to the banquet, with you in his arms smelling like roses, milk and ...yes...apples.
The bathroom light is out, but there are candles there, and sticks of incense burning, coating the air. The bath itself is a mixture of milk, water and honey, and floating on the thicker surface, the white surface, white and pink apple blossoms and white rose. Thick, so think it seems you'd be bathing in nothing but flowers...
There's a secret sort of smile on Fiona's face, rich with satisfaction. For all the urge to fight, to bite, to kick and scratch, there is a certain sense of accomplishment to have come this far. She moves into the bath, gathering up her hair and twisting it away from her skin, away from the hidden shadows under her breasts, away from the revealed valleys and expanses to something approaching manageability.
There is a sense of achievement in loving and in being loved, when one has for so long held oneself aloof from the face of Love...
She closes the bathroom door behind her so that she is alone in the room, amidst drifting currents of smoke and scent, the flickering light of candles marking the faint ripples of that which the tub contains. Leaning over the edge of the tub, she touches a fingertip to flowerpetals, watching it bob and then subside. "...there lies Urquhart's fairy glen..."
The song lyric pops into her mind, prompting a laugh and then the roll of a sigh. Fiona straightens, glancing to the darkened mirror and the candlelit reflection, then turns to step into the tub. The thickness of the contents ripple differently from water alone, and she pauses to listen for a heartbeat; then she sinks down, subsiding into the mixture with one small shiver of acclimatization. The ambrosia-like contents flow over her, as do the petals; closing her eyes as she begins to slip down further, Fiona mutters, "This really is unbelievably girly." But that isn't entirely a bad thing, her mental voice reminds herself. After all, girls get nice things - and they get boys...
Sliding beneath the surface of the nectar, there is nothing but darkness to penetrate past her eyelids. There is the feel of petals, the feel of the ambrosia, the thick, almost cloying sweetness of rosepetal and apple blossom, of incense and honey. There is the silence unbroken save for those ripples when they are heard, but beneath the surface even that is gone; there is the sinuous slide of her own hair curling and coiling and uncurling and uncoiling through the mixture. Time becomes almost a meaningless thing, measured not in tick-tock seconds and minutes but in punctuations of oxygen when the need to breathe reasserts itself with a rise to the surface. And eventually skin will begin to prune, giving the more direct signal than any alarm clock : ...time to get out...
The petals are magical...
They are real for the moment of this bath, they will dissolve and flow down the drains as effortlessly as the liquid that seems to bear them. When you submerge, you know the truth of it. You feel it everywhere around you. It is primal. It is power. Petals swim within the liquid, in unending layers. The bath, while you know the tub is a finite thing, the bath itself is infinite. Astral white, the bath of gods...
There are forests of winter white within the water, cloudy mistletoe berries, as if crushed to liquid. Only without the poisonous side effects. There are images within the white water, images of a man.
Of your man....
But before you can focus on him, on some part of him, the image of Davydd is gone...
And there rises a smell from somewhere below. Somewhere in that infinite, or perhaps merely downstairs, there are rabbit pies and summer pastries, apple cakes and honey drinks...
Expense indeed...
What did it take to create this, this realm, this effect? Fiona doesn't know, but is slightly awed despite her own best intent. Done for himself, done for her - she fights her way back into her own skin for a moment, then sighs with a trail of bubbles, letting go of herself once again.
One could swim through this expanse and never find a way out, if one didn't already know the way. "Davydd..."
But liquid is still liquid, and with the dissipation of the image, the rising smell of warmth and memory of food, so rises Fiona. And she rises, standing in the tub with the shining white shimmer of apple blossom and rose petal and ambrosia cascading from her skin and hair in a milk-solid sheet to spill back into the tub. And what is more feminine than milk by moonlight.
Towels serve to rub the liquid from her skin, and she is profligate with them, tonight. As many towels as she wishes, she uses; one modest-sized one for her arms and underneath the swell of her breasts, another for the length of each leg. An oversized bath sheet winds round her like a sail, its cousin only slightly smaller given up to sacrifice its dryness among the jungle of sodden locks. Once she is only tolerably damp, she steps away from them all, leaving crumpled towels behind her as she regards herself in pale illumination : first herself and then her reflected self. She has as many selves as there are worlds she knows of, three fragments drawn together into uneasy alliance of a whole.
The towels are scooped up on her way to the hamper en route to where the robe has been laid out, the bathroom door being opened slowly by a cautious turn of the knob, as if unsure that the bedroom remains on the other side and not some new place, strange and forbidding (and perhaps the more exciting) that she has no notion of exploration thereof. Fiona glances over her shoulder at candles that gutter in the new currents of air as she garbs herself, winding the robe and freeing her hair from under its edges. She hums quietly, wishing the tangles and snarls away from coming into existence until the oaken-blondeness of it hangs in a sleekness to her waist and past. Leaning to the mirror, she matches her palm to her reflection's. "Wish me luck," she murmurs with a half-ironic self-acknowledgment. Then she turns again, stepping out to follow the rumble of her belly to where she senses satiation may lie.
The food is not waiting in the sitting room beneath the bedroom. Neither is Davydd, and all traces of his prior presence are gone. Only there is some flavor of him left behind, some indication that he had at least passed this way. The chamber lights are low, the door to the hallway is left open.
And if you look closely, if you in your excitement pause to look to the floor, you may see the shifting of the worlds. The stones of an earthly castle are the stones of an otherworldly universe. The marble of the floor is patched and set upon sweet grasses, walls become woods become walls. You smell nice. He can smell you? Is he invisible? Or is he just that good?
Or bad...
The hall that leads to the stairs, stairs that in turn lead to the ground floor, are both Powis and Powis' more magical cousin. Everything is the same, and Nothing is the same. Walls, carpets, runners, stairs. You are in a forest one moment, sumptuous temple the next, wild Welsh castle with the next breath, stately country manor with the next.
There is no music, there is no laughter, there is, in fact, no sound of servants, what few he retains, the castle is empty. There is only you two. Down the stairs the castle seems to reassert itself in this earthly reality, all of the magic turned instead to what is laid out upon the many tables. Meats, cheeses, pastries and pies. Red wine and white wine and berry wine. Breads and scones, treacles and tarts. Everything laid out in lady portions, but pile upon pile upon pile...
And still no Davydd...
But he has passed this way. He left a plate of food and a glass of wine half tasted, fruit and cheese, rabbit pasties and pie. And two corgies sit patiently by... waiting for scraps and crumbs but blessedly silent...
If she had less experience with being between worlds, she would be more uncomfortable. As it is - it just isn't possible to be entirely at ease, with no way of knowing what will come of any given action. Action : consequence, delayed...
"Thank you," Fiona answers aloud to the (empty?) air. "I should; you prepared it for me." One would hope he'd like how it smells...
Moving from one place to another, with one foot in either world - it is familiar in principle, less so in practice. She knows the most of other worlds in dreams. Noone is here. No other breath save her own, no other voice, footfalls... Nothing to make one think the more that it is anything but a dream...
Save, of course, the knowledge that yes - this can happen outside of sleep...
"This is starting to feel a little like Beauty and the Beast," Fiona says aloud, looking at the table of food, then slowly sitting down at it. "I'll do my best, but I don't know how much I can eat. At least, if you want me able to walk as opposed to roll everywhere I go." She moves a plate to in front of herself, then smiles at the two corgies. "Bwci, Rhyddid," she names them softly. "Watching out for me? Don't worry, from the looks of it, there'll be plenty for you as well."
The dogs perk up their ear-dominated-heads and wiggle their way toward their mistress. Such supplication! Such beggary! Davydd would scold them if he could see them. But he's not here, you are, and you're a woman and therefore far more sympathetic to such techniques.
Feeling like a fairy queen yet? Perhaps one night I should have servants to personally tend to you. Maybe like the kings and queens of old we should keep separate beds. You can feel the laughter swirling magically at your belly and points slightly lower. Are you wondering yet what all this is about? I expected to have to answer a few more questions...
Like... where are you, Davydd?
What the fuck is going on, Davydd?
Why are you being so spooky, Davydd?
"Right, we'll keep to separate beds," Fiona scoffs, answering aloud. She's assuming you're listening, at least, even if not watching. "Where else am I going to find a man who'll put up with elbows to the small of the back in the middle of the day without complaining? Granted, it's because you can't really feel it, but hey." She curls up in her chair, lifting a plate with bread and cheese to her lips. Her mannerisms may be ladylike, but her appetites are large...
She chews her way through, then swallows, chewing on your words as she eats that which is more apparent.
Cheese gives way to meat, washed down with some berry wine, meat is followed by pastry and pie. Between bites, she answers you aloud, dropping a scattering of scone for the two corgies. "I'm curious as all hell as to what this is about. You're obviously up to something, but you're being mysterious. The way I see it, you're not breaking up with me - you're crazy sometimes, but this isn't how you'd break up with me if you were going to."
There's a pause as she half-closes her eyes in sensual enjoyment. Oh, bliss, ah, rapture, that which is the excellentness of a glass of white wine following a slice of chicken pie. "Mmm... I'm often impatient, but so far you've given me a night of wild sex followed by a candlelit magical bath and tables of amazing food that I wouldn't be able to pay for in a restaurant. It's pretty obvious that whatever it is that you're up to has some sort of Meaning." The capital M is impelled out to the air to fend for itself, followed by the rest of the word it leads.
Another glass of wine downed, and she settles back in her chair, cheeks beginning to be slightly flushed with the headiness of liquor and abundance. "Under the circumstances, look at everything I've gotten by being patient. I can wait and see what price the piper charges for the luxuries. Unless, of course, you're feeling forthcoming and want to just tell me now?"
I would hate to kill the mystery... what is a ritual without mystery, what is magic without ritual...
And the room goes strangely quiet. There is the sound of your eating and drinking, the soft sound of Bwci and Rhyddid snoring at your feet, consorts to a queen indeed. And there is nothing more shown, nothing more to be known. Not yet.
When you are finished... come to the room with the circle of stones...
"And," Fiona answers wryly, "where would our relationship be without a liberal dose of the supernatural? All right, Davydd. I'm still playing." For now, anyway, she silently amends. Her patience isn't infinite, but it seems to have stretched somewhat with recent passage of time. She looks about the room, looks to the snoring corgies, then rises to her feet with a pat to her belly.
"If I eat anymore, my stomach's going to be all swollen and I'll be in danger of just throwing up or something - which would be a shame, that was really good food. And you baked it with your own two hands?" She grins slightly, then bends down to scratch behind the corgies' ears, ruffling them and then rising again. She doesn't speak further; he'll receive her acknowledgment, her acquiescence when she arrives. And step by slow step, the barefoot lady winds her way through the dual-worlded castle to where awaits its lord. "Master of all you survey, Davydd...?"
There is no response...
Rather, there is the feeling of him there, an echo of him against the red stone of his castle like moonlight through a window. Then, there is an image. His eyes closed, opening when you enter. Dark forests are held in his eyes, his realm lives there, and you are entering into it with both feet, both hands, both eyes, both breasts...
It is a total immersion...
You are led down corridors, down a secret passage. He guides you. Each image moving across your mind brushes against your senses and your skin, each one manifesting with every following step. Hallways and stairways you had not walked before, secret stairs lit by solitary oil lamps smelling of a honey resin...
Nightbirds in song...
They lift from their perches, from the stone of the floor and the aviary notches, feathers falling in flight, birds chirping and squawking in surprise as your steps lead you to the aviary terrace, one of the gardens outside the palace. Now you may remember the way...
A hidden gate concealed by ivy...
The coolness of ancient stone and ancient chambers...
It wouldn't be the same, coming here by day. She's silent now herself, words and exclamations held in a sort of reverence for the unknown, face slack from fear into solemnity. Her hair, unbound, trails behind her against the robe, against open flesh where it can, whispering its own words, its own knowledge blindly.
Fiona pauses at the aviary, glancing up until the shock of her passage has stilled; she bends, picking up feathers where they've fallen and feeling the warmth by the quill-points, prickling where she touches. She holds them, spreading them as a fan, and presses them to her breast. And then, with wordless significance, she passes on.
Down stairs and over stones she passes, punk and fairy queen and mortal lady all silenced into one identity, one person, one Name as she comes to a halt in front of the ivy-clad gate. There is a silent discussion between the three, winding their way into One in this moment she takes.
But who knows what's on the other side? I don't. It could be anything, Lady Fiona Arundel murmurs, gaze cast upwards to the gate's hidden top.
Drancy snorts, belligerence in her frame. So? Get on with it! Fuck it, so either it'll suck or it won't. It's been all right so far, grudgingly admitted, even if it'll probably start to suck again. No free lunches, you know.
And the voice of the queen between them, gentle even in remonstration but with a coolness beneath that gentility. What has been begun cannot easily be ended. Turning away is a possibility, but that is not an option which is being taken under consideration. We go forth, then, and come what may, we wear our self-knowledge as our armour. Is it agreed?
Fiona nods, slowly, regarding the gate, and then she stretches her hand forward to open the door.
Once upon a time, you stood within a ring of stones, held a talisman and called the spirits of the earth by name. Do you remember, Drancy? Fairy tales were real then, the universe was a strange place, and you were just beginning to thaw from your self-imposed castle of ice.
When you step into the chamber, the first sense is that of cool air, cooler here than outside, even with the wind. As if you were standing on Amesbury again. Stonehenge at midnight. It is dark. So dark that for a moment up may be down, back may be forward, and everything ceases to exist. It is the quality of the dark Nothing that was before the creation of the universe. It is, simply, the presence of Life in its Beginning.
It is the womb...
It is the deepest part of the deepest forest...
It is the mind of God...
Nine heartbeats counted the measure, three times three, and there is sudden light, a flash of fire quadrupled as the torches hanging on the walls are suddenly lit, suddenly burning, suddenly illuminating the evening's destined path.
A bronze cup, its bowl polished to a burnished glow, is all but on fire with the sudden light. Perhaps that leaps first to your senses. Perhaps you notice how the stones themselves have changed, the carvings far more elaborate. Perhaps you notice a curved knife, the cushions and tapestries and cloaks of a magical realm spread out upon the otherwise dirt floor...
...But central to this scene is the man himself. Vampire. Holly King. Welsh Prince. Davydd. Blue tattoos are swirls to the senses, the markings not merely vivid but independently living. The holly dragons move and holly leaves shift in the breeze that moves through a king's country. Hazel groves promise enlightenment. Apple blossoms drift, love and music and poetry following in echoes like ripples skimming the surface of still water. Mistletoe clusters and the dragons of virility on hardened display. He is beautiful. He is powerful. The air sings his name.
And he is looking nowhere but upon your face...
Dark green eyes, deep forests of holly and yew live there. The cup is offered to you, the bowl tilted to show you that it is empty. Fiery eyebrows lift slightly and the Brythonic face, the face of legends, warms with the insinuation of pleasure. "Drop your robe," the Welsh is deep, earthy, sensual and soft. "When the Maiden stood before Death," his mouth threatens a smile, "...she begged for her life. Another year she said, just one year more. No, Death replied. You, my dear, must come along with me. Drop your robe, for you can take nothing with you but your soul..."
Drop your robe and come to me... we will celebrate The End that is The Beginning of Everything...
Darkness ... darkness is moved through as if something thicker than water, thicker than blood but not so solid as earth. There is no extant fear visible upon her face save for the very small and faint frown of someone bracing for a blow, a grab, for the intangible Unknown.
She moves, she sways, she steps, and then her hands come up to shield her face from the sudden burst of light as if it might be solid, turning, twisting around to see around herself, behind herself, in front...
Fiona jerks upright, drawing herself up an a step back and then to a halt. And she stares...
Lips move in the shaping of your name, though no sound is placed behind it. No other movement follows save for the movement of her eyes as she looks upon you, eyes widening and darkening as she does so. And her gaze is not confined to your face.
Is it a palpable sort of gaze? Can you feel the tracks of her eyes moving along your skin, the surprise behind it that rounds her mouth into something like a perfect circle, an unending 'o' to convey an carry her surprise? She looks at you, and eventually her attention returns to your face, three internal faces regarding your oneness as she listens.
This is not what she had expected...
This is not what she understands...
One eyebrow crawls upwards, lips remaining softly parted in consideration. "I've trusted you this far, Davydd ap Owain. I guess I can trust you a little further." Slowly, her hands go to her belt, loosening the knot as she fixes her attention on you. Loosens, then unbinds - and it falls away, the robes falls open and is slid back from her shoulders to fall with gravity's soft influence to puddle about her feet. And thus is she revealed, milk-white and scented of the apple and the rose, the low drone of bees almost evident in her wake.
Maiden, you know me... I am the man that had your blood...
Matron, you know me... I am the blood of your children...
Witch, you know me... I am the blood in the cup of Rebirth...
Drancy, the maiden; Fiona, the mother; Isabel, the witch -- you in your triplicate meet him in his singularity. And his energy sings out to each one. The Holly King with his three queens, the maiden-mother-crone that in their separate facets express the phases of Life Itself. He is Death. You are Life. What is between you is immortality and reincarnation...
His eyes do not shield the hunger he feels, the lust that moves through him (just now, that is impossible to disguise). And in your time knowing him, he has never been so much on display. Nor you. The four fires pop, the flickering light making the room ripple and waver like a dream.
"It is a circle you step within. A dark forest you step within. It is my heart you step within," Davydd intones in a breath, a breath that need not be louder than that for all the echoing off the stone of this closed chamber, and he steps forward, his feet making no sound. His form a show of male power, potency, grace and will.
Standing before you, Davydd hands you the bronze cup. Closer to it, you may now notice the opulence of the engraving, dragons and Welsh script engraved on its surface, the handles in the shape of interlocking dragons. And, yes, it is empty. "The three nights of the new moon are called by some the Death of the Moon," now he smiles, eyes crinkling in that familiar, human way. "There's no such thing as Death. What the Holly King presides over is the beginning, not the end. Transformation, not finality. Life... not Death. At the new moon, we celebrate Life through Death... symbolically," Davydd's hand presses upon your shoulder. A suggestion to kneel.
You'll get quite the eyeful to be sure...
The weight of that energy which resonates from you to her - threefold it resonates, threefold it radiates, it strikes her
(it strikes her as strange and yet familiar in its strangeness)
and she strengthens her stride, steadies her stance against it as she moves towards you. She glances to either side of herself, then down before the transformation of her gaze lifts again to you
(and how wise that her gaze is what transforms, rather than transforming that which it touches, as a cockatrice, a basilisk, or Medusa herself all writhing and hissing with serpents)
and she looks at you with some recognition but very little understanding. She recognizes that it is Ritual, and Ritual's weight is enough that she holds her tongue, opening her hands to take the cup. Fiona looks down into its depths, listening to you half-heartedly as her attention's not entirely on your words. She glances up, a question forming in her eyes and on her lips, but then your hand descends and so does she
(and it isn't the first time she's been down here, though it's the first time in any number of ways)
(how many first there do always seem to be between you and she)
to kneel on the cold stone at your feet. "Symbolically?"
"Symbolically," Davydd repeats, his voice for the first time tonight carrying with it a kind of reassurance, and he joins you in your kneeling, and in your kneeling you may see it, the other items of a ritual gathered. There is salt. There is honey. There is a small curved knife. But the weight of ritual is thick, the air is thick, he is thick. Even the tapestries and cloaks from some fairy closet somewhere, so opulent they are, belonging to kingdoms, are thick upon the floor, or feel so, softening the kneel both you and he are in, he so much the larger even on his knees.
His hands come around yours, covering yours easily, and the jolt to the senses and the skin, the magic that leapt between you at your first meeting does so again, but now cascading with familiarity beneath your skin, tickling from your heart to your thighs and between them. His mouth covers your own, a brief kiss, but complete, tasting the very power he inspires.
Symbolically becoming Holly King and White Queen, god and goddess, man and wife...Life, Fiona, and Death...
The kiss parts and his hands slide against yours until they move away. "Close your eyes, my White Queen," Davydd murmurs, and his hand reaches for the honey to his right.
A symbol is never just a symbol, not in this house. Fiona might be thinking it, but she doesn't say it aloud; the reassurance does draw the fragmented selves more together into oneness, into unity as she looks up to you. Her heart jolts in her chest; it is not the first time that she has been afraid...
Not even the first time that she has been afraid of you...
The leap and dance of power that comes at your touch is perhaps familiar, but not so easily dismissed. Never easily dismissed - as if you were so low as to be dismissed? She sighs at the feel, sighs at the kiss, at the thoroughness.
Nothing is ever just symbolic. What we become, we become. It's sent from her mind to yours, but there is no refusal, no real admonition or correction; rather, it is an addition, an addendum, a contribution. And slowly, she nods, eyes drifting closed.
She looks almost quiescent, save for the faint hint of pugnaciousness that remains about her nose and mouth, quirking her eyebrows into faint fierceness. And where would Life be, without some fight?
"Remember this, it is the sweetness of Life," there is the sudden taste of honey, his finger brushing it across your mouth, teasing with a slip within (no, a symbol's not just a symbol in this house). "It is the taste of first love, of your first child, it is everything Life promises and hopes to be."
Following that is the stinging taste of salt, clinging to the honey on your lips. "Remember this, it is bitter as Life, hard and crystalline and burning. But without it," another swipe of honey, "...would we remember the taste of honey...?"
"It is the same with life and death," you feel his hand again, a gentle grasp at your left forearm, and also something cool and inanimate. "... without Death... Life would have no lure... no sweetness. Without Life, Death would have no meaning, and there would be no means for transformation." His thumb presses at your forearm, a tightening presence of his strength, though there seems to be little in the way of effort. There is no sense of straining. My love, do not fight me now...
And while your mind may be concentrating on the tightening grasp, on the strength of it, on the reason for it, in that distraction there comes a quick stroke, a sudden pinch somewhere below where his hand is grasping. The throbbing of your pulse may tell you what your brain may be slow to realize...
You are bleeding...
The woman is the chalice, the chalice represents the womb of the goddess, the womb from which we spring endlessly, life after life. Life is Death and Death is Life. When I drink it, I will be reborn through you. The man... can only ever know Himself by Woman...
The taste of honey...
It is not unfamiliar to her. It is historically familiar to her, for reasons which her conscious mind is slow to comprehend, reluctant to admit. But generations of rabbis and scholars have gone in to the making of her, and the Kabbalistic significance is not unremarkable even if not remarked upon here, now, in the flesh and in the presence...
She sighs again as honey is followed by salt, followed by honey - the turning of the cycle, as what is perfect save that it is complete? Her tongue presses against her teeth, then catches between as she waits. This part is the hardest part, to remain blind at anyone else's word but her own, and it takes a goodly bit of her willpower not to struggle when your hand tightens on her arm.
But what use would struggle be? Struggle is given most of all for form's sake; Fiona knows herself to be in fleshly matters the weaker. Her shoulders tense and do not relax, but there is no accompanying jerk to try to tug her arm away; her concentration is going largely, in fact, to avoiding that struggle, whether out of a desire to cooperate with that mental request or otherwise. Her eyebrows draw together at the pinch, eyelids still pressed tightly closed, and her lips part as if to complain - all that comes out is a soft aspiration rather than a word.
Then, lizard-like, the truth makes itself known, and with it, accompanying shock, and fear...
It isn't rational, but then, rationality has very little to do with reactions upon finding one is bleeding, you know. The Three fly apart, each to their own voice, leaving Noone at home to mind the flesh. And all of it is audible, not with the ears but with the mind...
Drancy flies immediately upon booted heels, running down dark streets of an interior landscape, clutching her arm where the leather of her jacket's been parted open cleanly. Fuckfuck...fuckfuck...I'mbleeding... fuck... I'mgoingtofuckingKILLyou...DavyddapARSEyouBASTARD.... fuuuuuuuck! It keeps pace nicely with her pulse, the spike of fear and adrenaline that the flesh provides to pour blood out the faster. This is why they tell you not to panic, isn't it? She ends up in a huddle with her back to an iron ring around a tree, her feet pressed hard against a brick wall as she lowers fuchsia locks and grimaces, mouth baring teeth in a rictus snarl of pain/fear/betrayal/rage. This, then, is the child, the animal that knows the blankness and has found even the darkness provides no shelter, the shadow no comfort from the edge of Death.
Round as saucers, though - in another direction altogether does Lady Fiona run, feet bare and slippers cast somewhere behind. She has no use for them here, in this tangled wood she once thought she knew. Her hair has caught on briars, her silks on thorns, and the looks upon her face is one of pain and misery and humiliation. The instinct, the response born of instinct is that of going back some few years (so few to someone like you, but to her, the distance is an immense one - not in time, but in emotionally spatial location) to somewhere else - someone else. She turns, thorns laying open one cheek, and tears come to her eyes as she sinks in a muddle to cradle her wounds to herself. This, then, is the mother of the child - for Drancy had to be born of her, did she not? In the midst of her labour was she the most alone, and agonizingly aware of her loneliness. And all women go through birthing alone, even if in a room full of people...
Between them stands the Queen, Fiona ys Isabel, and she alone does not run, does not flee - does not panic. Pain is nothing new to her; sacrifice, nothing new. By her hand have (will) men live(d) and die(d). With willow or with cypress, it is all the same - the kingdom shall continue on under her calm and sere gaze. She lifts her arm out to you, and she and she alone is there to draw the threads of Child and Mother back to the waiting centre. Though Fiona's eyes remain closed upon the surface, the Queen sees nonetheless.
Drink, then, and do as thou must...
The cup you held is the cup he holds, the cup that holds your blood. Three swallows worth. But he seems expert at this, too expert at this, to know when you would be feeling sick, or dizzy or faint. Ah, but he fed you. Yes, and now you will feed him...
The burning of your flesh, the nerves telling the body and the brain that it is in distress and danger, is suddenly and completely soothed. Wet warmth covers it, his mouth, the swipe of his tongue, his own blood healing what he had torn. Healing it, as if it had never known disruption. The pain dissolving as easily as sugar in water.
His hand slides through your unbound hair, guiding you to his mouth again. You taste honey again, and salt, something coppery -- the residue of your blood upon his mouth from the tongue swipe. Davydd holds you to him, hand tightening its tangle, not to hold you but out of sheer intensity: of hunger, of pleasure, of desire. He holds you through the drinking. You can hear him gasp at it, breathe into it, swallow it. One... two... three...
If you open your eyes, you will see the very picture of spiritual ecstasy...
Blood, your blood, runs down his chin, painting that surface of him as well, a kind of tattoo -- your mark on him -- as Davydd drops the cup. His eyes are sharp but unfocused. His mouth parted and stained. The thorns of his forest live also in his mouth. The look on his face could be awe, could be religion, could be love.
His arms move suddenly, as the blood and its power moves through him, ruddying his pale and painted skin, making him a Celtic Mars, and he leans forward, his hands guiding you to lie back...
She is shaking in your grasp, not from the loss of blood but from the shock. Not from the pain, but from the unexpectedness of that pain...
A blow one does not anticipate - does it hurt more or less than one which one can brace for? Schools of thought on the matter remain divided. But to someone who has held oneself braced for long years against pains which did or did not come, it is perhaps the more traumatic, when that guard has been finally relaxed. Her eyes are wet with tears that she tries not to shed.
It keeps her eyes closed a moment longer than she might have, that desire to postpone tears, to block them from having their say, their tell-tale betrayal of feminine difference.
It isn't me, it's my Goddamn tear ducts...
The kiss is against parted lips, her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth to prevent gasp or sob, lips nonetheless parted for breath. When she is surprised or afraid, she forgets to breath through her nose, or she forgets to breathe - it's one or the other. And you drink, and drinking, she opens her eyes all of a sudden, with tears still held as a curved glass to prism her vision of you. Droplets are caught like crystal upon her eyelashes, and it is held, and then slides as perfect as glycerin down her cheeks.
She doesn't flinch at the sight of blood - even her blood. She's seen blood before, even if not like this. It might be that you are Death, but this isn't the sort of horror she's come to associate with Death, and though she stares at you with that thin line of fear still present in some places of her, not so secret but not so fatal as running, she does not flee.
Fiona gasps as you guide her back, as you lean forward, another wave of tears escaping her; beneath the surface of her skin she damns herself for them, though not aloud. Weakness... how has she gone so far back as to denying herself weakness, save in the presence of a wound... She tenses, but she doesn't struggle. While the Queen may not speak for the three with perfect agreement, she nonetheless has spoken. But Fiona watches your face, marking your eyes with her own unsteady gaze, hair tangled and spread, caught half beneath one hip.
His mouth is warm upon tear-cooled cheeks, the tapestries soft against your back and he lightly settles upon you. Lightly? As lightly as possible for him, at any rate. His face tilts, there is a slight smile, mostly in his eyes. Dark forests they may be, but in those kingdoms there are meadows of flowers and soft grasses. There is refuge and sanctuary, even in a forest of thorns.
"Shh," he breathes at your mouth, "... there is no need for tears, my queen." Davydd settles between your legs, giving more of his weight to you, but it is at least well distributed. His hand brushes your cheek, wiping away the moisture. The energy moves between you again, a hum against your skin.
His settling upon you begins to be a settling within you. His mouth finds your neck. Open-mouthed, he pulls at your skin, teasing the blood to the surface along your neck and along the line of your shoulder. "Do not cry, cariad," Davydd whispers at your ear. "The pain in life never lasts forever..."
There's a soft squeak of expelled air as you settle, her eyes closing again as you touch your lips to her cheeks. Her expression is anything but blank, anything but slack, the turbulence of her emotions still harnessed and mostly contained. All the safer that they are...
Fiona has a lack of knowledge of what to do with her hands now. To hold seems too convenient. To push away, too difficult, and she isn't sure she wants to do that anyway... Easy things never held much interest for her, did they? So they settle to either side, lightly, awkwardly, as lightly as a doe poised for flight.
The feel of the return of that energy makes her sigh, despite herself. "Why am I so defenseless against you, Davydd?" Fiona barely seems aware of giving voice to the words; they come unbidden, undesired, without her permission. She would rather rail at you, hurl accusations and rage, threaten fiery destruction than this, this admission.
"Anyone else, I've pushed away - if I let them get close, in the end, I burned my bridges even if I was in the middle of it. But you... it doesn't seem to matter. There are things that you could do," she sees them, sometimes, in the middle of the day unbidden, "that would break even this. But what you actually do..."
Fiona sighs again, the words in their thin reedy whisper expiring as they're uttered. Now, her hands move to clasp your back, feeling the broadness of your shoulders, and her eyes close as if they might never reopen.
Your words bring a grin. You can feel the motion of it against your skin, and a deep chuckle sounds in his chest, where it is held. Your hold is an invitation. When you surround him with your arms, he gives his weight to you, a hand beneath a hip, tilting it and bracing.
The blood was just the beginning...
"Because I need you," comes the Welsh, at your ear, at your neck, at your mouth. Shoulders curl beneath your hands, musculature pulling, hawthorn and blackthorn blossoms spreading beneath your fingers, even as you spread beneath him at the insistence of his own thighs.
Because he needs you, and that need is no secret...
"Women can't resist a man who needs them," Davydd grins, the curved thorns of his fanged smile showing still, your blood moving through him. He can still taste you.
Shuddering, Fiona brings her face up to brush against the curve of your arm where it meets the shoulder, marking you with her tears. She mutters something thickly, it could be 'bastard' or something more or less complimentary.
"I should fend you off," Fiona murmurs, as if she could - as if she would. She isn't minded to, and it shows... you can feel that lack of resistance in her, for the moment. Which isn't to say that she's entirely quiet or submissive about it.
"Did you need me when you found me, though? I don't know about that logic. But I owe you something," she vows, even as her legs slip apart under you. And though her own teeth are unmarked by the presence of fangs, she brings her chin up along the sweep and curve of your arm, and she bares her teeth again, and bites down on stained skin and the muscle it covers. Bite, challenge and fight - she accepts you, but the sting has to come into play somewhere with the autumn child...
The vampire closes his eyes at the bite, and the sound reverberates through him, through you, throughout the small chamber. The hunger that was briefly sated returns. The lust that was so visible to you when you entered expresses itself again. Davydd does not answer your question, not in so many words.
Not in words at all...
Magic, motion, energy, strength -- all that is attractive about him is given to you, expressed in motion within, upon and against you in a suddenness that may be every bit as startling as the slice of the knife against your skin. Beneath your teeth, muscle all but turns to stone...
And he is not alone...
The twelve trees come with him in their own glory, in their own expressions. The virility of mistletoe, the potency of hawthorn, the awe of hazel, the tangle of ivy in the tangle of your forms, the whisper of willow in the suddenly rhythmic breathing, the sweetness of apple in his kiss, the power of blackthorn in his touch, the strength of the ash. The presence, even here, even in lovemaking, of the balance between Life and Death as those thorns make their presence known against the crook of your neck.
Bite gives way to gasp and moan combined. Her arms tighten around you as if afraid to let go, as if she were engaged in some desperate bid to win you - as Jennet and Tam Lin, she clings, her answer to your arousal evident in every arch and slight twist and ripple of flesh against flesh. Words are all fled to other grounds...
Twelve trees, three Women, one god and one goddess. It's getting crowded in here.
I love you ... I need you ... in denim or linen or leather or nothing at all ...
As if the urging were needed, as if the urgency were not already noted, noticed, known. Fiona's turned into a thing of witchery, nails raking and digging, lips kissing, suckling, parting to bite, fighting you as much as she joins you. She may be under you, but she is anything but passive.
It's going to be another long, long night.
Posted by rowan at September 16, 2004 12:43 PM
