A brother is getting married, possibly ahead of schedule. Another brother is ascending to a throne, and possibly also marrying (again). It's not her business, thankfully; Tanira walks barefoot from her rooms on the top floors down many marble steps, dressed in white robes that shift and part and rejoin. She is making her way to one of the many pools, to sit beside it and wait for her 'date'.
     It isn't an ordinary sort of date. But she wears a filmy white veil that hints at the lips behind it rather than revealing them; the lips behind it are painted a rich ripe shade, the jewel flesh of the plum rather than the purple skin of it. And her glossy black hair is worn in a heavy single braid; her eyes are kohled, and silver beads rattle at her ankle, her toenails painted silver to match. Let's see how it goes this time.
     She tries not to judge; tries and fails. Everyone makes judgments, though, don't they? Tanira has dismissed her servants. If you really want to kidnap her - if any of her suitors do - the presence of one maidservant isn't going to stop it from happening. And she reaches the poolside and pulls one of the wicker chairs over to it, idly dipping a foot into the rippling warm water, heated as it is by magic and thermal vents deep below the island. She settles back, and closes her eyes. He might be early. Or he might be late. He likes to try to take me off guard. Which means this time he'll probably be exactly on time...

     Circles of ripples extend from your toes and the pool may as well be an ocean, for on ...and on ... it now goes. You are transported, chair and all, with the barest folding of space and time. You moved, in short, without seeming to move at all.
     Your toe still touches water, which is still warm, still rippling from your first and only dip, but every single other thing has changed. You sit in the center of the Oasis of Dreams. The grand pool is decorated by floating lotus blossoms and is surrounded by gold-capped minarets. Exotic flowers (including vanilla orchids) paint the air with both fragrance and vivid color, growing wild, it would seem, from your dreams of love and romance. A gold-domed palace sits nearby and the sky is brilliantly captured in a constant state of twilight.
     "Hello, Tanira," Duma's voice is deep, quiet... and sudden. He appears dressed all in white, his grand black peacock wings unfurled and trailing the marble of the poolside. "Welcome to the Oasis of Dreams." He smiles as he slowly approaches you. "It is hardly fair to expect you to be a Queen of Dreams without ever showing it to you."
     Here, his green eyes take on the iridescence of peacock feathers. "There I go," Duma smiles, "... being presumptuous again." He glances to the pool, your dipping toe, and he skims the surface of the pool with his feathers, looking to you as the water chimes from feather-hairs to pool. "You are an orchid among orchids. It is presumptuous, but I must say... my Oasis seems to suit you ...and you it..."

     She senses the movement and goes very still, the way a wild animal might at the sudden change in reality. Hold very still and maybe the predator won't catch you. Not that it would do her any good; you are not an ordinary predator. But then, she's hardly ordinary herself.
     A hint of color rises into her cheeks. He did it again. Tanira keeps her wings tightly folded, unlike you, and carefully, she folds her hands in her lap. "I notice that you are not apologizing," she remarks coolly, "for the presumption. Hello, Duma." Her voice is cool, but her eyes are not. They spark, and snap.
     But she doesn't stand up, instead regarding you from above her veil; never mind that you've seen her mouth before. She sits upright, and she crosses her legs daintily with the soft shifting and rustling of white silk, and she lets her arms relax along the arms of her chair, and she looks at you - really looks at you - with a deliberate sort of cool insolence. "Does it?" Tanira answers blandly. "Do I? And, then, are you so certain that I suit you? I am not entirely convinced."

     He smiles. "I can see that. I would say it's disconcerting. But," his smile softens just a touch, "... that would be insincere. I am perhaps what is disconcerting." Duma stares at you a moment, meeting your insolent look. He remarks at it as plainly as he does your beauty. It moves against his green eyes very similarly to how the ripples of water moved at the tip-touch of your toe.
     "I believe you do." Another chair appears and he takes a seat next to you, his wings folding until they disappear from view. He tips his head to look at you. "You are not sure about me." His mouth forms a smile. "With the exception of frustration and ... perhaps a little contempt." Duma leans in toward you. "Yet you have not dismissed me, so there is room for me to hope..."

     "It would be easier if I did have contempt for you. I don't." She corrects you because she is above all else honest. You will take it how you will. "I am not sure about you. You do frustrate me. And you are handsome; and you irritate me a great deal, Duma. But you are correct. I am not ready to dismiss you, even if it would be easier for me if I were..."
     Tanira sighs, and she brushes her braid back over her shoulder. "But I do not do things because they are easy. If all I wanted was easy, I would have told my fathers to choose a husband for me and I would have left it entirely in their hands. Obviously, I did not. Obviously, I will not. You make me angry partly because I feel that you discount how much I should care about the feelings of the others, I admit. But I acknowledge that you are more ruthless than I am. And perhaps you are being ruthless in this a little bit because otherwise, you think I would have dropped you from the list long ago now. I don't know." She shrugs. "You are rather impenetrable, Duma. But you have in most ways been actually more of a gentleman than I would have expected of you." Whether she would have preferred otherwise, she does not say.

     "It would be a nicer world, perhaps, if dreams were linear and made sense," he murmurs. "But... then what would challenge us to be or do more?" Duma rests his head upon his hand, looking to you. In this moment, the pretense of his surprising you rolls away, leaving something more poignant behind. "I am not a ruthless being," he remarks quietly. "Though, I know it must appear otherwise. It ... isn't that I'm trying to connive you into anything. One, it wouldn't work. You're too intelligent for such dealings. Two, it simply isn't my intent. Dreams...and I... are not ....linear. If constantly shifting sands are not to your liking, however, it is better to know that now."
     A service of tea and rosewater wine appear, along with sugared and candied orchid petals and other such delights. The cups themselves are hardened, candied flowers. "It will not make me love you less. You will always be a special star in my firmament, whether or not you choose to... loop your belt of stars with me or no," Duma notes, taking one of the candied purple flowers. It dissolves sweetly on his tongue. He offers one to you. "I challenge you, because I respect your ability to endure it. And me..."
     His smile is mystery and oracle. There is truth there, cloaked in veils of his own. What is clear, however, is the shimmer of desire. "I want to be the first ...to lift your veil...and kiss you." His hand moves aside your veil, gently, to place the petal as an offering to your lips. "Do you desire it?"

     "I don't think that you're trying to connive. For the reasons you mention, but because it does not seem your - well, your style." She accepts one of the cups, looking down into it, as if it would tell her the truth. What is the truth, anyway?
     "I know myself," Tanira says finally, "but I do not know all of myself. If I knew all of myself, it would be very easy to choose Eavan, or Jophiel, over you. But I do not; and I do not know you, or them, well enough to know who to choose. Part of it is that I am impatient. Have I not waited long enough?"
     There is for a moment a plaintive note to her voice, a pained note. She has watched love found for both her older and her younger brother. She has watched it touch many people, and she has remained aloof and unstained by anything but the longing for what others have. She pushes it away again with a flicker of eyelashes, returning to quiet detachment... or its nearest available cousin, at any rate. Your offering is brought to her lips, painted as they are, and she looks up at you, and she blushes, turning her face slightly away. "Sometimes it is not enough just to desire something," Tanira says quietly. "If we always had what we desired, we'd grow fat and flabby and useless, would we not?"

     "You want, and it pains you to want and to be wanted, because also you deny yourself the very love and pleasure you seek. You long... you do not wish to wait and yet you put yourself in a cage. Dear angel, how can any love you if you lock yourself away?"
     His hand is gentle as he moves aside your veil. He looks at you without the curtain, without the flimsy silk that separates you from the rest of the world. He looks at you, not through you as he has before, and he brushes his hand against your cheek.
     Is it your first kiss? No such gossip leaves his lips. They are too busy stroking against your own. Petal soft, but firm, his mouth makes gentle introductions. There is a world of dreams there. Fantasies and aspirations bloom there in the human warmth of the angel's kiss. How your days and nights might be filled. Would his arms (and wings) not be pleasurable? And revealed in it, too, is a moment, however fleeting, of his own vulnerability.
     "Know me as I am," Duma whispers there. "What I want," his lips tug yours sweetly, his own lips stained by your color.
     He sits back and reaches for a sugared petal, his hand lifting it to you in sweet offering. "You do not need to know all of yourself. Every day, God reveals more of Itself to us and to Itself. Not even It is complete, Tanira."

     She does not pull away, although she likely could; she permits the kiss, trembling slightly, accepting it, her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap. She does not know what to do with them. And when you pull away, she looks down at her lap, color making dusky rose of her cheeks. And she resists the temptation to feel her lips with her fingers, to see if they have somehow changed. They feel as if they should have...
     "It would help, though," Tanira counters quietly, voice showing a hint of unsteadiness, uncertainty. She accepts the petal, fumbling slightly, still looking at her lap. "Knowing. Being certain." As she is ever more uncertain...

     "You have not known us for that long. I should be more surprised if you had a clear answer," Duma quietly replies. He brushes a hand against your face again, a smile holding steady in peacock green eyes. "Might I give you some advice, without coming off as presumptuous?" He doesn't wait for you to answer. Leaning close to you again, a large, black peacock wing curled around your chair, Duma is nearly close enough to kiss. "Enjoy it more," he whispers.
     And he kisses you again, this time on your cheek. "Enjoy it fully. And why not? You want to know us. You want to find love. It should be a fun process. Not some fight to the death." Sitting back, his wing retracting, Duma smiles.

     She watches you from under her eyelashes. You do make her feel feminine; and that's almost alarming. She tucks one hand beneath herself, one bare foot pressed against her other ankle as she looks at you. "I am trying to enjoy it," Tanira mutters. "I am."
     She picks up her veil, folding it and putting it on her thigh. "I wish I could understand you," she says suddenly. "You are a mystery to me. You turn up and you say that you love me, and you change so often and so much. And - I cannot just stop thinking of you; as I said, I can't simply dismiss you." She shakes her head and stands up. "I was going to try to surprise you, shock you, you know."

     "I probably should have saved that conversation for the third date. But, I did want you to understand my motivations. You were wondering why someone like me would be interested in you. So... I told you the truth." Duma watches you for a moment. How hard it is to understand dreams.
     "What is to understand?" he wonders. "I Am." What a very oracular thing to say! There are sphinxi who are more easy to understand than he. Duma smiles. "So... surprise me. I promise you I do not peek or sneak through your subconscious. I would do so only under the gravest circumstances." He takes a sip of the rosewater wine and then he is there again, offering another petal to your lips. "You wish to understand me... ask me what you wish to understand..."

     "I don't know that there would ever have been a perfect time. You did what you were moved to do." She fingers her braid, examining the tip for any split ends with a small frown. "I ... no. I'd rather surprise you when I have an actual chance at surprising you."
     Tanira turns and looks at you, up at you from under her eyelashes again, lips parting at your fingers with the petal. You are there so suddenly; she blushes about it, and retreats half a step. "I want you to show me who you are," she concedes, almost under her breath. "I want to ... you have mysteries, and I feel ... I don't know."
     She brings her chin up suddenly, sharply adding, "But I am not an angel. You do know that, don't you?"

     Duma smiles as you take the petal from his fingertips. His fingers brush against your lips. "Then, more of the same," he murmurs with a warm tease. For he has been showing you who and what he is. You bring your chin up suddenly (defiantly). "You are not an angel. You are a Tanira," he says, his mouth spreading in an acknowledging smile. "I do know that. And you know that although I am an angel, that doesn't mean I'm a saint."
     Lifting another of the sugar petals, he goes to offer it to you again but then brings it to his own lips, eating it. Duma smiles, and in his smile the Oasis of Dreams shimmers and disappears...
     You are returned to your own poolside as though you had never left. In fact, to everyone in the vicinity, you have just arrived and have only just taken a seat. There is only a teacup on a small table to tell you otherwise.
     And Duma... nowhere to be seen or found...
     So... surprise me. His voice is ephemeral. It is a glimmer of hope, a whisper from your soul to your heart, and then it fades back to the sound of rippling water...

     She is a little bit ruffled, and she adjusts her veil, suppressing her frown. I am going to have to revenge myself a little upon you, Tanira tells you stiffly. She looks into the teacup as if for some sort of further answer, or sign, or message from you.
     And then she rises, taking the teacup with her, and even though she has 'just' arrived, so she departs. And as she reaches the doorway, she tugs off her veil, tossing it behind her without a word. And she doesn't look back.

Posted by rowan at April 16, 2010 08:52 PM