Topic: Sometimes We Get it Right

Sapphyre · Date: 2007-09-06 01:31 EST

Room 20 - The Red Dragon Inn

The mirror reflected a pale face and blanched lips. Large, dark eyes staring through the glass for all the glass would give her, a dim room the back drop, a single candle burning, dried wax gathering at the base of iron claws. It was the sole extravagance in a humble room.

Autumn was on her mind. Only weeks till it began to urge the memories of a cold cruise on a haunted body of water, little by little she was nearer to indulging in her brand of occult. The shingles of the roof rose a touch with the gusts of wind that had in recent days begun heading into town. She had arrived with its howl.

Brushing the last knot from silken locks, curls heavy and full and burnished by the candle light she was satisfied, and deciding that she was dreamy, thought it time to retire. Her sheets still crinkled and unfolded from the morning and her harried getting ready awaited, snug and beige, tomorrow she would do some laundry and take a stroll around the lakeside.

Endeared by the numerous shoreside spots she was riveted also. The draw of the sea reminded her of stories an aunt would tell of wolves and the call of the wild. The longing of a bark between pack members separated by disaster, or distance. The very thought of it excited her in a strangely affecting way, made her tense up and imagine dark, moist forests, places she had not yet tread, and the swell of animalistic, primal vanishing, alone, in the wilderness. It was thoughts of a woman who while cultured and well traveled was yet a fixture of Chaos. The days gave her over to Winter, with each New Moon, and the hopefulness grew scarce. She became thinner and her clothes got thicker.

Laying on her side she stared at the window and what she could see of her sky from the shutters at their angle. The persistant breeze would slam them abruptly through the night so that she would sit up for hours studying the blank darkness before her, and awaiting a signal that told her to find the source and Impose. These characteristics of her nature developed in a bearable living. The solar hint as dawn began, her reprieve, for it would be several hours before she would again consider Two Seasons Forth.

Ashen was the sky as the clouds parted. The sun was violently hot, scoring the skin after only minutes in it. That day with her clothes washed and a stroll alongside the lake relished, she returned to her room, listening to the beat of the weak fan. It was brown shadows and orange sunset that told her of the city below and the hour of day, and the occasional scent of spices or cologne that brushed along as whiskers. She was not ruined, just an eternal learner. For the cosmos danced to its own tune, adhering to no rule, but the pattern in the passion of the determined stars, who shone freewill, and guided her in their tragic way.

Sapphyre · Date: 2007-09-06 03:16 EST

The Dockside - A week later

Foam and froth milled about the crags and rockpools, with them seaweed and shells, most of them fractured and covered in a thick layer of salt, caking to the cusp of the shape, the colour of raw sugar. The waters were a marine blue, and further out a murkier teal, beautiful from a distance as the waves shimmered like scattered diamonds, and sometimes, she thought, like the sky upside down, especially at twilight, when all was the right hue and a particular mood. In that instance she would stare above and pretend she was beneath its rippled surface, breathing, a mermaid of the wind.

But she was not, and the world was the right side up.

She hugged herself as the winds blew, thinking her wardrobe choice poor, wearing what she was, a blouse and a mauve skirt, both flimsy in the capricious seaside air. But she was warmed by anticipation for there was much to study and much to engage her. Professions to be made, people to become friends and mentors, places to leave her mark.

Distantly, as if not quite herself, she strolled along the planks, her black velvet heels drowned out by the tidal symphony below. It was another sullen sky, and the wind was colder still. She soared in recollections until she no longer felt cold or recognised where she was, and inky tones swallowed her up in a quiet street. Beside her, a series of balconettes, either side, where vines and exquisitive pink flowers grew, each all the more spendid by the hazy, orange light of the braziers festooning the gap between each unit, like some carnival had waltzed through and left itself in part. Sapphyre stood there, intrigued, for a long time, listening to the din of the insects in this remote part of town, and the wail of gulls out towards the harbour, echoing through the street before her, in pursuit of distant laughter and the rattle of lids on alley bins.

The maiden had become accustomed to these dreamy moments, that eclipsed the past and the future and trembled infinitely in the now, as if she were eternal, in that instant, a solid, beating heart of time, of space, a cornucopia of alien testaments, relaying an emotion into the air suggestive of some great, secretive immersion; limitless, pallid, arching against the world, if anyone was witness to it, their eyes would not be sore.

The street hummed with her disappearing, evocative of a distant, forgotten land. A faint imprint lingered of raven hair, a plaintive face, and a flickering shirt of caramel white.

Sapphyre · Date: 2007-09-09 04:42 EST

Today - The trembling of the strings

Sapphyre had retired to a large chair to read. Sunset came in shy streaks through the venetian shutters to decorate her body in slivers of shadow. Her eyes were half open as they intensely read the passages before her as she calmly lay curled, as the daytime drained away and her energy slowly collected itself again. Outside a flute called to the air and was a carried to her balconette. She had left a room in the Inn to find one of the small units in her favoured street unoccupied. After contacting the estate lord she had made the necessary arrangements and moved her few belongings in; a bedroll for the meantime, her large candle holder, a few books, a pink curtain and necessities including her newly bought casserole dish. It made for a handy item on afternoons when the urge to cook struck. It passed the time and kept her expansive mind busy.

Widening her gaze as a long shadow crossed her, a bird outside caught in the rays of the sun, she closed the book and watched dusty particles fly within the haze. Outside, somewhere, the flute faded and foot steps grew nearer, and then passed, and her muscles grew taut as she stood and walked to the pile of notes on her study table, the study table, the one left behind by the man who had lived here before. She'd known right away it had been a male, his energies were still around, the estate lord needn't have mentioned he'd lived here alone for five years, and that his wife had died during the first two of them. She could taste the sorrow in the stale air as easily the fine vapour of cigarette smoke that lingered in the vacating. The conspicuous stain of dark red in the first corner from the door, most likely spilt wine after a long, terrible night of grieving, or a failed attempt at reaching his beloved"

Her mind played over the various strategies humans took to find their lost ones. The ones who were not lost at all, but more found than the living. A living person could still walk away, disappear from one location to the next or perhaps conveniently lie down the telephone line that they had indeed gone. But a dead man stayed where he was. Where the soul went was to the stars, an ocean that allowed ones purchase to surface. It was blistering and truly blinding. It stole all horror and one forgot about their woes. They simply were.

Shaking her head, she lifted up the first note on the pile to touch her finger. Crinkled, apricot coloured paper, paper she'd found in the top study desk draw, smelling of tears, for tears smelt stronger than the sea, and tobacco. Pressing the paper to her nose she breathed in, and the sun fell deeper into its nest for the night, and she felt a chill ride her spine. The evening always took so soon in a new town. The days so quick when there was so much to do....And what of this man, with livid lungs and a sorry heart, what did he intend to do, at one point in time, with these papers" The purposefulness of their colour, location and the musk of words that had tried to be wrote called to her as shrilly as the flute only moments ago. She dropped the paper and closed the blinds, and too her thoughts which invaded the privacy of the previous occupant. Garthry, wasn't that his name" First or last' And was was hers" Flora.

And that night with the need to smell the sea and not sorrow she crossed to the dock side and decided that she would write about ships again. Should another of her kind find her imprint they might doubt her single investment in her destiny - to live as richly as she might, being little more than impression and scintillating matter.

The watchmen nodded their heads as they walked by, but she did not return the gesture. She removed her gloves and untied her hair and breathed deep. She wanted to flex her feelings a little wider, a little wilder, and imagine the poverty of the human heart. A barren place aching to be filled, and when done so, and then lost, how perfectly wretched and beyond repair it was. Ruefully, she smiled, and felt a weight press against her heart, in a sensation of pining beauty.

Sapphyre · Date: 2007-09-10 02:06 EST

Frolic - Brothel in Soho

Through the saloon style doors and into the sultry heat iwithin a sort of necropolis where the frightening and the brave walked hand in hand. Topless fourty year olds, female and both, making out with confused brokers half their age, and a little boy with oversized spectacles sitting by an ashtray of stubbed cigarettes, most still glowering; of course no match to the scower on his face. Helpless.

"Hey", Sapphyre removed his glasses.

He stared up into a face that was milky and blurred. He could only see her mouth move, bright orange lipstick, and the rim of kohl eyeliner. He could just hear her words.

"Wha?", he said rudely, in the carefree, ungrammatical way of a kid.

"I said, do you want a soda?"

He nodded his head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He spent the night with her walking around the outside of the city. No seedy rooms where he would be subject to watching the mechanics of his playboy momma. The moon was full and rosy, seeming so, with clouds of a pale pink fused within the moonlight. Cherry coloured stains dotted the shadows they left to move into the streetlight on a quiet corner.

"You can go on home now if you want"

The boy closed a finger and with its knuckle shoved the glasses to the bridge of his nose, squinting up at what looked like a half-real apparition before him. For the warmth of her vocals and the cool touch of her hand he was comforted.

"I dun wanna now"

He shrugged and looked away. To herself, she remarked how old he seemed. It was true that nature could shape a soul.

"Why?"

He smiled up at her as if to say "come on, missus" and then laughed a bit and dug his shoe into the ground. She bent down and hugged him. They were like that for longer than they had wanted to.

Need was a tenacious attribute, no matter the person.

Sapphyre · Date: 2007-09-25 02:42 EST

With her fingers she knit dandelion wreaths. With her heart she sent missives. With her arrow she spent wishes. With her eyes she called lightning.

She left Rhy'Din to spend some time on the sea, learn of it, from it.

Violet · Date: 2007-09-25 03:06 EST

I had been caught in a wind tunnel, quite a severe one, and when I landed I was not befriended or attacked, I was just a bent string, a person hanging lengthways over a branch. She took my hand and led me down a sunset road.

I don't even know her name, her real one, she refers to herself as Sapphyre.

I have seen the statue in her name, and it is because of her I have ever set foot on a boat. I am a stowaway, a lab rat, a marvelling man. I seek my sister friend, like I seek the sun when cold. It is, truly, that simple.

Violet