Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision,
While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue, you make your first incision.
And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision,
Doubled over with the hunger of lions,
Hold me close, cooed the dove,
Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds.
I wanted to say: Why the long face?
Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face.
Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!
Sing, I will swallow your sadness, and eat your cold clay,
Just to lift your long face;
And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave
Your precious longface.
And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate?
Why the long face?
And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil?
Why the long face?
? Sawdust & Diamonds, ? Joanna Newsom lyrics
Suliss'urn's choice for dress for the Beltane ball had been one filled with more than a little humor, a dollop of bitterness and a wide, wide hand of irony. She, a sacrificial little black lamb had swathed herself in all white, the gown was nothing more than summer-spun thin silk woven by her opposite: light elven hands. It flowed like a dream from one segment to the other; over ribcage and hips and forever downward to her feet like a long, long prayer. (Amen.) Strings on her shoulders stabbed through little tiny rubies in a spray wove in mind-bending intricacies from body to hair; which was unbound and as white as the gown making it difficult to tell where the train of material ended and unwoven hair began. She was bare foot as a bride of summer and she stopped at the door purposefully. She stopped where the light glittered and where it would drink up the white of her lie in the dress and the spray of gem-blood in her hair.
A bell rang softly chiming through the Great Hall as she paused. A woman in pink gown stood upon a chair and announced the unmasking hour. Suliss' mask, that of a white doe with twisted, cruel, delicate horns (Everyone knew Doe had no horns. Besides that, they were too small to be young buck, and too warped, painted laughingly crimson on the tips to be deer anyhow) remained on. It did not matter that you could not mistake who she was as she slipped as sin into the crowd of people, laughing and talking and unmasking and singing and dancing while little black terrors tip toed daintily in white.
Meanwhile, back in the throng that pressed close, heated, a man with widowed peak hair, dark as windowless midnight rooms, reached up to remove his iron skull mask from his face. From head to toe in belly-slit red upon red, he had garnered the eyes of a few, but pulled the sweetness of a little patchwork woman. Viki watched as Jodiah Ayreg took in a deep breath of air. Like a man on bursting out from beneath the waves on the verse of drowning. The iron mask made dull clung as he dropped it to the floor.
"Do naut leave me again. So many leave," said the little girl--the woman--the Seer, wound a finger around a rebel thread of string, hanging loose from a bit of the stitching over the side of his garb. He had dressed as Red Death. She would ask why he chose this costume, but the girl already knew the answer. With a cat's curiosity, she jabbed the mask with a toe.
"I do not control that for now, Little Victory. I sit like a dog on a leash, and I feel it beginning to grow tight. Like as not, I won't have a memory of this night when this night has passed." And perhaps the man, with a sullen, unwelcome look if there ever was one, might have said more. Except he was being kissed by Tass. Good old Tass, always at the ready to Kiss anything that moved. Even slightly. Ayreg spluttered unintelligibly, lifting a black gloved hand to push the old man away with a sneer he knew would be completely ineffectual.
Suliss'urn twisted 'round table and chair decorated for spring. Flowers and buds glimmering with tiny little magic brought no reaction from her. Soft as little snake bellies, the drow was humming: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb, its skin as black as sin. Speaking of, it was the perfect clash for the white dress, nau? How droll, how funny, how amusing to have dressed herself in virginal snow when everything about her screamed baby likes to do bad, bad things. Every bare foot step she takes away from the tables to further meander deeper into the crowd made the trails of tear-drop gems on her mask and bare shoulders (a cloak of blood for the little queen) sets them all twinkling. As if they laughed at her and knew something she did naut. Something important. Something red and something never borrowed. Nor blue. Something important....
What suddenly became important was how the dark elf stopped so harshly in the middle of the room like some unseen hand fist-twisted a collar 'round her neck, choking her to a standstill. The drow turned into a statue with glowing wedding-ring eyes, so savage the halt her dress kept whispering forward 'till it fluttered back and flat. She was staring, hard and bright at Viki and the man dressed as Red Death.
Jodiah Ayreg. There. At the Beltane Ball, dressed as dandy as you please. As if he had not simply disappeared like everyone else. As if it had not been years and no word and no nothing of the man for the entire time.
The bile at the back of her throat was the taste of a dead heart being unraveled from its embalming; the taste of all those years of careful reconstruction and denial. Years of making her heart die over and over again on purpose. Years of masks and mirrors.
Sawdust and diamonds; the taste of her heart beat.
While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue, you make your first incision.
And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision,
Doubled over with the hunger of lions,
Hold me close, cooed the dove,
Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds.
I wanted to say: Why the long face?
Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face.
Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!
Sing, I will swallow your sadness, and eat your cold clay,
Just to lift your long face;
And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave
Your precious longface.
And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate?
Why the long face?
And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil?
Why the long face?
? Sawdust & Diamonds, ? Joanna Newsom lyrics
Suliss'urn's choice for dress for the Beltane ball had been one filled with more than a little humor, a dollop of bitterness and a wide, wide hand of irony. She, a sacrificial little black lamb had swathed herself in all white, the gown was nothing more than summer-spun thin silk woven by her opposite: light elven hands. It flowed like a dream from one segment to the other; over ribcage and hips and forever downward to her feet like a long, long prayer. (Amen.) Strings on her shoulders stabbed through little tiny rubies in a spray wove in mind-bending intricacies from body to hair; which was unbound and as white as the gown making it difficult to tell where the train of material ended and unwoven hair began. She was bare foot as a bride of summer and she stopped at the door purposefully. She stopped where the light glittered and where it would drink up the white of her lie in the dress and the spray of gem-blood in her hair.
A bell rang softly chiming through the Great Hall as she paused. A woman in pink gown stood upon a chair and announced the unmasking hour. Suliss' mask, that of a white doe with twisted, cruel, delicate horns (Everyone knew Doe had no horns. Besides that, they were too small to be young buck, and too warped, painted laughingly crimson on the tips to be deer anyhow) remained on. It did not matter that you could not mistake who she was as she slipped as sin into the crowd of people, laughing and talking and unmasking and singing and dancing while little black terrors tip toed daintily in white.
Meanwhile, back in the throng that pressed close, heated, a man with widowed peak hair, dark as windowless midnight rooms, reached up to remove his iron skull mask from his face. From head to toe in belly-slit red upon red, he had garnered the eyes of a few, but pulled the sweetness of a little patchwork woman. Viki watched as Jodiah Ayreg took in a deep breath of air. Like a man on bursting out from beneath the waves on the verse of drowning. The iron mask made dull clung as he dropped it to the floor.
"Do naut leave me again. So many leave," said the little girl--the woman--the Seer, wound a finger around a rebel thread of string, hanging loose from a bit of the stitching over the side of his garb. He had dressed as Red Death. She would ask why he chose this costume, but the girl already knew the answer. With a cat's curiosity, she jabbed the mask with a toe.
"I do not control that for now, Little Victory. I sit like a dog on a leash, and I feel it beginning to grow tight. Like as not, I won't have a memory of this night when this night has passed." And perhaps the man, with a sullen, unwelcome look if there ever was one, might have said more. Except he was being kissed by Tass. Good old Tass, always at the ready to Kiss anything that moved. Even slightly. Ayreg spluttered unintelligibly, lifting a black gloved hand to push the old man away with a sneer he knew would be completely ineffectual.
Suliss'urn twisted 'round table and chair decorated for spring. Flowers and buds glimmering with tiny little magic brought no reaction from her. Soft as little snake bellies, the drow was humming: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb, its skin as black as sin. Speaking of, it was the perfect clash for the white dress, nau? How droll, how funny, how amusing to have dressed herself in virginal snow when everything about her screamed baby likes to do bad, bad things. Every bare foot step she takes away from the tables to further meander deeper into the crowd made the trails of tear-drop gems on her mask and bare shoulders (a cloak of blood for the little queen) sets them all twinkling. As if they laughed at her and knew something she did naut. Something important. Something red and something never borrowed. Nor blue. Something important....
What suddenly became important was how the dark elf stopped so harshly in the middle of the room like some unseen hand fist-twisted a collar 'round her neck, choking her to a standstill. The drow turned into a statue with glowing wedding-ring eyes, so savage the halt her dress kept whispering forward 'till it fluttered back and flat. She was staring, hard and bright at Viki and the man dressed as Red Death.
Jodiah Ayreg. There. At the Beltane Ball, dressed as dandy as you please. As if he had not simply disappeared like everyone else. As if it had not been years and no word and no nothing of the man for the entire time.
The bile at the back of her throat was the taste of a dead heart being unraveled from its embalming; the taste of all those years of careful reconstruction and denial. Years of making her heart die over and over again on purpose. Years of masks and mirrors.
Sawdust and diamonds; the taste of her heart beat.