by Poppet
I'm never going to leave here whole.
Hopelessness curdles my facade and I burt into renewed maudlin tears.
This is the one thing I won't survive, and I've survived so much hardship. I lost Mom, Dad, Seithe, Douglas, even Arelstin. Please don't make me do this. Please.
Shocking me he kneels so we're face to face, holding my hands in his, as if in compassionate understanding. “Ellindt, how can you prejudge what you don't know? Is pain such a familiar friend that you'd rather be abused than loved? I've never seen you so silent or afraid. Pain is what you've desensitized yourself to. It's what you expect. It's what you anticipate. Love doesn't hurt... I would never hurt you in this manner. You mean far too much for me to cheapen your innermost light. Stop being so resistant, just try.”
“Try?” I snatch my hands away, clinging to rage, my last shield, the final stand, wiping my eyes and sucking in urgent breath. “Try! If you had an inkling of how hard this is, how impossible, you'd never demand it. Love is freely given, not puked up and spat out like regurgitated vodka, this isn't a binge of self-inflicted agony, I'm not a love bulimic, I'm just.... fragile.”
Standing, he draws me into his arms, holding me the way he'd hold a bat with a torn wing, “I know that. Fuck Ellie, if anyone knows, I do.”
His hug is so careful and heartfelt that I can't find the strength to fight. I don't want to fight. I'm desperate. I'll do anything for Douglas. I have to do this. It's just one time. It won't kill me. It can't kill me because there's a light of hope waiting at the end of this dark tunnel. This is the first time I've been given permission to go back to Doug, I can't mess it up.
With my contention missing, I'm easily guided away from his demonic bed and the chamber of horrors, beyond the curtain... into another realm.
“Welcome to my home. It's time you met the real me.”
Cheerful sandstone striates the walls, ceiling and floor, in welcoming warmth. The temperature is balmy; a chandelier sparkles rainbows over all surfaces, littering them in magical twinkles. Calm flames hover above thick white candles, the room one huge cavern of comfort sprinkled in warm hues and congenial lighting.
Richly woven Gypsy rugs hug the raw floor in opulent colors, the overall impression deep wine red and sunburnt orange. It suits him far more than the room next door.
Glancing surreptitiously up at him I spy the smile aimed at me. I've known Zarak all my life and have never seen him look happy. Right now it's plastered over his face, churning his irises into an ambient glow. Stuck in that gaze, heat courses through my body, exciting my heart and giving me heady giddiness.
I'm weakened here. I can't find my anger to summon, to use as my shield or to inject me with much needed strength.
Gliding across the sacrosanct floor, it's a relief to be guided into the voluminous couch in front of the indoor garden. Dazed, feeling out of body, I stare at the white lilies fragrancing the room with strong perfume, spilling spring redolence into the chamber, their green foliage riddled with fern fronds of tropical mess, lit with uplights, morphing the atrium into a fairyland. I can hear water trickling from deep inside there. It reminds me of the Vamporium.
He sits next to me, stretching long legs and linking ankles, reaching out, holding my hand comfortably in his, resting his head back and closing his eyes.
My mouth is arid with apprehension and I watch him suspiciously while drowsiness infuses my body. Somewhere behind us a guitar starts strumming. The song is unfamiliar and I listen to the man singing it with interest.
Fire burns in my stomach while I focus... emotion rising up to gild my eyes. His hand in mine is warm, companionable, his right hand tapping fingers on his thigh to the music.
Have you ever been walking
and your feet swept off the ground
Have you ever been lost
only to be found
Have you ever seen the light
the way it shines in you
Have you ever felt anything so right
the way I feel about you
The Way I feel about you
It's so real
There's nothing I wouldn't do
To let you know how I feel
I see the day turn into night
They just drift away
I see the way you light my life
I just feel that way
Before you let me in you already knew who I was
Before you let me in it was some crazy magic love
The way I feel about you....
The song keeps playing, the musician singing, an electric guitar taking over, and I am in denial that I'm being wooed with Zarak's romantic side. Tell me this isn't happening.
He opens his eyes and looks directly into my heart when the vocalist sings... Who knows what real really is...
“I don't know this song,” I chatter nervously. I need to break this tension with mundane conversation.
“Siri. He's a yoga teacher and a fire dancer. I should take you to see him sometime, you'll like him.”
“Siri who?”
“Siri Khalsa, he lives in California. The song is his original, titled The Way I Feel. I prefer music written from the heart instead of something contrived and preordained as popular.”
“He's honestly a fire dancer?” I smile. How did the tension dissolve? I needed it to keep me cautious.
He nods, “Fire dancing at night, on the beach, it's spectacular. It feels natural, and right.”
I would expect a demon to think something like that.
“Don't judge it until you've experienced it, Ellindt.”
His tone is chastising.
Sighing, I look back at the unexpected garden, anxiety coming back on strong. He flops his head back, closing his eyes, relaxing in his home, ignoring me.
My pulse flutters, the atmosphere around me growing heavy as water, tingles trickling up my fingers to my wrist, curling around my arm, snaking euphoria up to my shoulder, up my neck, heating my head, drowning my eyes with dancing mirages, sinking down to cradle my heart in ethereal massage.
Battling to focus, I look at the hand in my lap, deceptively relaxed but burning fever into my spirit, awakening a latent energy hidden beyond my consciousness but present in my body – or... soul?
He turns, smiling at me with his head supported. “I lied.”
I can't react. Nothing responds to the words. I accept them as fate, as if I always knew he'd say that. I'm not working. I'm zinging all over, my body alive with endless tremors and quickening delight, it's a current of confusion, sedation, delicious and disorienting.
Sitting up, releasing my hand, he bends down, removing his boots, throwing them into a dark puddle of shadow, then faces me with the expression of a harbinger. A heavenly scribe come to read the fine print left at the bottom of my contract, locked inside my heart, in the top left chamber, where it is omnipresent to remind my body that I am not my own person, I've always belonged to an energy far greater than I.
Thrumming with this weird energy I watch him when he stands, discarding his jeans, turning his back to me. Across his shoulders are scars he's always hidden. Slowly pirouetting he spirals back to face me, revealing welts, cuts, horrific burns puckering his beauty, broken bones mutilating his form, his skin washed raw with acid, charred in places, his fingers dropping hot blood onto the serene calm of the sandstone floor.
I'm horrified, shocked, but can't summon a visceral reaction.
“When I hurt you, I hurt myself,” he says by way of explanation.
He blinks, coursing salty tears down his handsome face, kneeling in front of me and reclaiming my hands. “I chose that song for a reason, Ellie. Long ago your kind knew The Way. It went into hiding in the dark ages, and when it did somehow you lost the truth. The Way, is, how I Feel.”
Tilting my head, croaking over the comatose bonds holding me in static control, I whisper, “What?”
“It's an emotional map. The Way was the name for the religion it became, named thus by a messiah and the on
e before him. Emotions are the only true gauge, emotions are the only truth. We can't deny them from ourselves. They define us, because without them we'd cease. Words only have meaning when they're saturated with emotion, and that emotion defines intent.”
My body feels like it's floating again, buoyed by his words.
He smiles, the torture on his body vanishing, and he leans closer, holding his hand up. It's spotlighted in brilliance, silvery and soft. “Look at your light shining at me. When I look at you that's all I see. I have to drink Pyrolic to see your physical body because I am spirit, and when I look at you all I see is that bright purity that shines inside you. That's who you are to me, Ellie. You are a star, shining brilliantly, and it warms my inner essence to witness you as the way you once were, before you chose to be half human, before you chose to deny that you are so bright you could break anyone out of their darkness.”
Buzzing with euphoria, his words are like making love, energy to energy, recognition, splendor.
Holding my hands, kissing the palms, his smile is ecstatic, jubilant, adoring, and the song playing speaks for him, “Have you ever seen the light...the way it shines in you.”
Emotion wells up and I'm engulfed with shame. I'm blown apart inside with this simple knowledge. His words are succinct and ruthless, rupturing my coherence of who I am and where I belong in this world.
Slipping back onto the chair he cradles me to his warm solidity, stroking blessings up and down my spine with his caress.
“I drink Pyrolic to be solid, to have a physical body, because you shut yourself off from me, you locked up your light and hid it in pain.” Precious kisses trace my cheek, seraphic breath rustling my eyelashes. “But when I'm physical I suffer the consequences of libido, I understand anger and frustration...”
“Then why the claws, and hollow eyes?” I manage to say, but my voice comes out like a song of praise woven by the wind.
“Our story was perverted by men with an agenda to separate humans from their anima. Seithe understood anima perfectly, and so did those men. They decided to start a religion that splits mankind from their daemons, casting them into spiritual darkness.”
Moving us, I'm reclining on something so soft it's an all over body hug. He leans over me, his eyes periwinkle clear and stunning. “And you gave him everything he ever wanted, including your devotion.”
“Who?” I murmur, enraptured by his beauty.
“Arelstin. He was angry, so he broke all that was good. Daemons suddenly became a wicked evil, the subject of much propaganda and an excuse for murder, and you feared that... so I simply played to your fears. Us deamons, for us it's amusement to mirror imaginations. We present ourselves as expected, waiting for someone to see beyond the illusion, to see the pure unadulterated love that we are. Fear is something you control, we can't instill it, and we often show you your own fear so you can see how it harms you and restricts your freedom. It's conjured by your mind and it only has power because you allow it to.”
“How could you hurt me if you are loving spirit?”
“Oh Ellie,” he laughs, pressing blistering kisses across my collar bone. “Love guides, and sometimes it feels like it hurts because you can't see how we employ pain to guide you away from that which would ruin your eternal light. Light must be nurtured, allowed to blossom and mature, to be all that it can be, so we steer you away from harms, and unfortunately to you it feels like pain because you can't see it was motivated by love.”
Sitting up, his skin aglow, he looks down at me with a universe of anguish, “I tried so hard to guide you away from Arelstin, but you believed all the lies about daemons. You shunned me.” His posture is tense and his face serious when he says, “And maybe I hurt you so you'd realize your full potential. By breaking you I showed you how easy it was to heal yourself. I never hurt your heart or soul, only your body. It was the only metaphor I could use without sinking to Arelstin's level.”
I rejected love.
Do I? Have I always done this? Why?
The song makes sense... it plays over and over... Have you ever been lost - only to be found.
Slumping next to me he curls his long frame around me, folding me inside the envelope of his embrace, “I'm happy just to hold you this close without lies between us.”
Cradled in acceptance and mercy, I snuggle up, pressing a thank you kiss on his full lips. Closing my eyes, I slumber in the arms of manifested heaven, our light combined so bright the room vanishes in edge to edge white.
It gives me hope, allowing me to dare believe that in love, anything is possible. We construct illusions, fears and obstacles, and the truth really does give us wings. I'm not cheating, I'm simply learning to love myself.
At rest, adrift on the diaphanous magic entombing my angelfire... I'm on the cusp of sleeping inside his safety net and non-judgmental breath.
I never knew you. I've been a stupid girl. You can't judge what you don't know.
Drowsy, unfocused, I feel him shift to whisper into my heart, “Before you let me in you already knew who I was. Before you let me in it was some crazy magic love.”
Chapter 6
Aisyx:
Waking up with my face in her lap, her hand constantly stroking the crown of my head, I'm smitten. Smiling up at the heavenly sweetheart I'm embarrassed I fell asleep.
“Don't tell me, you don't need sleep either right?”
“Ne,” she smiles, her perfection the ultimate way to start my day.
Until she walked into my life I was simply a violin of rusted notes. In one night she rearranged the mess inside me, exposing the symphony was there all along it just needed a conductor to make my pulse compose to the harmonies of her celestial touch. Those notes are strung up neatly now, the five lines of the stave crammed with adulation, filling sheets, unleashing a sonata of adoration, drumming my heart and strumming my veins.
It's honestly how I feel. When she touches me I buzz with euphoria, it's like my soul is oscillating to her in musical vibrations caused by the excited pumps of my heartbeat playing the flute with my bones.
Catching her hand I kiss it, unable to hide the manic smile splitting my face, “You are good for my soul, Nada.”
She laughs back, viridian eyes catching morning light and seeming to undulate with the ray's caresses. She's a living source of tranquility, calm, the rightness come to fix my wrong.
“Now,” I say, sitting up, running a hand through my hair, noticing that every curtain and window is wide open to the day, “You may not find chocolate your poison of choice, but maybe you'll love coffee?”
I indicate I'm going to walk to the kitchen, stopping to appreciate naked legs and elegant feet. What a sight! In my living room! Breathing the same air as me.
She unfurls, standing in complete confidence, not a shred of self-consciousness, moving the temple of love through my bland lounge, big eyes curious, her glance toward the kitchen inquisitive.
Thrill expands my insides to such a degree that my lungs get tight. Looping my arm around her, relishing the hot soft breast squishing into my waist, I kiss the top of her head, strolling like honeymooners into my dowdy kitchen. She's so fantastic everything now seems dull and unworthy of her.
Popping the kettle on, grabbing two mugs and leaving them on the counter, I surmise this lady will want her coffee black.
“What be coffee?”
“A hot drink. It's made from a bean that's roasted and blended, then ground up. We brew it in water and drink it.”
“You like?”
Turning to her as she sits at the pine table, crossing her legs and propping elbows on the grain, cupping her chin, she's so congenial and lovely I have the weird sensation of intestines knotting while my morning glory rises to salute.
Like? Lord above woman, like is an understatement.
Distracting myself, grabbing the grounds from the fridge door and nabbing the espresso pot, I take a deep calming breath, “Yes, I like coffee very much.”
“Okay,” lilts behind me
in her soft melodious voice.
Jesus, all I want is to worship her until she can't find the strength to walk. Infatuation is getting muddled with love and the midline is murky. I've never felt so alive, or beyond belief happy.
Pouring boiling water into the base of the pot, packing the funnel with potent coffee, screwing it together and putting it on the hot plate, I turn it on, grateful I have the family sized version. I'm going to need a lot of caffeine to keep my erratic blood pressure under control.
Looking at the dewy dawn which has brushed the foliage outside with droplets of refreshment, I smile, recalling the pagan belief that it's sky sperm come to fertilize the earth. Women would collect it to wash their faces in the morning, believing it to be the fountain of eternal youth.
“Aisyx like morning?”
Twisting to my new fixation, I say, “You obviously do. My house has never been this brisk and bright at this hour. Is there any window you didn't open?”
She stands in a fluid swirl, unnaturally magnificent. It's as if she is at one with the air and energies around her, moving through it as if suspended and supported by it.
Perfect calves flex with lean thighs, her impeccable torso just right, those breasts utterly compelling, but beyond all of it is her serene beauty which is so powerful it transcends language.
Reaching behind me, folding arms around my waist and resting her cheek on my spine, she murmurs up at me, teasing my skin with warm breath, “Nada not accustomed to wall. Morning precious, newborn, must met with reverence. Welcomed and invited into life .. everri day.”
Curling herself around me, pushing me away from the counter while the espresso pot gurgles gossip, she rests her chin just below my chest, gives me her peculiar sniff of appreciation, and then gazes up at me. “Day is Nada's baby. Must love and kiss.”
