Dance with me in cold clear air.

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

[Morning of Saturday, September 19 (day 111)]
[Out by the Voronin Estate]

Management, oh, hey, Management. It felt so good to hear back from them, it really really did. I mean--look, hey, I know Management aren't saints, but they're--hell. They're family. Not in the real close way, but in a true way. I missed being sure that they knew, you know? Feels like maybe things are a little steadier here, and now I've got a chance to go out and take a look at a few things. It's Saturday, so market's on and I'll need to be back for the afternoon and evening, but right now I've got time.

Get up early in the cold morning and get dressed, jeans and warm socks under my shoes and a T-shirt and a shirt over that and my jacket, and I head out over the Pontarlier into town, and the air's chilly enough to make me notice all the soft baffle of my clothes, holding my own little bubble of warmth steady against the air running quick and cold all around. Not a lot of people around, and my feet are clacking over the bridge and down the stones and hard dirt of the roads until I reach the tall iron gates, edges of rust and the smell of cold cold metal.

And I stop a minute and curl my fingers around the uprights of fence and gate and stand there, feeling the metal press into my hands and breathing in a hint of old smoke, like a long-dead campfire, and I start to worry. Anushka, lovely lovely psychokine wonder, touching and seeing and holding out the wonder of the world like a clock winding up and measuring golden time--no-one from town would've come to hurt her, would they? Running scared and looking for something to blame, missing the wonder and sweep of her and seeing only the strangeness?

Swallow once and slip through the gate and listen to the early-morning silence.

"Lady Voronin?"

[Open to Anushka]
[Closed]

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[anushka-excolo.livejournal.com]

Once I would have felt her as a wave through water. Things become themselves into the garden: birds on their flights above it realise they are flapping their wings to avoid falling; animals at the edge of the tangle remember that though there is always something to run from, this thing should be fled from further, faster, longer. "Lady Voronin?"

Her boots against the scorched grass whispering. I slip outside and go to meet her, thin fingers weaving between hers, and the chill air hanging vacant between us. Odd how the grates have stood empty now the cold weather has found us at last. "Hello Zann," I say. "Come inside and talk with me." I know she has come with questions, and I know she will ask them, and I know what my answer will be. Yet still we must act out the parts which are ours to play.

The door opening, the footsteps across cold marble, the wind catching its notes on the broken windows, the white fur hem of my coat dragging through the dust. Each element falls into place like turning another card over. They have always been there, pasteboard fraying to felt at the edges, brightly painted pictures fading against the tabletop. They have always been there. "I'm sorry about your friend."

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

So quiet here inside the fence, and the grass is sere but not winter-sere, and I can feel something starting to knot in my throat. I know Gaueko's her god, and I'm wondering worrying if maybe Tez got pissy, out on the edge of town, tossed around a little flash and sizzle like one of his shows gone sharp and wrong--

--and then she's here, white coat like something Svetlana would maybe wear sweeping up fragments and ash, moving through the garden, and I smile and I'm reaching out when she holds her hand out to take mine, pale fine fingers warm against the chill, like the porcelain on a coffee-cup, and I smile at her, pale and bright and shining.

"Hello Zann. Come inside and talk with me."

"Thank you," I say softly, getting back up light and easy to my feet, and keeping my hand in hers long as I can. Wonder what she's seeing of me, from me, remember her shouting singing arrowing bright into Svetlana's mouth and the thought of that brightens the grey morning and the dulled grass, the dust and dim ash inside. I've never been inside before, wondered what it was like. It's sad in the way some old things get, when people forget them or take them for granted.

"I'm sorry about your friend," she says, and I feel the corners of my mouth tremble down just a little.

Oh. "Genny? Me too," and really, there's nothing to say but that, really nothing except "Thank you," and I mean it. Realize then that I've been hearing that as much from outside the family as in, lately. Want to talk to her and want to ask her I don't know what and all I can think of is what it's like to see things so clear and bright, patterns turning and stretching into each other, and how she showed me one tiny part of it all, music and intent and light all caught up in a crystal, and I'm down on one knee in front of her again, moving light and graceful as I can.

"Lady Anushka Voronin," I say, and I'm smiling. "Thank you for seeing me again." Want to ask her about Kent and about seeing things and all of this, about how she sings through the shining music of the world and lets the notes sound out inside her, but I'm not--not quite sure how to set it out.

Swallow and dip my head, and look down at the dark dusting across the floor, our footprints and the hem of her coat traced through it, echoes of patterns that the moving air's already starting to erode, very very softly. It seems oddly fitting that Svetlana was the one to kiss her.

"May I ask--" I say, and I hear a tremble in my voice, and remember what she said once, about how I could say any name I liked if I was willing to take the consequences. "Kent--Iblis, whoever he was--were you afraid?"

[anushka-excolo.livejournal.com]

It is not a scent that is on her; nor is it a humming of power like the residues of those metals of before which sickened at those who held them and made fire bloom where they fell: more a quality of light falling across the objects in her thoughts. They are solid things panned around in her mind, models of things that were with the hard white light of his certainty falling on them. Of course I knew she had talked with him, but there are many things in the tower which I keep my thoughts from straying to. At first it seemed only polite. Now I have other reasons. "Thank you." Fingers tightening on her own. What's to be said? What can I say when once I was a priestess too?

Inside, the shadows shorten like breathing, and she is on her knees. "Lady Anushka Voronin. Thank you for seeing me again." Oh precious this is the moment of aching light spiralling up from us. How fragile and perfect she is, and I look down at her: a hollow thing filled with the brightness of soured wishes and flames fanning themselves. "May I ask--" she says, and her voice catches on the corners on all the corners and the air seems filled with broken glass-- The silence pans. Think of that square of filament and framed sky and her wonder settling rainbowed like oil on water over the garden. "Kent--Iblis, whoever he was--were you afraid?"

I let out the breath I was holding. All those held breaths between the ticks of the clocks. "Oh, precious," I say, and I take her face in my hands and I kneel to look into her eyes. "You think that you need him, but you don't."

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

"Oh, precious," she says, and then she's kneeling and looking into my face, eyes timeless as sky and oh everything that she must see and she's looking at me, and I lift her out of the dust and up and let her be shining like a star. "You think that you need him, but you don't."

"I could" and I don't know what else to say "oh, what I can do, what I could do." I remember the night all the lights went out on the midway and Tez and Gaueko were standing there like the stars and the night sky, and how much it hurt to bring the lights back after. I did it, but if I could do something like that again, if I could do it and not have it take so much out of me...

"I'm sorry for him," I say. "I'm sorry for him and I like him, and I'm scared of him and he's beautiful, he's like all the motion and weight behind a star, and I don't know if I'm ever leaving Excolo, and I wish I could do what he could let me do." I reach out and take careful hold of her, get to my feet with her, and please, Anushka, don't be down in the dust on my account.

"He said he made you greater than you were," I say, looking at her. "What you can see... I don't think even he could make me like that, I'm not... I'm not made that way, I just... oh, that crystal, just that crystal, it was like everything. I don't think I could ever see like you see. Did you need him?"

[anushka-excolo.livejournal.com]

"I could." And that is everything. I want to tell her the weight of that word could drag her down deeper than light could reach through gelid water. I want to tell her it could lift her higher than the wind. I want to show her we two dancing in the wide air above awed cities, and the gulf of laughter pierced only with sunlight, and the plain of mouths singing in praise for her and her white metal armour. I could show her these things. I could show parts of her so deep it would be real. And I want to, I want to, I want to dance with her like that, but I don't. "I'm sorry for him. I'm sorry for him and I like him, and I'm scared of him and he's beautiful, he's like all the motion and weight behind a star, and I don't know if I'm ever leaving Excolo, and I wish I could do what he could let me do."

And I'm sorry for her, and I'm scared of her and how feverish she burns, and she's beautiful, and like stars and like the paper white curve of a bird's egg and like pistons hammering silent and slick and I want her to leave, I want her to run. Run. I could make her. I could make her run and never look back. "He said he made you greater than you were," she says.

Is that how it was? And I smile, for it was certainly like that for him, if not then, then as he spoke the words. "He made me nothing," I say, and for all the sight I have burning in me and longing to push through her eyes and into her mind, I hold it back. Zann in her jeans in the dust is worthy of that respect. Zann with her skin still pinched with cold, and not him. "He helped me, yes, more than anyone could have, but what I became was something I reached for and grasped and got myself. No bargaining, no deals, no this for that." God, how long since words meant so much to me?

"No gifts. Let me show you," I say. I could laugh at me here asking. When have I asked before, and when have I needed to less? The high thin noise of the fence. There is metal that sickens. I did not realise the depth of the fault in me until I thought of Zann's fingers finding the white wires of that thing.

When she decides to nod, then, then I am in her head, and we are at the door to the nursery, and the noise of the fence is a sick low whine, and I show her just what it took to become greater than I was.

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

"He made me nothing," and it rings true, and I think of all that she sees and at the thought of that being within her always I can feel my heart leap. "He helped me, yes, more than anyone could have, but what I became was something I reached for and grasped and got myself. No bargaining, no deals, no this for that. No gifts. Let me show you," and I nod, and there's a quick

(the wires are crawling and the air between them is sliced into shapes that try to be other than they are the space is panelled as octagons interlock the triangles have seven sides)

hitch and flip of dizziness, and the room I see the room cleaner brighter younger and I think of Essa as a girl, Fiona giggling at somersaults and I am not e but I p into it and my hands are not cold and he's only a baby in the small bright place. Reach out to him and that's when it starts to go wrong, take his arm not his hand but his arm and no Anushka he's only a baby please no Anushka don't--

(and this was before and she has done it and she does not stop)
--and she is everywhere showing it all to me she is the world the blood is the world the blood is in the world and breaking open and the world the world is screaming and it goes past and out and up like touching the mirror Tez stood on the night sky and it pulls away from me and I'm falling apart into the space left, pieces flying out and out and out, seeing nothing--

"kah" I say and I'm on my knees but nowhere near the floor, in a high quick spin like that time working on the wheel when I grabbed for Jay and I caught him and it took me a second to realize that I caught him, that he wasn't falling down through the air sliced into diamond shapes by the struts of the wheel, that he wasn't breaking. That, like to this. That I am not there. That the blood is not there. That no-one is falling.

That it's over.

Try to speak again and there is a shape this time. "Konrad," is the shape in the air is the meaning is the world is what we make of it. "Voronin." Breathing, I am breathing now. He died. Before. He died before she killed she killed him she was sobbing and the world was screaming and all of it was her. To herself. To herself. She did this to... this makes what Genny's doing look gentle, scabs and chills and vacant sight. Cut herself open and no, no, Anushka, you didn't want to say you didn't have to but the star was born in blood how could you oh how you screamed and I hear over and over again I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, wet breath and wet face and Anushka, I'm sorry, I wish you hadn't hurt, and Lady, the pain, it's not an idea, and I try to hold her and I'm crying into her coat and I can't do anything. I'd fix it if I could, I'm sorry, I wish there'd been another way.

[anushka-excolo.livejournal.com]

"Konrad," she says, and we fall back from that room, come tumbling spinning flying back into ourselves until we are in the hallway washed clean with the grey morning sun, where once the lichened windows filtered only underwater light. I catch her. "Voronin."

Oh Zann with her tears and soft skin reddening and salt soaking into white fur. Her sobs catching on those two words which move ever distant. There's less cut to them now. They're blunted. Only those soft syllables and the sound of laughter receding. Only those two words, and how they became safe: the way songs are forgotten, each note each note losing the anchor of its word and drifting distant into silence. I hold her to me and rock her and my hand is cool against the soft spikes of her hair.

"I'm sorry," I say, but I am not sorry. I would push this sight into the heart of her to see over and over in the dark and in the pale safe morning if I thought it would keep her away. But once is enough, is it not? Let it be enough. "There are things we can become," I say, whispering it into her hair in the quiet house in its silent garden. "Ways we can make ourselves new, and they are wonderful. But they are wonderful in the way that ice and knives and distant stars are wonderful. They're bright because they're hollow. They're bright because they've lost their shadows and all the dark heavy things that kept them weighed into the place. No blood and no heart, and they mean nothing. They can reach up into that cold place and touch the stars and see-- Oh, see. But there's no feeling. There's nothing left to feel with. Like little china dolls." I think of those dolls which were once in the nursery, see one dipped into silver, and I smile.

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

Shhh, oh shhhh. And she's cradling me and rocking me gently, and it helps, the motion of it all, oh Anushka, Anushka, I'm sorry. Listening to her words, and the stars are hot and bright and have a weight behind them for themselves but I understand what she means, here and for me and with winter coming on they're cold. We care but they don't. I see.

"He used to love," I say quietly into her shoulder, and I smell her coat gone wet with tears, smells like rain and a well-groomed cat, and her hand's in my hair. "I know he doesn't now, but he used to. I'd help if I could. I just, I know but I don't understand, how he can see so much and not care." Pull back a little so I can look at her, and I feel her arms around me, light and delicate and I think stronger than anyone'd guess, and I put one hand up to very lightly touch the side of her face.

No blood and no heart, and they mean nothing.

"I'm glad you didn't go that far." It'd be too horrible if she had, and that pain (Konrad) was the last thing she felt. "I'm glad you're not hollow."

[anushka-excolo.livejournal.com]

"He used to love," she says, and I wonder if that is true. Love, yes, but not as we know it and can understand it. Love from a different angle to the world, perhaps. "I know he doesn't now, but he used to. I'd help if I could. I just, I know but I don't understand, how he can see so much and not care."

And I don't know what to say. Am I that like him, now, that she could mistake all I've shown her? Have I failed at this one goodness that much? "It's not for you to help," I say, and it comes out softer and harder than I had meant it. Her hand on my face is soft and rough and real. I do not tell her she is so young, that she will come to understand, and to see, in more ways than the ways she has now. "I'm glad you didn't go that far. I'm glad you're not hollow."

Child have you not been listening? Have you not looked when I showed? Where else does she think there is left for me to go? And god, god it aches at me to think she would believe me whole after those things; that she could want it for me enough. Maybe that cool smooth ache is what keeps my likeness in the shape of a woman.

"No," I say, shaking my head. "No, precious, you're mistaken. I went that far and further. Those things, those things are me, now. This is how it is to cut yourself open. You saw how it was. Anything he might give is as wonderful and terrible as that, even if the cutting is slower."

[tereixa-zann.livejournal.com]

"No. No, precious, you're mistaken. I went that far and further. Those things, those things are me, now." Cold and empty and nothing but edges, the dead light of stars moving senseless out unseen through the void, hollow, hollow...

"Then why're you warning me?" Oh, I'd feel like an idiot for not getting it if what she were saying didn't--didn't fly in the face of what she were doing, the music doesn't match, it barely even complements. "You let me come and talk with you, told me you were sorry for Genny..." I shake my head, and it's only confusion. "You're different, you're beautiful, I know I can hardly even have an idea of what you see, and what--what that was--I know you changed, but--you're holding me. You're not hollow."

[anushka-excolo.livejournal.com]

"Because I know what is important, now." It's a simple answer and it is one which will have to do. Oh Zann, I see how she is tugging against herself even now, and I want to make her see. Once I would have been as though something inside me, some surge of power inside me was yearning towards her, yearning to push itself inside her and make her see, but not now. Now it is well within my grasp, each piece of myself the same, and there are now struggling and separate elements. All one. All mind, perhaps. "You're different, you're beautiful, I know I can hardly even have an idea of what you see, and what--what that was--I know you changed, but--you're holding me. You're not hollow."

I look at her for a long time in the cold white light. I used to think of light stroking the things it touched, like a caress, or like soft powder settling gently onto everything, or like a coil of smoke stroking something on its way past and up.

I let go of her and the light hits us both cool and flat. I say, "Gods are never what you want them to be, Zann." I say, "I'm sorry." I could show her what I am, but it would be cruel, and there's no reason for it: she'll see, in time. And I could tell her not to let Genny follow the jaguar god any further, but I know how that will end, and so I say nothing. Knowledge is such a weight of silence sometimes.

"I had a garden once," I say, instead, and look out through the broken window at the half-singed tangle of it. "It will flower again. You can come here, any time you like, when I'm gone. Maybe that will help it along." And I walk away up the corridor, smiling at her, while I can.