estdeus_innobis | (no subject)

{Early Evening- Tuesday, 29th June ~ Day 394}
{Crossroads DanceHall}

Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time
I feel alive
And the world turning inside out, yeah
And floating around in ecstasy, so
Don't stop me now
Don't stop me
'Cuz I'm having a good time, having a good time

It is finally time to open the doors.
The lights are on- thanks to a couple folks from the fair who came out to help me with 'em. And the musics' done warming up now- sounds of instruments tuning and and the player's psyching each other up have given over to songs playing and feet stomping along.
A few brave souls have opened the dancing and there are mostly smiles all around.

So far so good.

A lot of the younger set know me by now from hiring them for the clean-up, and I put up some signs around town, so hopefully we'll have a good turn out.
And now that the greater part of the haying is done, people are in a good mood. People like to dance and come out and see each other when they're happy. Even in a strange town like this that holds true.

Smooth my skirt as I circle the floor towards the drink stand. I'll probably take a few turns of my own tonight, but mostly my job is to meet people who don't know me yet and get them to like me enough to come back. If the night continues like this, I do think it'll turn out fine.

The band starts another song, and I find my smile is genuine.

(The DanceHall is open to all! Come on in and have fun!)

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"...Marie died like that?" I shake my head; not to disagree, but - "I can't talk about that," I say. He says he misses Marie, and I swallow a little. To bring the dead to life / Is no great magic. But it's a terrible one.

"She was dead, and then she wasn't, but she was different," I say. "Like you, I suppose." Except she's gone now; that other Marie never was, even if I remember her and that other life with sometimes painful clarity. And he's still here. But he's not the Tez he once was either. I believe that. I just don't know what he is, or what risk he is.

"Should I stop myself loving him - her - then?"

"You can't just turn off feelings," I say. "But that doesn't mean you give in to them either. Even if you love someone, it isn't always a good reason to be with them. Look at Wanda," I add, because now I realise he knows - knew - who her husband was. "I don't know if I could love like this, if I had. Him, or - other people. You gave me that."

There is a little pain in my breast, hearing that.

"Then I am glad," I say softl, and I am.

"She can't give me that. Danika. A family, a - home. She will end everything, one day. That was my task, once. I don't know if it still is. I don't know many things, Valmont, though part of me's existed for - well. Since the beginning of worlds. I'm confused by so much. But she is so much to me. In everything she is."

"You sound different," I say. He does. Not like a lost boy any more. Perhaps this is what it's like for a god to grow up, and the thought makes me smile a little, but sadly. "I knew how to help Micah. Or I thought I knew some ways, at least." I don't think I can help Tez, or this Micah, or whoever he is, and it feels like a loss, somehow. "If you could choose how to be happy now, what would you want?" I don't know why it matters. I think I want to hope that he's not going to just hand himself over to something that exists for despair, and let himself be swallowed up. Even if that's what he wants, or deserves. I don't know.

He cares about me. It's important. I can hold onto that.

"If I could choose?" My mouth twists again, just a little bit. "I'd say to not-be, but that wasn't happiness. It was...." I look for, and find, a word that Micah wouldn't have used. "Cessation. For happiness - to go back. To that other world, when we wished." It's stupid, and - cowardly, I think he would say, and I feel colour flare high on my cheeks. Still a boy, then, in some ways. "It was...simple. Nothing's simple, now." And won't be again.

"Oh, my dear," I say, quite automatically. I feel very sad for him. I can't give him that world, and I certainly can't be with him now. But he looks horribly lonely, and very very young. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze, and only then do I think about the old Tez and wonder: could he be manipulating me? That old Tez was a good liar. But... I've watched a lot of men play poker, and I don't think he's playing me.

"Maybe," I say, "you can have something like that again. I'm sure there are people in town you could... care about. It might be more complicated than before, when you didn't remember all of who you are, but even so. You have the capacity to feel like that about - just a regular person," which is an awkward way to talk about myself, "so you have a choice, I think. I mean, aside from the tower."

His hand on my shoulder's warm. I press my lips together so they don't tremble. He called me my dear.

"I have before," I say, quite quiet. "They die, you know. And I don't." And there's Syl, but he doesn't like her, and I got everything wrong there not just once but twice. I'm scared of seeing her, I know.

I don't know what else to say, except: "I'm tired of being, and of things ending and me going on." I wonder how long I can stand it, all of it all over again. And Valmont was angry and now he's being kind, and I want to crawl into bed with him and curl up against him and have him hold me. Not even sex, or anything like it: just hold me. I'm so stupid.

Edited 2012-03-22 20:58 (UTC)

There's a horrible sadness in that going on.

"Still," I say, "you could have years and years with someone, couldn't you?" I wonder if his body ages, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to ask. "If I knew Hermia was going to die next year, I wouldn't want to stop loving her because of how it would hurt. I know it's not the same." But it's all I have. I feel a little helpless, really. If we weren't here in public I think I might hold him now, so perhaps it's best that we are: I don't know if it would really help him, not when his feelings for me are so confused anyway. You would think learning someone is an ancient god would stop you feeling protective, but oddly it doesn't seem to have done. I don't just think it's his body, that he looks so young. I think some of him is just a child, still, despite everything. A very miserable child, and that in an odd way reminds me of myself, once upon a time, and how very desperately I wanted to be loved. So I move my chair closer to his, and put my arm along the back of his chair, because it's something. Even if it can't be enough.

It's not the same. I look at him and I can see that he wants to help and knows he can't, and for the first time I feel older than him: not in flesh, not as the thing I also am, but as someone who's lived. He puts his arm on the back of my chair, and I lean back just a little bit, letting myself take comfort in his closeness. "It's alright," I tell him, though it's not, because he looks sad too, now. "It's alright, Valmont."

"It's alright, Valmont."

I look at him for a long moment when he says that.

"You are growing up," I say quietly, and I smile a little. Micah of a few weeks - days - ago wouldn't have said that, I don't think. Tried to comfort me with something that's not true. "I should talk to Hermia," I say at last. "I'm not throwing you out," I add. "I don't know if you can stay, and I need to discuss it with Hermia, but I'm not going to just turn you out onto the street. You'll come home with us tonight, won't you?"

"You are growing up." It's a ridiculous thing to say to me, given what we both are. More ridiculous that it doesn't annoy me. I still want him to think well of me.

Home. There's a moment - just a little one - where I don't know if I can speak. And then I nod, at that and what he says about Hermia. "Don't tell Alice yet," I say. Will he think that's because I want to - deceive her, manipulate her, do something bad? So I explain: "I know she has to know soon. But I want her to - I don't want her to see me differently. Not yet. Please?" He already does, and Hermia will. "Not tonight."

"Alright," I say. "But soon. She'll probably take it better than most people would," I say, and smile a little. "I wouldn't worry about losing her friendship on that score." Not when she thinks Gaueko is good company. And then I sigh, and stand. "Try to talk to some people? It does you good," I say, and "don't drink too much punch." And I smile a bit at the foolishness of telling a god what to do, but he's still the boy I had to show how to wash and who I started teaching to read. Thinking that, I go in search of my wife.