Original Fic - Water
Wrote this for a site I mod, but I want to post it here, to keep it, in case the site ever dies.
TITLE: Water
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 2526
BRIEF: A decision has to be made, how far will it carry her though
SUBMISSION DATE: August 2nd, 2010
Water
She lies on the bank of the river, the grass standing tall around her, waving in a breeze that provides a welcome chill in the baking summer sun, hidden from sight. A grey barked tree rustles on the other shore, and a quiet peacefulness prevails in a place that knows not a car. Her hand brushes the water at first, delving, delving into the cool water and allowing the liquid to flow through her finger tips, sun beating on her quietened form. She watches the water flow, dispassionately, detached, as she lays on her side, dark haired head laying on the arm that belongs to the hand in the river. It is all dispassionate, as though it is happening to someone else, not feeling the coldness of the water, yet feeling it all the while.
Her long slim frame is enshrouded in gossamer fabric with muted pastels, flowing like water, drifting down to her ankles, her hair fans out behind her, a book lays at her side, half eaten food long forgotten about, now feeds an army of ants, it is unwanted anyhow. Her mind drifts, she feels calmer than she has in days, she allows herself to think of anything and nothing, allowing herself to observe her life and her thoughts as dispassionately as she views her river soaked hand. From a distance it makes sense, under scrutiny, she feels unsure and hesitant about it all.
She has come to this place for this purpose, has sought out its calming effects, it's natural environment, and the soothing sound of water. She had a mission, but the heat and the food has beaten her in to a submission of malaise. She doesn't know what she was going to do about him,her husband, the person walking around, she feels sure, wasn't the person she married. The man who made her heart ache, the man who had built his world around her, the man who now spent his time in his late uncle's house, when he was, he was distant cold and distracted.
He has become so preoccupied, spoke in such riddles. Riddles she can barely grasp, let alone understand and that was when he deigned to speak to her at all, other than in short simple phrases or sentences, barked at her for maximum effect. He has become a stranger, and she doesn't know if she wants to know the man that has replaced the one she loves.
How does someone wake up one person and during the change so radically, that the person you have loved, and loves you in return, doesn't know the person who walked in the door. Twelve hours and the world you have created is turned on its head. How does that happen? Is she naïve, has she been missing the signs, a thousand similar thoughts swirl in her mind, much like the clouds above her, the sun is long gone and darkness has been descending in the form of a thunderstorm for some time.
She rises from her bed of earth, malaise lingering on in her soul. Her movements feel slow and languid, like the water flowing along the river she feels in some way, a part of. A decision hasn't been made, and she no longer knows that tomorrow brings her routine. Something has changed, and her falcon, can no longer hear his falconer. She feels the sting of pain it brings, the jealousy of knowing there is something competing for her lovers affections, and the feeling that is something with which she can not compete. It all lends weight to her movements, the world - it seems - has landed on her shoulders, and she doesn't know how to dislodge it.
Long tall flowing grass that brushes her thighs as she walks gives way to a more landscaped space. More people are around, the noise of children playing fills the air, as people talk and snatches of conversations break into her mind. The public space in turn gives way to Tarmac and paving slabs and her car glistens, new and shining in a parking space. As she puts her key into its slot, the rain that has been threatening to fall from dark, angry, ominous clouds, falls free and heavy. Her summer's dress begins to show signs of droplets, before she turns the key and slides home and dry into the car's interior.
Resting her head on the headrest she sighs, in the matter of seconds a choice is made that hours alongside a river has not brought. She will confront him, if it is another woman, she will try and cope. Try and solve the reasoning behind his infidelity. If it is something to do with work, they will try and break it all down. It is the way their relationship has always worked, and she sees no reason that should change alongside her husband's change.
She drives along roads that rapidly become rain slicked, a wind blows harder, moving the trees this way and that. As she drives some small part of her mind notices the people in summer clothes caught out at the weathers sudden change. Using briefcases, bags or even papers, they dash hither and tither, desperately searching for shelter form mother natures change of mind. And an even more distant part of her mind remarks that the weather has matched the change of expected behaviour, her husband has made. Its so distant in her mind though, that she doesn't even hear it, so distant that it will never even be recollected as a memory. It will never even become a part of her subconscious. A random thought, one that will be discarded.
She gets home, she dashes from her car to the door of her single storey home, opens the door, enters, throws her keys on the hallway table and turns around and looks out of the open door at the rain falling. The water flows faster than the river, its harder and harsher and she thrusts out her hand and arm out to the rain and feels the cold sting of heavy rain on her arms. She realises as she feels the water that it matches the cold sting in her heart, the sting of fear, that if, what holds her husband, is something she can not compete with, that she may be on the losing end. It's a fear and thought she doesn't want to admit to, after all denial is a far warmer, comfortable place than that of reality. She draws her arm back in, wipes it with futility on her dress and moves further into the home and to her kitchen.
She settles into the regular routine of her afternoon. Preparing dinner. She puts on music and as soon as she hears the notes of Für Elise, she turns it back off, her heart not in the music it strikes discordant with her languid mood. She sets about chopping vegetables, snapping her knife into the cucumber and the lettuce, sharp jerky movements, a counterpoint and rhythm to her inner workings. Soon their pieces she cuts goes into the makings of a salad, placing vegetables in various creative and appetising arrays of colours, and aesthetic work of art. She dashes the olive oil and balsamic vinegar mix she has made over the vegetables and deli meat and sets about placing the meals for herself and her husband on the table already laid out that morning after breakfast. She walks back into the kitchen and picks up a bottle of Chardonnay and sets about opening it.
She hears the door open, hears it slam shut again, keys join hers on the hallway table, his briefcase drops to the floor heavily, his umbrella into the stand, the coat is hung up on it, she can hear its weight as he takes it off. She can hear the squelch of his rain sodden shoes, hears each one drop to the floor, hears the socks, also sodden, drop to the floor and she wonders, absently, if he is ever going to buy new shoes; the ones he has are riddled with holes, she doesn't think about who will pick up the socks, that argument made and remade so many times over the years, and dismissed with behaviour that she knows it will be her to pick them up. She hears also his distracted footsteps, squelching down the hall and into the dinning room. She hears too the sound of cutlery and tableware clumsily and rudely shoved to one side, and the sound of something heavy being dropped into place on the table.
As she walks in she sees his dinner pushed to one side and an old, ugly looking book lying open in its place. The language looks old and a quizzical look passes over her face as she remembers how he has shrugged and looked embarrassed on their honeymoon as he has explained how he has never bothered learning a foreign language, even though he has taken her to Italy. It doesn't add up, but then nothing does these days, not where he is concerned.
“Ethan, are you going to eat your dinner?” Leanna goes to close the book. The look he gives her stays her hand over the book. The looks is angry, and it is also feral. She does not know what this stranger - in the place of her husband can do. The thought itself worries her, she always knew who she saw at her dinner table, but this person is not the one she used to be able to predict. That thought disquiets her.
“Do no touch it, it doesn't, nor will it ever, belong to you.” It's a low rumbling tumble of words from his mouth. Their meaning is obvious to her, she is shunted and no longer trusted. She now sees his preoccupation. She doesn't for a moment know how to break the preoccupation he has. If it were a woman, she can offer up some kind of compromise, but this, this is a little to abstract for her to comprehend.
She sets down at her own place setting and pours herself a wine, and begins to eat. It's a mechanical process, a process borne of necessity, bodily requirement and second nature. She stares at her husband, intently focused on his book with a lovers gaze. When he has been studying for his bar examinations he has not been so intent. She has been able to distract him then, been able to touch his books also. Her dinner plate empties, her glass of water has been drunk, the bottle of Chardonnay has been left on the counter-top she stands uneasily and begins to clear up. She looks at Ethan as she picks up her plate, but does not have a full grasp of the plate and it falls clattering back to the table, cracking in the process. It is enough to gain his attention.
“Can you be more noisy! I am trying to concentrate here.” He screams at her, and her eyes widen in shock at the tone he uses, this she realises is not the man she has woken up next to a month ago, it is just the man that has replaced him that night. The plate still holding his dinner comes flying over her head, smashing into the wall. “Stop distracting me!” He roars and as quick as it has happened he settles back down to the book and becomes absorbed and enraptured in his book once more. She stands shaking in disbelief and shock.
Time passes and she finds herself in their bedroom. She looks at his side of the bed, not comprehending how the man who has lain there for the past three years has changed so fast, wondering if those years has been a façade. She picks up a suitcase, heart hammering in her chest, mind a whir of worry. She moves to the dressers and gathers clothes up haphazardly, and begins throwing them into the suitcase. Grabbing this and that, she passes the time until she can fit nothing more. She looks around and anger envelopes her. She grabs her things, grabs her handbag, and walks through the house, making a list in her mind of what she would come back for, she gets to the door, grabs the keys she has thrown on the hall table, opens her front door, and walks through it, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows in their frame. She opens the back seat door to her car and throws in the suitcase.
Closing the door, she stands up and looked over her shoulder, the front door is open once again. Ethan's face is full of anger. He stands arms crossed leaning in the doorway, his mouth a tight slit, and his eyes in shasows made by the frown he wears. He is watching her and it makes her wonder what he is about to do. He raises one eyebrow and mouths at her a single word; “good,” and closes the door behind him, turning the hallway light off as he presumably goes back to his book. Her heart sinks, she knows in that moment that she has lost; but what really has she lost in that moment, she thought, that hasn't been lost to her a month previously.
Getting in the car, she turns the ignition and drives away from the house she has shared with him, away from her heartache and the loss enshrouded in the form of a man. Instead the pain and the hurt, the betrayal and grief became nebulous and harder to box in, harder to encapsulate into memory. She drives for an hour aimlessly, after that she drives with no concept of where to go. Her parents are out of town, her friends have children. There is no place she can go in her mind. She begins looking for a hotel after that and finds a half-decent not too seedy motel. She parks her car, drags her suitcase to the reception, checks in, drags her case again to the room she has purchased the use of and lets herself in.
She looks around at the room. She feels her heart sink. The faded décor looks as though it hasn't been updated since the 70's, the bedding looks recent and clean which is a relief, the television doesn't look like it would receive much of anything, and she is afraid to turn it on for fear it would burn the place down. She sets down the suitcase, stands at the foot of the bed and looks around at what she feels is now her life. Sinking down she finds herself sitting on the floor, that she hasn't even looked at, and probably doesn't want to think about, hugs her knees and begins to cry; what has her life become, and how has it come to this. All she can see when she closed her eyes is the book that seems to have replaced her in her husbands affections. That, she feels, she can never comprehend.
TITLE: Water
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 2526
BRIEF: A decision has to be made, how far will it carry her though
SUBMISSION DATE: August 2nd, 2010
Water
She lies on the bank of the river, the grass standing tall around her, waving in a breeze that provides a welcome chill in the baking summer sun, hidden from sight. A grey barked tree rustles on the other shore, and a quiet peacefulness prevails in a place that knows not a car. Her hand brushes the water at first, delving, delving into the cool water and allowing the liquid to flow through her finger tips, sun beating on her quietened form. She watches the water flow, dispassionately, detached, as she lays on her side, dark haired head laying on the arm that belongs to the hand in the river. It is all dispassionate, as though it is happening to someone else, not feeling the coldness of the water, yet feeling it all the while.
Her long slim frame is enshrouded in gossamer fabric with muted pastels, flowing like water, drifting down to her ankles, her hair fans out behind her, a book lays at her side, half eaten food long forgotten about, now feeds an army of ants, it is unwanted anyhow. Her mind drifts, she feels calmer than she has in days, she allows herself to think of anything and nothing, allowing herself to observe her life and her thoughts as dispassionately as she views her river soaked hand. From a distance it makes sense, under scrutiny, she feels unsure and hesitant about it all.
She has come to this place for this purpose, has sought out its calming effects, it's natural environment, and the soothing sound of water. She had a mission, but the heat and the food has beaten her in to a submission of malaise. She doesn't know what she was going to do about him,her husband, the person walking around, she feels sure, wasn't the person she married. The man who made her heart ache, the man who had built his world around her, the man who now spent his time in his late uncle's house, when he was, he was distant cold and distracted.
He has become so preoccupied, spoke in such riddles. Riddles she can barely grasp, let alone understand and that was when he deigned to speak to her at all, other than in short simple phrases or sentences, barked at her for maximum effect. He has become a stranger, and she doesn't know if she wants to know the man that has replaced the one she loves.
How does someone wake up one person and during the change so radically, that the person you have loved, and loves you in return, doesn't know the person who walked in the door. Twelve hours and the world you have created is turned on its head. How does that happen? Is she naïve, has she been missing the signs, a thousand similar thoughts swirl in her mind, much like the clouds above her, the sun is long gone and darkness has been descending in the form of a thunderstorm for some time.
She rises from her bed of earth, malaise lingering on in her soul. Her movements feel slow and languid, like the water flowing along the river she feels in some way, a part of. A decision hasn't been made, and she no longer knows that tomorrow brings her routine. Something has changed, and her falcon, can no longer hear his falconer. She feels the sting of pain it brings, the jealousy of knowing there is something competing for her lovers affections, and the feeling that is something with which she can not compete. It all lends weight to her movements, the world - it seems - has landed on her shoulders, and she doesn't know how to dislodge it.
Long tall flowing grass that brushes her thighs as she walks gives way to a more landscaped space. More people are around, the noise of children playing fills the air, as people talk and snatches of conversations break into her mind. The public space in turn gives way to Tarmac and paving slabs and her car glistens, new and shining in a parking space. As she puts her key into its slot, the rain that has been threatening to fall from dark, angry, ominous clouds, falls free and heavy. Her summer's dress begins to show signs of droplets, before she turns the key and slides home and dry into the car's interior.
Resting her head on the headrest she sighs, in the matter of seconds a choice is made that hours alongside a river has not brought. She will confront him, if it is another woman, she will try and cope. Try and solve the reasoning behind his infidelity. If it is something to do with work, they will try and break it all down. It is the way their relationship has always worked, and she sees no reason that should change alongside her husband's change.
She drives along roads that rapidly become rain slicked, a wind blows harder, moving the trees this way and that. As she drives some small part of her mind notices the people in summer clothes caught out at the weathers sudden change. Using briefcases, bags or even papers, they dash hither and tither, desperately searching for shelter form mother natures change of mind. And an even more distant part of her mind remarks that the weather has matched the change of expected behaviour, her husband has made. Its so distant in her mind though, that she doesn't even hear it, so distant that it will never even be recollected as a memory. It will never even become a part of her subconscious. A random thought, one that will be discarded.
She gets home, she dashes from her car to the door of her single storey home, opens the door, enters, throws her keys on the hallway table and turns around and looks out of the open door at the rain falling. The water flows faster than the river, its harder and harsher and she thrusts out her hand and arm out to the rain and feels the cold sting of heavy rain on her arms. She realises as she feels the water that it matches the cold sting in her heart, the sting of fear, that if, what holds her husband, is something she can not compete with, that she may be on the losing end. It's a fear and thought she doesn't want to admit to, after all denial is a far warmer, comfortable place than that of reality. She draws her arm back in, wipes it with futility on her dress and moves further into the home and to her kitchen.
She settles into the regular routine of her afternoon. Preparing dinner. She puts on music and as soon as she hears the notes of Für Elise, she turns it back off, her heart not in the music it strikes discordant with her languid mood. She sets about chopping vegetables, snapping her knife into the cucumber and the lettuce, sharp jerky movements, a counterpoint and rhythm to her inner workings. Soon their pieces she cuts goes into the makings of a salad, placing vegetables in various creative and appetising arrays of colours, and aesthetic work of art. She dashes the olive oil and balsamic vinegar mix she has made over the vegetables and deli meat and sets about placing the meals for herself and her husband on the table already laid out that morning after breakfast. She walks back into the kitchen and picks up a bottle of Chardonnay and sets about opening it.
She hears the door open, hears it slam shut again, keys join hers on the hallway table, his briefcase drops to the floor heavily, his umbrella into the stand, the coat is hung up on it, she can hear its weight as he takes it off. She can hear the squelch of his rain sodden shoes, hears each one drop to the floor, hears the socks, also sodden, drop to the floor and she wonders, absently, if he is ever going to buy new shoes; the ones he has are riddled with holes, she doesn't think about who will pick up the socks, that argument made and remade so many times over the years, and dismissed with behaviour that she knows it will be her to pick them up. She hears also his distracted footsteps, squelching down the hall and into the dinning room. She hears too the sound of cutlery and tableware clumsily and rudely shoved to one side, and the sound of something heavy being dropped into place on the table.
As she walks in she sees his dinner pushed to one side and an old, ugly looking book lying open in its place. The language looks old and a quizzical look passes over her face as she remembers how he has shrugged and looked embarrassed on their honeymoon as he has explained how he has never bothered learning a foreign language, even though he has taken her to Italy. It doesn't add up, but then nothing does these days, not where he is concerned.
“Ethan, are you going to eat your dinner?” Leanna goes to close the book. The look he gives her stays her hand over the book. The looks is angry, and it is also feral. She does not know what this stranger - in the place of her husband can do. The thought itself worries her, she always knew who she saw at her dinner table, but this person is not the one she used to be able to predict. That thought disquiets her.
“Do no touch it, it doesn't, nor will it ever, belong to you.” It's a low rumbling tumble of words from his mouth. Their meaning is obvious to her, she is shunted and no longer trusted. She now sees his preoccupation. She doesn't for a moment know how to break the preoccupation he has. If it were a woman, she can offer up some kind of compromise, but this, this is a little to abstract for her to comprehend.
She sets down at her own place setting and pours herself a wine, and begins to eat. It's a mechanical process, a process borne of necessity, bodily requirement and second nature. She stares at her husband, intently focused on his book with a lovers gaze. When he has been studying for his bar examinations he has not been so intent. She has been able to distract him then, been able to touch his books also. Her dinner plate empties, her glass of water has been drunk, the bottle of Chardonnay has been left on the counter-top she stands uneasily and begins to clear up. She looks at Ethan as she picks up her plate, but does not have a full grasp of the plate and it falls clattering back to the table, cracking in the process. It is enough to gain his attention.
“Can you be more noisy! I am trying to concentrate here.” He screams at her, and her eyes widen in shock at the tone he uses, this she realises is not the man she has woken up next to a month ago, it is just the man that has replaced him that night. The plate still holding his dinner comes flying over her head, smashing into the wall. “Stop distracting me!” He roars and as quick as it has happened he settles back down to the book and becomes absorbed and enraptured in his book once more. She stands shaking in disbelief and shock.
Time passes and she finds herself in their bedroom. She looks at his side of the bed, not comprehending how the man who has lain there for the past three years has changed so fast, wondering if those years has been a façade. She picks up a suitcase, heart hammering in her chest, mind a whir of worry. She moves to the dressers and gathers clothes up haphazardly, and begins throwing them into the suitcase. Grabbing this and that, she passes the time until she can fit nothing more. She looks around and anger envelopes her. She grabs her things, grabs her handbag, and walks through the house, making a list in her mind of what she would come back for, she gets to the door, grabs the keys she has thrown on the hall table, opens her front door, and walks through it, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows in their frame. She opens the back seat door to her car and throws in the suitcase.
Closing the door, she stands up and looked over her shoulder, the front door is open once again. Ethan's face is full of anger. He stands arms crossed leaning in the doorway, his mouth a tight slit, and his eyes in shasows made by the frown he wears. He is watching her and it makes her wonder what he is about to do. He raises one eyebrow and mouths at her a single word; “good,” and closes the door behind him, turning the hallway light off as he presumably goes back to his book. Her heart sinks, she knows in that moment that she has lost; but what really has she lost in that moment, she thought, that hasn't been lost to her a month previously.
Getting in the car, she turns the ignition and drives away from the house she has shared with him, away from her heartache and the loss enshrouded in the form of a man. Instead the pain and the hurt, the betrayal and grief became nebulous and harder to box in, harder to encapsulate into memory. She drives for an hour aimlessly, after that she drives with no concept of where to go. Her parents are out of town, her friends have children. There is no place she can go in her mind. She begins looking for a hotel after that and finds a half-decent not too seedy motel. She parks her car, drags her suitcase to the reception, checks in, drags her case again to the room she has purchased the use of and lets herself in.
She looks around at the room. She feels her heart sink. The faded décor looks as though it hasn't been updated since the 70's, the bedding looks recent and clean which is a relief, the television doesn't look like it would receive much of anything, and she is afraid to turn it on for fear it would burn the place down. She sets down the suitcase, stands at the foot of the bed and looks around at what she feels is now her life. Sinking down she finds herself sitting on the floor, that she hasn't even looked at, and probably doesn't want to think about, hugs her knees and begins to cry; what has her life become, and how has it come to this. All she can see when she closed her eyes is the book that seems to have replaced her in her husbands affections. That, she feels, she can never comprehend.