Comments | estdeus_innobis: I will only complicate you. Trust in me and fall as well.

lilith_qliphah in estdeus_innobis

I will only complicate you. Trust in me and fall as well.

Jan 10, 2009 00:40

Tuesday, September 1st
Day 93
EveningI do not bother to draw my form back together after I leave the Grindhouse, instead I remain as desert air drifting over the carnival, simply enjoying not being contained in human form for awhile. I did not look for Zann immediately after I left but I know perhaps only a day has past between then and now and ( Read more... )

iblis, lilith, zann

Comments 49

tereixa_zann January 10 2009, 18:26:44 UTC

Weeknights have gotten really quiet lately, and this Tuesday's no different. So I feed Anti and Kythera, and leave them a handful of walnuts and a coupling that I found in Cain's junkyard, and grab my jacket and head out, north and west and north again, always north. Maybe something wants us here or maybe we're meant to be here and the whole thing about wanting and meaning is, it's done by something with a--a mind. Kind of. An awareness, a singing song, a thing that can see a pattern and want something different, want it to change or come to its end or something.

Feel like I'm waltzing with someone and I'm only hearing a third of the notes, and I can't see their face; feel like I'm trying to fix the gears on a new machine blindfolded, and what I can touch I can handle but I don't know if something's going to come down and crush me. Someone fucking tell me something, okay ( ... )

lilith_qliphah January 10 2009, 20:20:51 UTC

"what the fuck?! What the fuck are you doing here?" Zann hisses, clutching her chest as if to steady her galloping heart.

My eyes widen with surprise at her reaction, "Zann I told you I was supposed to see Kent this week. I couldn't find you so I was going to his house by myself when I saw you walking. The way you looked.." I pause, brows drawing together, "Worried me," I say slowly. "I wasn't even going to bother you, but when you didn't stop anywhere in town and then came here...Zann why are you here?" I say quietly, shivering and rubbing my arms as I look around.

"Are you okay?" I ask gently, looking around us again appearing a little more worried.

tereixa_zann January 10 2009, 22:14:58 UTC

"Yeah. Yeah, just got a hit of adrenaline, don't mind me." Jesus she threw me for a loop. Grin a little and manage a smile. "Here same's you, I guess. Came to see Kent. Just... yeah." I shrug and force myself to breathe deep and slow.

"So you've been... what, following me since town?"

lilith_qliphah January 10 2009, 22:51:03 UTC

"Sure, Zann," I nod half smiling, "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you." She seems to be calming down a little, taking deep breaths and slowing her heart.

My head snaps around to look at her, "You're here to see Kent? At a water tower?" I ask slowly, arching a brow, "Ohh right the devil lives here," I say smiling and shaking my head, "Well I guess he's not here then. Now If you were looking for Kent, I know he has a place in town, which is where I was going.." I say gesturing back towards town.

al_shairan January 11 2009, 01:02:20 UTC

The tower is dark and light, nightfall and moonlight, and I move as air between the moonbeams and the shadows.

I hear someone approaching, the thrum of her heart an engine in the quiet night.

Zann.

I would smile if I were wearing a body. And I can sense something else, the dry heat of the desert with the familiarity of my own pulse. Lilith has come, too. Well, this should be interesting.

I look down from the window and see them, small at the foot of the tower, and I take myself as a light breeze some few hundred feet from where they stand. And there I turn wind into flesh, as I become Kent once more.

I walk across the grass, letting my feet make noise as I go.

"Be not ashamed, women-your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest;
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul."

I speak clearly across the little space now between us, and the moonlight falls on my face as I move. We are all of us chiaroscuro tonight.

"Zann and Lily. Hello."

tereixa_zann January 11 2009, 01:40:57 UTC

"Ohh right the devil lives here," she says, shaking her head, and yeah, okay, some of it's from the heartspike stab of adrenaline left over, but I swear I am this close to snapping at her over that. "Well I guess he's not here then. Now If you were looking for Kent, I know he has a place in town, which is where I was going.."

I'm torn between saying one of two things--either Nah, you go on back, I'll meet you at his place in a bit, or else You followed me all the way out here in the dark, when you weren't coming here? And on the edge of that, unspoken, is the thought and I didn't hear you or see you even once? Even as edgy as I am?

And then I hear footsteps rising slowly closer and I look towards them and I see him. And I stop wondering. Didn't even know I'd been wondering until then, but I'd forgotten how meant he was. And maybe Lilith knows and maybe Lily doesn't, but that's... not the point, right now.

"Be not ashamed, women-your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest ( ... )

lilith_qliphah January 11 2009, 02:10:06 UTC

Zann doesn't have time to reply to my questions before I feel Iblis approach, but its not until he speaks that I appear to take notice. My spine stiffens and I let confusion fill my eyes as I turn slowly towards him. "What in the world is he playing at now?" I murmur, only loud enough for Zann to hear, though I'm sure Iblis did too. Then her body relaxes and she's smiling and quoting another line from the poem he recited. Ohh she really does like him doesn't she. I wonder how hard the witch will be laughing when she hears of this.

With an inward sigh I step forward and place a single kiss on his cheek, lips drawing into a smile against his skin for a only moment before I move away, "Hello, Kent, what are you doing out here?" I ask quietly, stepping back beside Zann. "I brought you something," she says to him and I keep my face a mask of confusion as I look from one to the other even though I want to laugh and say, Yess, I've brought you something too.

al_shairan January 11 2009, 17:43:48 UTC

Zann's heart stop-starts like a shuttle on a loom, but then the beat of the poem steadies her into a smoother pulse.

"The male is not less the soul, nor more-he too is in his place;
He too is all qualities-he is action and power;
The flush of the known universe is in him;
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well..."

"That sounds like me," I say, smiling. "Although I would not particularly describe myself as male. But you know that, do you not, Zann?"

"I brought you something," she continues, and I tilt my head and observe her.

"A gift? What is the occasion?" The corner of my mouth turns up, and then Lilith comes up to me and kisses my cheek, light as a whisper.

"Hello, Kent, what are you doing out here?"

Ah, still playing the innocent. Is Zann, then, the teacher? That is rather delightful, Lilith letting Zann lead.

"Hello, Lily. I live here now... More or less." I smile in the moonlight. "Would you like to come inside?"

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tereixa_zann January 17 2009, 07:30:09 UTC

Svetlana pours tea out for me, and I take the cup and warm my hands on it, and listen to her. "That is a fair question. Genny gives Tez power, and I like him being powerful. I could give him power, of course, but... It is better when he remembers his own strength." I can feel my mouth thin, and I take a sip of the tea.

Her association with him troubles you, does it not? But it keeps her safer than almost anything else."

"He wants to eat her alive," I say quietly, and I can't tell if I'm bitter or sad, I really really can't. Don't say the other thing I'm thinking, the other half of that: and Syl will feed her to him. Remember a tarot card I saw once, not from the twins' deck but down in Gibson, Strength as a woman holding a lion's mouth shut and the reader said the lion was hungry so she'd fed him her baby. Had nightmares about that. She'll mean the best for us, Syl always does, but when it comes to Tez... "I'm not sure if he forgets that or if he's lying about it when he comes down, but he does."

"And I do not dislike art. ( ... )

al_shairan January 17 2009, 10:21:37 UTC

"He wants to eat her alive. I'm not sure if he forgets that or if he's lying about it when he comes down, but he does.""He is a god," I say simply. "Really, humans have themselves to blame for gods' excesses, if they can be called that, since they created them." I smile. "Quite a feat, to create something greater than yourselves. Like poetry." I taste the tea and hold the smoky warmth in my mouth. Bodily sense is such a peculiar thing. "He wants to do to Genny what I did to Anushka, I think. It is likely not to work as well, because Tez is not me, and Genny is not Anuska, but every day he is with her he opens her here -" I set down my cup and put two finger tips against Zann's forehead- "and here," I continue, putting my other hand above her heart. "She is extraordinarily lucky, to be able to see what he has given her the strength to see." I think of Genny and smile. "I had a thought, once, of leading the transformation myself... But Tezcatlipoca has found her heart instead. Perhaps you can be grateful for that small ( ... )

tereixa_zann January 17 2009, 18:23:50 UTC

"He wants to do to Genny what I did to Anushka, I think," and that doesn't worry me, or it wouldn't have before I started wondering what she did to Anushka. "It is likely not to work as well, because Tez is not me, and Genny is not Anuska, but every day he is with her he opens her here - and here -" and she touches me, hand and heart, and I sit quiet under her hands. Think of Anushka again, bright and shining and moving through the strings of the stars, and when Svetlana speaks again for a second I'm not sure if she's talking about Anushka and another body (Kent or that blond prettyboy I saw Tez with at the Marks party or someone else), or about Tez and Genny. "She is extraordinarily lucky, to be able to see what he has given her the strength to see."

"She is," I say quietly. "I know that."

"I had a thought, once, of leading the transformation myself... But Tezcatlipoca has found her heart instead. Perhaps you can be grateful for that small mercy." ...dammit, I've read about what he does with hearts. And it scares me that maybe ( ... )

al_shairan January 18 2009, 01:58:17 UTC

I feel the tension in her, all that fine noble sentiment wound up defensively.

"Humankind is so very good at defending itself," I observe. "Almost as good as it is at destroying itself. Really, I barely needed to lift a finger during the Apocalypse." I smile a little at that. Watching humanity tear itself apart - well, it was like Zann's little music box in macrocosm.

"Do you think that the reaching's love?"

Of course it is love. What do you think you were made for? Love like poison; love like the end of days. But I just smile placidly and say nothing to that, for I do not have to reply to every question, and Zann has asked many. Her curiosity is like a flame. I wonder what a tightrope she would walk with that flame behind her.

"And we make poetry. And gods. Did we make you? Or--Him, did we make Him?"She is looking upward, and I laugh. The very idea of owing my being to her, to them ( ... )

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