The meeting of personalities is like that of chemical stubstances. With any reaction, both transform
[Friday, October 16, mid-morning]
[On top of the Carousel]
It's been two days. Sun went down in a sky still smutty from smoke and came up clean on the other side, went down in a chilly dusk and came up this morning and now it's inching 'round and up and over me like the world's slowest scoop, and it'll fall again and come up through clouds and sky and it'll swing around slow on its own golden span of light, and Lady Anushka Voronin will still be dead.
Wednesday it was almost okay, it was knowing but not seeing, a blueprint etched in mutters. I wanted to go out there and I didn't, because fire makes people edgy and when the townie houses start burning down you don't want to end up getting caught poking around the ruins. I'd have gone anyway except Essa said that if she couldn't find me on the damn lot she'd head out there herself. And I couldn't let her do that.
I cried when the sun went down. I mean, I wasn't bawling or anything, just slow stunned tears like I'd been slapped, like I'd managed to bring the hammer down on my hand, that fine sharp spike you get shooting up your arm to your heart before the rest of the sensation sets in, except this time it wouldn't end.
Genny came by to see me, that night. She brought cookies. It was awful and awkward and we didn't--god, we couldn't even talk right, all jitter and halt around each other, and then I really cried, and so did she. I got it under control enough to thank her, and when I went to bed it was easier, long soft ragged sobbing, and I fell asleep feeling better.
And then I woke up yesterday, and Anushka was still dead.
I guess she knew it was coming. I can imagine her standing there to meet it, all bright in silk and light, fine nobility and the steady grace. I remember the first time I saw her, bowing to her in the dust, and her hand in my hair. Remember how she laid out the shape of the town, the fine notes of the piano in the air, and how she let me hold her with the rain coming down all around us, stitching earth to sky.
I remember she kissed me, through the broken glass I brought together for her, and showed me the world unfolding in a piece of crystal. The whole world.
I know what she did. She showed me, in that glare that took apart the world, magnesium flare eating everything inside her to sparks and light. But she warned me. She cared.
You weren't a monster, Lady Voronin. You were never that.
And I can't tell her that, and all the words I could've said, all the things she could've showed me--oh, hell, not even that, all the things I might have been able to watch her as she saw! And she'd have known, I guess...
(And today I woke up before dawn, and the air was cool, and I fed Anti and Kythera and I went out to the Carousel, my baby, and I set her running in the clear morning air, and haul myself up to the top of her and feel her running along underneath me, sweet and bright.)
Anushka would have known, she would have, and that's beautiful, all the beauty and singing meaning that she saw so much better than any or all of us ever could, that great and shining motion that rolls on and on forever as we turn on its strings and weave meaning out of it all to make it into something real.
But oh god, oh God, it's selfish and it's helpless but even though she knew, I wish I could have had a chance to tell her.
[Closed]
[On top of the Carousel]
It's been two days. Sun went down in a sky still smutty from smoke and came up clean on the other side, went down in a chilly dusk and came up this morning and now it's inching 'round and up and over me like the world's slowest scoop, and it'll fall again and come up through clouds and sky and it'll swing around slow on its own golden span of light, and Lady Anushka Voronin will still be dead.
Wednesday it was almost okay, it was knowing but not seeing, a blueprint etched in mutters. I wanted to go out there and I didn't, because fire makes people edgy and when the townie houses start burning down you don't want to end up getting caught poking around the ruins. I'd have gone anyway except Essa said that if she couldn't find me on the damn lot she'd head out there herself. And I couldn't let her do that.
I cried when the sun went down. I mean, I wasn't bawling or anything, just slow stunned tears like I'd been slapped, like I'd managed to bring the hammer down on my hand, that fine sharp spike you get shooting up your arm to your heart before the rest of the sensation sets in, except this time it wouldn't end.
Genny came by to see me, that night. She brought cookies. It was awful and awkward and we didn't--god, we couldn't even talk right, all jitter and halt around each other, and then I really cried, and so did she. I got it under control enough to thank her, and when I went to bed it was easier, long soft ragged sobbing, and I fell asleep feeling better.
And then I woke up yesterday, and Anushka was still dead.
I guess she knew it was coming. I can imagine her standing there to meet it, all bright in silk and light, fine nobility and the steady grace. I remember the first time I saw her, bowing to her in the dust, and her hand in my hair. Remember how she laid out the shape of the town, the fine notes of the piano in the air, and how she let me hold her with the rain coming down all around us, stitching earth to sky.
I remember she kissed me, through the broken glass I brought together for her, and showed me the world unfolding in a piece of crystal. The whole world.
I know what she did. She showed me, in that glare that took apart the world, magnesium flare eating everything inside her to sparks and light. But she warned me. She cared.
You weren't a monster, Lady Voronin. You were never that.
And I can't tell her that, and all the words I could've said, all the things she could've showed me--oh, hell, not even that, all the things I might have been able to watch her as she saw! And she'd have known, I guess...
(And today I woke up before dawn, and the air was cool, and I fed Anti and Kythera and I went out to the Carousel, my baby, and I set her running in the clear morning air, and haul myself up to the top of her and feel her running along underneath me, sweet and bright.)
Anushka would have known, she would have, and that's beautiful, all the beauty and singing meaning that she saw so much better than any or all of us ever could, that great and shining motion that rolls on and on forever as we turn on its strings and weave meaning out of it all to make it into something real.
But oh god, oh God, it's selfish and it's helpless but even though she knew, I wish I could have had a chance to tell her.
[Closed]