Rains and Smiles

[diva_myron]

Date: Sunday, 18 February 2000
Time: Ten Thirty-Seven in the morn
Location: Myron's flat - Deirdre's flat - Da Grove
Characters Involved: Deirdre and Myron
Rating: PG-13 at most

Comments

[diva_myron]

"I didn't know myself," Myron replied, turning back to look at Deirdre, and smiling almost apologetically-- except that he was not very sorry the idea had hit him in his head. Not in the slightest. For an indefinite moment silence had established its reign over the guest room, as Myron took his time to take in the sight of his dearest (the most dearest!) friend, appreciating every centimetre of her being. Although geometry never really worked with things like that. To him it would not have made any difference if Deirdre was dressed in the most exquisite of suits or in a casual t-shirt/jeans combination. It would not have mattered if she had her hair braided, or shaved off completely-- or dyed green with yellow polka dots: she would have been the same to him. A quiet piano melody in a room full of dignified solitude, the sound reverberating off the walls, as silver shadows waltz in slow-motion back and forth in the ghostly moonlight on a Friday afternoon. (Afternoon? Yes, afternoon - on Pluto.)

"You make me mellow so," he said gently, mind resurfacing from the depths of his imagination, as he fixed his gaze on Deirdre's for a few moments. "What's the occasion? Must there be an occasion to come back home?" Myron continued with a smile that now was tinted with light playfulness, almost on the edge. But that was all they have been doing since they first met - dancing on the edge of a razor, bleeding rose essence, all while smiling and conversing so politely. ("This razor is rather sharp, wouldn't you say, Ms Burke?"; "Oh yes, quite, Mr Wagtail." And a close-up of a shiny crystal bead of tension, but not a muscle twitching!)

The silence after his remark was deafening, even if it had not been even a few seconds after the utterance, and Deirdre must not have even had enough time to respond-- when Myron took up the conversing reins again, and continued, sliding off the edge into the safe grounds. "I just love the way your house makes me feel, I think. Or, well-- something to that extent," he shruged, before finally noticing there was a mug in his hands, and sipping a bit of the hot liquid. Darjeeling, how perfect. There was a message at the bottom of the vessel, tea leaves arranged in such a way, as to say: Look into the stormy ocean of her eyes - can you survive it? At which Myron looked up at Deirdre, eyebrows shot upward in pleasant wonderment, as he found himself drowning - intoxicated, most likely. The ocean was full of wine, no? If not- what was causing such giddiness inside his stomach?

"But ah, behind all these lyrics- honest, I must say!- there was a purpose to my visit," Myron said, shifting in his seat to cross legs. "I come here to take you away from the desolation of winter," he said with a smile, extending his hand toward Deirdre. "Shall we elope?"

[deirdre_ivy]

Deirdre only just contained a sputter as she half-choked on her tea. Her mind had tricked her for a moment at his last words-a good thing she was not a Freudian, or she would have had cause to worry at how very quickly “elope” had made her jump to thoughts of running away with her a lover. She stretched out her hand to his, reflexively and without thinking, forgetting in her momentary blinking distraction that she might want to do anything but slip a few fingers into his palm.

She always felt peculiar when he looked at her. No, not when he looked at her “that way” or with “those eyes,” as so many tittering women seemed to gush at their most cliché. No, she felt as though her spine had turned electric when he merely looked at her. She’d often cursed her pale eyes, as they seemed worst equipped of any shade to disguise any incriminating feelings that might (inexplicably?) bubble to the surface if she met his gaze. Of course, she’d always managed well enough before, so the worry seemed almost strange. There’d been a time when she’d felt more than bold enough to match and advance, step for step, in their perfect (and perfectly strange) waltz.

During the Time Apart, however-she’d started to think. She’d thought this: wasn’t it true that whenever she allowed herself to become invested in anyone they (and secretly she) became gone? Wasn’t it so that she became a fractured statue with the innards all ashed and crumbled away? don't let me hurt you hurt me again and again. Wasn’t it better to eradicate dependence? And this too: it is as impossible to ignore the inevitability of a speeding train as it is to stop it. How do you stop it? Why must you?

But, she had decided-she must. And so, though she had forgotten to disagree with Myron’s assertion of ‘home,’ she did not kiss him, and she maintained the composure necessary to refrain from hoping he would push those long fingers through her hair.

To avoid falling in [to his eyes, of course], Deirdre focused on how her hand had fallen mysteriously in his. She was still darker than he, even now, and where her small fingertips touched his skin her heart fell up into her throat (all vertigo). When had she forgotten the difference between up and down sex and intimacy?

“Right,” she said as a clutching-point of clarity, blinking again. Her spare hand flickered up to fiddle with the collar of her night blue turtleneck, and her eyes met his again, all assurance and nonchalance. The sweater was too thin, and maybe emphasized a similar trait in its owner, but at least it was long sleeved and high-necked. She wore jeans as well.

"That sounds...wonderful." She smiled fleetingly, and squeezed his hand. "Perfect, even. My coat is by the door." They rose from the couch together and moved through the open, simple house. Deirdre's taste for elegance was tempered by her fear of the musty, overcrowded Pureblood homes of her youth and her meager finances; her home was spare, but comforting nonetheless.

Deidre pulled a charcoal pea coat from the rack by the door and put it on one sleeve at a time, detaching from Myron out of necessity.

"Where are we going?"

Mental note: no word association games with Myron. There was no telling what might come out.

[diva_myron]

Perfect- Myron thought, as her hand fell into his so effortlessly, so naturally. Perfect- he thought, when he almost drowned choking in her eyes. Perfect- Perfect- Perfect- he could chant, as they rose together and walked toward the door, step in step, like longtime dancing partners. Waltzes, even. With lilies. And rose petals, but that was irrelevant for the moment. On Pluto, nothing was ever relevant, but only the sound of their breathing, and that slip of time between one second and the next, when one can catch a glimpse of:

There was, once, a scene- a large bed of bird feathers. (The environmentalist inside Myron's head twitched in pain.) All covered in magenta blots of blood. Assorted colours of unearthly rainbows here and there, dotting the no-place. Myron could never understand it, but sometimes, when you catch that glimpse-- can ever a meaning out of a dream be extracted? And magenta blood, how ridiculous. (How about neon?)

Then came the question, and Myron smiled mysteriously, helping Deirdre with her coat. "I will sing to you of secrets and faerie tales," he said with a quirky grin, putting on his own retro-trendy coat. "As we ride on broomsticks beneath the spectral shadow of mistress Moon, that is," he finished, the door open.

It was still raining outside. Not quite as strongly as before, and not as gloomily. In fact- oh gasp! - if one peered patiently enough, one could catch a glimpse of (there was, once, a scene...) the faraway rays of sun making their way through thick layers of winter clouds. Spring was fast approaching in England. Or at least a ghost of it. Myron looked at Deirdre excitedly-- "How perfect, the rain soon shall be stopping!" he said, grinning and spreading his arms in an embrace of everything, really. Most of all, the beauty of the moment, of course-- for what else could a musician ask for? At that moment, such happiness filled his insides, it was frightening, even to Myron, the ever merry soul. How strange, how so very strange.

"But we must hasten," he said, landing back on earth from celestial heights. "We must hurry, lest we want to miss that moment when light meets dark and greets it, as they pass on their ways- and there are arabic lutes quietly ringing in the corners of circles," Myron blurted out, before smiling apologetically. "Although, I seem to be the greatest nuisance on our way of doing so. Let us hurry then!"

And off they were on the narrow pathway, retiring from Deirdre's house and into a more appropriate place for apparition. (Or maybe it was just Myron's ploy to get them wet.)

[deirdre_ivy]

It baffled her a bit, how Myron could relate such eiderdown bits of a whisper and such dancing twirls of fancy whilst simultaneously making so much sense.

It frightened her a little more that his eccentricity seemed anything but.

She quirked a brow at his poetic evasion, and smiled lopsidedly in his direction [an over-the-shoulder glance, really, as she was allowing him to stand behind her and slip on her jacket] as if to say 'Ah, a surprise, then. Well, have it your way--I'll follow, an aloof and disinterested veil fluttering over my surging curiosity, just so you'll never know].

The whisper of change took hold of the roots of her soul when they stepped outside, as it had been doing for the last week or so [and if you listen closely: Spring!]. She could feel phantom green shoots pushing through her feet as they picked along the gray cobbled pathway, and see the swelling buds on each of the small trees in front of her modest abode. The smell of wet grass permeated the spongy loam, and all the snow was gone away. All is bursting! she thought, unexpectedly and dramatically. Every drip of the crystal melt loosened the clogged veins of Nature, and every strip of faded bark hid a swath of gasping jade.

Deirdre followed the path of Myron's gaze to see the golden blush of the sky. She'd had a friend--shocking!--once, back in America, that would take her on walks through the forest. When the storybook rays of sunlight cut through the mist and the canopy above to illuminate some arbitrarily holy spot amidst the close warm darkness of the woodland floor, he would call it a "glory hole." She grinned to think of it, that sort of private mirth elicited by a moment and gone just as quickly, fleeting across her features as she was silently soaked.

"Okay, okay; we're hurrying." She wasn't used to hustling after someone else, but she didn't much mind in this instance. As long as he didn't leave her behind, she could slip after that slim phantom for ages.

"You'll have to take me side-along," she said, stating the obvious--she still had no idea as to where they were headed. She waited next to him: take hold of me, of my insides. But don't--

She put an arm around his waist, like one of those halfway hugs. "Lead the way."