"Waters Black, Wood in Snow," Bellatrix, PG
One more post tonight, then I'll quit to spare your friends pages!!!
Title: waters black, wood in snow
Author: kethlenda
Characters/Pairing: Bellatrix
Summary: It will be a kiss that ends the waiting, and there are two kinds of kisses.
Rating: PG
Warning(s): gratuitous fairy-tale references like whoa
Originally Written: 12/05
Notes: Title is a Vienna Teng quote.
It was always her favorite fairy tale, snow and blood and ebony; not for her the princesses of pink and gold like dawn and spring and Cissy. The apple of everyone's eye, Cissy, born at the first warming of the year when her namesake flowers painted the black ground with cheery yellow.
No, snow and blood and ebony for Bella, and yet she was not prepared.
Forbidden fruit: as red as the purest blood, without spot or stain, and at its heart a secret black star, as though to say, yes, you were right, always this was meant for you. She always knew it was dangerous. She always knew the taste of its heady flesh might be her death. Death was always a possibility, but would it be so bad, riding the tide of her rushing blood until she crashed in one last moment of fire?
She was not prepared for this, this endless life that is not life, this suspended animation, the chains and the stone and the lapping tides, and the hooded creatures that draw near when she remembers what her life once was.
So she will not remember.
She banishes all passions, all causes and loves and pains; they will all be there when the time comes, but for now, she thinks of the wood beyond the Black manor, silent and still in the long nights of winter.
She lies, in her mind's eye, enclosed in glass, in ice, preserved, not alive yet not dead, while above her the birches' rimed limbs reach skyward like the white fingers of dead men, and the moon gazes in silver serenity upon the snow. Yes, and her sleep as deep as the snow.
That howl--it is only the chill wind soughing in the trees. That scream is only the cry of the screech-owl calling to its mate.
As though from a height, she sees herself, black hair twining, fanning out like ebon branches, and her hands folded bone-white upon her chest. Her lips, the only red left in this withered winterscape, a stain of blood on the snow.
Sleeping, now, crystalline, waiting, in her coffin of icy glass.
It will be a kiss that ends the waiting, and there are two kinds of kisses. The first, the only one she dares hope for, is the kiss of the hooded ones, the final embrace that will strip her of all, leave her a husk, winter forever.
The second is the kiss of the key as it tongues the rusty lock, the kiss that spells freedom. And then--muscle and bone remembering how to run and dance, and heart and mind remembering how to love and hate.
This way lies danger, and the gray ones again, so instead she thinks of her best years wasted in this nothingness. She tells herself that when she wakes she will no longer be the princess, but the wizened queen, hooded and masked and barren. The only fruit she will bear is that which is poisoned.
Title: waters black, wood in snow
Author: kethlenda
Characters/Pairing: Bellatrix
Summary: It will be a kiss that ends the waiting, and there are two kinds of kisses.
Rating: PG
Warning(s): gratuitous fairy-tale references like whoa
Originally Written: 12/05
Notes: Title is a Vienna Teng quote.
It was always her favorite fairy tale, snow and blood and ebony; not for her the princesses of pink and gold like dawn and spring and Cissy. The apple of everyone's eye, Cissy, born at the first warming of the year when her namesake flowers painted the black ground with cheery yellow.
No, snow and blood and ebony for Bella, and yet she was not prepared.
Forbidden fruit: as red as the purest blood, without spot or stain, and at its heart a secret black star, as though to say, yes, you were right, always this was meant for you. She always knew it was dangerous. She always knew the taste of its heady flesh might be her death. Death was always a possibility, but would it be so bad, riding the tide of her rushing blood until she crashed in one last moment of fire?
She was not prepared for this, this endless life that is not life, this suspended animation, the chains and the stone and the lapping tides, and the hooded creatures that draw near when she remembers what her life once was.
So she will not remember.
She banishes all passions, all causes and loves and pains; they will all be there when the time comes, but for now, she thinks of the wood beyond the Black manor, silent and still in the long nights of winter.
She lies, in her mind's eye, enclosed in glass, in ice, preserved, not alive yet not dead, while above her the birches' rimed limbs reach skyward like the white fingers of dead men, and the moon gazes in silver serenity upon the snow. Yes, and her sleep as deep as the snow.
That howl--it is only the chill wind soughing in the trees. That scream is only the cry of the screech-owl calling to its mate.
As though from a height, she sees herself, black hair twining, fanning out like ebon branches, and her hands folded bone-white upon her chest. Her lips, the only red left in this withered winterscape, a stain of blood on the snow.
Sleeping, now, crystalline, waiting, in her coffin of icy glass.
It will be a kiss that ends the waiting, and there are two kinds of kisses. The first, the only one she dares hope for, is the kiss of the hooded ones, the final embrace that will strip her of all, leave her a husk, winter forever.
The second is the kiss of the key as it tongues the rusty lock, the kiss that spells freedom. And then--muscle and bone remembering how to run and dance, and heart and mind remembering how to love and hate.
This way lies danger, and the gray ones again, so instead she thinks of her best years wasted in this nothingness. She tells herself that when she wakes she will no longer be the princess, but the wizened queen, hooded and masked and barren. The only fruit she will bear is that which is poisoned.