[CLOSED] Isley & Priscilla
Who: swordofthenorth and yetsleeping
When: Sunday, September 4th, Morning
Where: Isley’s home, East Anatole
Format: Paragraph
What: It’s an emergency! With paint...?
Warnings: A colorful mess is bound to ensue. I'd drop a Pocahontas "Colors of the Wind" pun here but I'm sure someone would smack me for it.
( . . . to paint away the warmth with winter. )
When: Sunday, September 4th, Morning
Where: Isley’s home, East Anatole
Format: Paragraph
What: It’s an emergency! With paint...?
Warnings: A colorful mess is bound to ensue. I'd drop a Pocahontas "Colors of the Wind" pun here but I'm sure someone would smack me for it.
( . . . to paint away the warmth with winter. )
“My dear, don’t look so betrayed. This matter is truly urgent.” He swung her about so that she could better see the paints from where they stood, not far from the open doors. “You must understand that I could not wait to see you, Priscilla, and that these paints, open as they are, must be put to immediate use or else they will dry.”
No air of apology surrounded him, not even a trace. And before she could think to protest, he reached one hand into her hair and brought her face toward his own for a kiss-the kind that would steal words from the tip of her tongue and leave her breathless, or so he hoped. Perhaps then she would be less inclined to kick, scream, and berate him for his playful deception.
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The pale whites and blues, they all reminded her of snow drifts. The colors of the North, and the colors of Isley himself, standing under moonlight, or even under the sun on those wintry days of mist and pale blue skies. And she would have done something else - asked a question, maybe, or kicked him in the shin (at least that would be consistent with her initial impulse) - but instead she stops talking, stops swinging her feet, stops breathing for a moment, lost inside that kiss.
Her reaction, unlike the rest of the encounter so far, was not unexpected. By the time their lips parted, she was nearly smiling.
"Mmm. Well." She wiggled her feet again, and turned her head slightly to glance at the paint, the brushes, the pale colors. "...you could have just said you were painting." And then, half a beat later. "Why are you painting?"
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A beat later, he settled Priscilla’s feet upon the floor again. Isley himself turned back to face the paints and the wall they would soon be applied to. It was a great blank canvas; certainly, it fell short of the vastness of the North, but with careful application, he and Priscilla could allude to such immensity.
Neither of them were artists, of course, but Isley would not allow that trifle detail to impede their progress.
Bending to pick up the brush that he had dropped, Isley answered, “I miss the North-its enormity and the snow most of all.” That was the truth of it. As for the rest, “I also thought that it would be something that you and I could enjoy doing together. Something outside the norm, that is.”
No sooner had those words left his lips that Isley was very far away. He remembered an icy wind that cut like knives across the skin; winter’s kiss some might call it. The sun that climbed the heights of the sky in vain was unforgotten as well, its warmth too distant to reach the snowy plains below, too weak to chase away the frost. The blighted cities scattered across the land stood as frozen landmarks, testaments of time and turmoil. In the forests, the fresh and sharp scent of the cold mixed with that of pine. There was nothing else like it, nothing quite so invigorating. He would trade no warmth, no flowers, no color in all the world (or Anatole) for it. Nothing was worth the freedom and opulence of the North-nothing except for Priscilla.
He looked back over his shoulder at her and smiled invitingly. “Take up a brush and paint what you remember. Don’t be afraid.”
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So now, as she up a paintbrush, held it... she wondered if it would always feel so alien in her hand.
But that wall called to her, and she twisted the brush handle between her fingers as she looked over it, envisioning that land she knew... better, even, than her own homeland.
"What I remember?"
She looked at him from the side of her eyes, gaze lingering on his profile for a long moment, conjuring up the wind, and the harsh bite of the ice in the air. Those things she had felt on his fingers the first time she met him, here. Even if she didn't know what it meant, at the time. And she remembered the first time they met at home, too (if that was her home. It's hard, sometimes, to keep track.) - the snow between her toes, and melting on her skin. And all the moonlight shimmering on drifts, and on his face - his true face. The one behind the human body he wears, most of the time.
"...most of all, I remember the mountains." She smiled. That would be white and grey. It would be stone and snow. And it would be blue - the color of the sky reflecting onto endless diamond white. Light blue? Or-- She blinked, and looked at him again, turning her head this time. "Do you think it should be night or day?"
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They did not require an artist’s talent to accomplish the mural. The paintbrush was to a painter what the sword was to a warrior; between the two of them, they possessed all the skills they required to see this endeavor through to completion, and a beautiful one at that.
Isley chose his palette and upon it collected various colors. “If, when you close your eyes, you see those wintry nights, Priscilla, then use your brush and paint the night. If, in your memory, the sun is shining, paint the sun. We are two very different people and our memories will be very different, too. There is no possible way for us to create an image of the North exactly as it was because, to each of us, it meant something unique. We each have our own distinct memories, that which made the frozen land precious to us. It is the joining of those things that I wish to see upon these walls; nothing more, and nothing less.”
He dabbed the tip of his brush into a pale blue. “The only thing I ask of you is this: for once, Priscilla, do not fear making a mistake. There are absolutely none that can be made here.”
Isley approached the wall and, with confidence and fearlessness, he pressed the bristles of his brush to its surface. His stroke was the first, altering forever the face of his new home, making it indeed…where his heart would lie.
“I remember the lights,” he said aloud, thinking conclusively, I remember how they blinked out one by one that night at Pieta. “How they shone in the sky like jewels after the sun had set, and how, when the sun was still yet risen, you could see far and wide from a lofty summit.”
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...first, she saw the snow. In her memory, it always swowed, every moment, and the drifts were always growing higher. And the moonlight (the moon... so it must be night) shimmered like silver across the icy surface of the snow, on the rooftops, on the evergreens. And in the sky... the purple streaked clouds wrapped around the glittering stars, casting shadows across the moon.
She remembered...
She collected colors, too - dark purple, dark blue. Black like velvet, and white like diamonds against that velvet. Black like shadows, too, and a lighter, but desaturated, blue.
She remembered looking south, sometimes. Wondering what lie beyond the mountains... if it would be the same place she left behind. How long it had been, since she left it behind.
"I think about... the mountains." She nodded a little, and dipped her brush in white, mixed it with blue - just a bit, to soften the glare. Carefully, she swept the brush across a small section of the wall, leaving a streak of white and blue behind. "Oh! And footsteps." Whose footsteps? She blinked, glanced down at the floor as though she could see the snow at her feet, even now. "The people of the village, and then sometimes yours.
"And mine, sometimes, when I wandered off."
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Using circular motions, sweeping strokes to blend the paint outward, to utilize the natural dark tones of the wall, Isley applied the pale blue to his canvas. It gave the appearance of shadows moving beneath fresh ice, water in the midst of freezing and yet still flowing.
The colors that he was choosing were lighter than Priscilla’s were. Although the nights were longer, clearer in his memory, Isley remembered the days more fondly, more frequently.
He could recall Priscilla’s body tangled in the bed sheets as she slept, Raki next to her with eyes wide as he awoke. The sun always shone through the windows brightly in the morning. It washed over the pair of them, and she would stir in the warmth, limbs wrapping about the nearest body. Often he would stand in the doorway and observe them. He would smile at them, and for several long moments, it appeared neither knew he was there. And that was how it was, how it had been...
Daytime also brought sword training with Raki. It brought memories of the boy’s skill, his passion, and most of all his will to persevere. In the daylight, Isley watched Raki grow into a young man. In the daylight, he watched Priscilla watch them, watch the mountains, watch everything.
When the sun began to set he remembered...the hunger. He recalled the long treks away from home when he could no longer bear the emptiness in his belly. He remembered Raki’s eyes upon his back, the boy watching him leave from the window. A heavy feeling, a tight feeling in his chest like a knot each time he left them behind-like something foreshadowing what was to come. He remembered footprints in the snow, too. He remembered blood beneath the light of the moon, staining his clothing, his skin.
He remembered meetings in private with Rigaldo to discuss massacring their enemies, and even their allies.
Then suddenly he realized he had stopped painting.
“I’m sorry. I did not mean to grow quiet.” More paint was collected, a pure shade of white like snow beneath the eye of the winter sun, gleaming like one thousand diamonds, even now, if only because the paint was still wet. “I was remembering. And considering. Things have changed so much.”
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Clear memories. So clear, she could scarcely believe they hadn't happened only days ago. She remembered it all so well- the chilly wetness on her bare feet, settling into the hollows of her collarbone, and melting on her skin. The wind in her eyes. She always left her cloak those nights - dropped it in the snow, and walked for seconds, or minutes, or hours till she found the right perch. It was a clifftop, some nights, or a rooftop, perhaps; she would watch the moon and the stars and the sun - the orange streaks of dawn and the red of dusk. And she would feel... things. And she would remember that scent - the scent that was Raki, that was Clare, that was--
She looked away from Isley again, and back to the wall, and the pictures forming there. Light and dark, night and day.
"You always say me that change is constant. I guess that's true, hm?" She can't remember when he said it - here, or at home. In the summer or the winter. In one of the houses they shared, or in the ruins, or the forests of home (one of her homes; she's had so many, and across two worlds). "...but I guess that doesn't mean we can't remember, right?"
Priscilla lifted her hand again, dipped the brush in blue, mixed it with a dusky red. Together, the two shades gave color to a sky dyed deep purple and red by the dying sun.
"...memories are sad, sometimes." She glanced at him sidelong, watched his hands moving and the set of his mouth, the expression on his face, and in his eyes. "...sometimes. Not always. I remember--" The sky turned to sunset under her hand, and she switched to another brush for shadows - footprints in the snow to lead her back to that cottage where they stayed, so no matter how far she roamed, she could always return to him - to them. To the swords mounted on the wall, and the warmth of the library. To the rooftop where she loved to pad on bare feet, carefully balanced, pretending it mattered if she fell.
"I liked to pay attention to things. Even when I couldn't see them.
"It must have seemed strange. But I could 'see' every light in the North. I felt every spark. Every awakened being. Every warrior. The strong and the weak. Where they were, and how they felt, and what they wanted. Their desperation, and their loneliness, and their love, and their hate, and fear. I felt it in their yoki, and in my bones, and I felt...
"I wish I could show you. That you could feel it, even only for a little bit." It was beautiful, she thought, and wonderful and terrifying. And it made her feel tiny and immense at the same time. "--I wish I could show me. I feel very blind, now. That's changed, too."
The edge of a footprint - the breaking of snow. She made the prints shallow, because she's always been light.
"...did I ever tell you why I followed him? I don't remember."
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“Change is constant; the cycle of life revolves around that truth just as all things do. Why, even in death there is change.” It was in Anatole that he had first spoken those words to her. Since then, Isley had spoken them many times over. Was it was because he believed he was speaking truth, or because he was trying to convince himself? He had never bothered to find out the answer to that question.
His gaze drifted back to his paints. Idly he dipped the tip of his brush into them, and then swept them over the surface of the wall. Snowy hills rose upward, shadowy valleys between them like pathways the sun could not reach. He chose grey and brown for stumps and tree trunks; white, cream, and black for birch. Barren branches like skeletal hands clawed upward, green pine needles and brown, whole beds of them, led aimless trails into a growing and dense forest.
The smile was fading again, replaced by something cold like the snow and lonely-like the loneliness she spoke of, but did she realize that he felt it, too? Even with her by his side, and even with Raki and Rigaldo, his was a plateau that was isolated.
He painted that, too. Into the side of a rising cliff, the peak of which the sun cast in blinding lights, glaring off icy caps, beautiful to look at, and yet so far out of reach, so dangerous to hold onto.
“I’m not certain I want to know,” he answered finally.
He had his suspicions. He was not fool enough to believe that Priscilla had ever seen in their trio the family that he had, that she had felt the same comfort by it that he did. Her head was always somewhere else, over the hills and far away. “You told me that you liked the way he smelled.”
That, evidently, had not been referring to his insides, because Raki had never found himself gutted by her butcher’s fingers.
A glance to her side showed Isley just how occupied her world truly was, just as she described it. Footprints, lights...and his held none of those things, even in the daylight when life stirred the most. She felt so much more than him, and so much less at the same time.
“All that mattered to me was that you did, and that was enough for me.” He said this staring at her. After a moment of pause, he took a step nearer.
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There was a more difficult subject. Complicated layers of intertwining thoughts - the reason she had been drawn to him initially, and the reason she had followed him. It wasn't affection that made her stay with him, though to say she lacked fondness for him entirely would be a little too extreme. But she remembered her heart then, which was colder then and felt very little even when it felt at all. It was not a heart that would lead her away from Isley, away from the South that was her home, and toward the rocky western lands.
It was not a heart that would often lead her anywhere at all, really.
...perhaps that was why he didn't want to know.
Priscilla looked down, briefly. Her she tightened her fingers around her brush for a moment, pondering how much to say... and then he stepped near, and saved her from the decision.
She smiled up at him - a soft smile, welcoming and warm. "I did." She nods once, a tiny gesture. "He smelled like..." old blood and unfulfilled vengeance. "...familiar things. It drew me in."
Not quite a fiction. But perhaps more comforting than the truth.
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Isley pondered for a brief moment what might have been familiar to Priscilla at that time; the south was one possibility of many.
"It drew you in," he repeated with a nod. Like a moth to the flame, or maybe more like a spider to a fly. No, not that, either. Raki was greater than a mere fly. Even if they had first met him when he had been small and seemingly insignificant, the boy had incontestable passion and potential. Isley had taken to him for those reasons, and because...something in Raki reminded Isley of himself.
"Well, I suppose he drew me in as well. I also saw...familiar things in him."
And he had wanted to shape those things, to make sure that not one went to waste. He helped Raki hone his skills, strengthen his mind and his body. Before long, he wasn't just a simple human in their midst. Raki had become, at least in Isley's mind, family. Or as much of one as he could ever hope to have.
"I'm happy that he drew you in, whatever the reasons." For all the weakness it instilled in him, Isley had never been happier. Strange how that was possible. "Do you ever miss him?"
Smiling, he brushed the colored bristles of his paintbrush over Priscilla's nose. The motion left a gray-blue smear in its wake across her pale skin.
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It was probably not terribly mysterious. Reminisces, looking back to the time they had spent together with that boy. For Isley, the memory would be molding, it would be family. It would be watching Raki grow and become all the warrior he could be without becoming a hybrid, too. Human, but nearly as strong as a low-ranked soldier. And as skilled as a top-ranked one. That, she knew, was Isley's doing - his mark on Raki's life.
His gift, too. Hadn't he done the same for her? She came to him as a novice and left as... well, true, she can't equal Teresa in skill, but the gap is much smaller, these days, than it had been.
Raki was no different, really. Like her, he had come to Isley in need of his knowledge, his experience. And like her, he'd been changed by it. For the better, she hoped. Now she hoped. Once, at home, it hadn't mattered so much.
...why hadn't she told Isley then, what Raki was to her? Had she even known? And what sort of creature follows a boy for seven years, lets him lead her back to herself... and then leaves him to die in a ruined town?
Priscilla stares down at her arm - the one she gave him, long ago. And she opens her mouth to answer, though she's not entirely clear on what the answer is - she had cared less for him when she knew him than she does in retrospect. A shift in nature can be so powerful. And yet--
--yet, there was paint on her nose.
Priscilla blinked once. Twice. And then she raised her fingers to the tip of her nose, all cool and apparently greyish blue... or so said the color that came away onto her fingertips.
"Maybe," she said, and reached up to swipe white-blue over his chin.
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