LJ Idol - Week 24 - Intersection - "I’m the Usain Bolt of Running from My Problems"
Humans were still idiots. As a race, they always had been. Crystalyne Regina hated that she’d had the bad luck to be born one of them. The fae had much more healthy and realistic perspectives, and on the whole were a lot more interesting. There was so very much in the universe that her fellow humans were always overlooking in favor of their own needlessly narrow versions of reality.
Crystalyne studied her face in the rear view mirror of the custom built sprinter van that she had hoped to share with Kai for the last few nights, right up until yesterday. Her peach and ivory hued skin was still dewey and completely flawless, except for the tracks of her recent tears.
Her thick platinum hair with it’s pale blue streaks was still artfully messy, arranged in a bun and half hidden under a blue hand-knitted wool beanie that warded her against the mountains’ morning chill. The jeans and worn merino turtleneck that hugged her lithe body provided dark contrast to the light airy interior of her home on wheels with it’s window-shutters open to the crisp morning light. She still looked great, at least. And she couldn’t help but start to smile a little at the jagged white-topped peaks she could see out the window. Goddess but she loved these mountains.
The pictures she’d set up this morning would form the backbone of a gorgeous instagram story about summertime #vanlife options on the Argentine side of Patagonia on her Sn0wQween account.
Ad revenue and sponsorships related to her Instagrams were funny things. They would never come close to bankrolling her lifestyle, but social media was a fascinating sandbox to play in. It opened up opportunities for her that she otherwise wouldn’t have known about. Social media wasn’t unlike magic in that respect.
Social media was also a lot more fun than her career had been. What young people like Kai didn’t understand was that a person had to provide for themselves first. Sure, Crys had been granted a bit of a head start on securing her own future with the Regina family fortune in hand. But her parents hadn’t really been interested in increasing their riches the way she was.
Crys hadn’t allowed herself the freedom to seek followers and friends until after she secured an empire of her own. Sure, people had called her cold in her hard-charging youth. She hadn’t even discovered her passions for mountains and road travel and snowboarding until after she sold her third tech startup, despite her early proximity to the Sierra. And in the old startup days she had scoffed at people who wasted time and became entangled on social media, especially as crude as it had been back then. Now that she was in her mid-forties and one of the richest women in the Americas, though, she had time to look down and see what other people were doing. And other people were all over social media in all of their spare moments, it seemed. So many of them were so disconsolate spending their energy there.
Kai was certainly a fool to go back to his little artist life with his artist friends. They were begging to be noticed by any media, trying to get their starts without any empires behind them. It was backward. That life even seemed more transient than usual to Crys, with the world in an uproar the way it was now. Everyone was looking forward to the turning of 2020 into 2021 with hope in their hearts. But the city Kai had gone back to was bound to remain a pandemic playground even after the way it had suffered in the first wave of the disease that it weathered in spring.
Crys gave herself a little shake. She had shown that foolish man magic; real magic. The kind that had required years of very well-funded research for her to harness. But apparently authenticity with a dear friend who wasn’t even physically attracted to him was more his speed than Crys’s precision passion had been. She shivered a little even now, thinking of their passions, when she’d first discovered him. Kai had been seeking a soul that understood beauty almost as much as she was. But experiencing the beauty of the world was not going to be enough for him. He wanted to capture it in art, too, where Crys was happy just to experience it.
It was her own fault, she supposed, for getting caught up in scrying, seeking first a soul who could appreciate the beauty that she saw all around her and then somehow shifting into a search for a lost and longing soul to compliment her own. Lost and longing? Longing maybe, but why had she thought of herself as lost? Crys met her own gaze in the mirror and shook her head, feeling herself slip back into melancholy as she replayed the last few days again. That guy had really gotten to her.
From her perspective, it started when Crys came upon a perfect alpine lake last week, with one edge still frozen, even as close to midsummer as it was here, and when she realized that the moon was full that night, she thought of the lake as she had first seen it with the sunset reflected on it’s glassy, icy surface and knew that the lake would be perfect site for an esbat scrying. The ley lines were strong beneath these wild mountains, and her midsummer longing, even though she’d already experienced midsummer this year in the northern hemisphere, was particularly intense.
She conjured red roses to use in her spell, since the mountain meadow flowers were such a riot of color around the lake and she always loved red roses the best. They would help link her back to Patagonia if she traveled the ley lines. As she swirled the petals along with those of the mountain flowers into the icy water around her legs, she had a strong premonition that she was going to find exactly what she most needed, but also that it was going to come with a price.
What Crystalyne had shown Kai after she found him had been authentic. But sometimes the real face of the world, even without arcane underpinnings was just too much for people. She had tried to show him the cold beauty of her beloved Patagonian mountains and the precise beauty of the magic of the ley lines that she had used to bring him almost halfway across the world. But as much as he wanted to believe in magic, he wasn’t ready to believe that it could be used to actually travel between continents. Because of his disbelief, she couldn’t fully bring him into her scrupulously clean van. She had to keep him frozen in a bubble of winter from his northern hemisphere- a simple enough task this high in the mountains.
He was so young. When she first felt the depth of his longing and followed it to the dingy apartment from which he stared up at the muted stars from his small open window, she’d expected a man or woman of twice his age. But she had to admit that his undertones of hunger for physical love were part of what made it so easy for her to follow the energy of the cold lake water into his space. The temperature there was even colder than the night air had been in Patagonia. The steam she brought with her as she met his hunger coalesced into banks of snow, covered in ephemeral flower petals. As he’d passed his hand through insubstantial columbine and into the very real snow that had formed beneath it, he asked her, “Are you the muse I’m dreaming of, or a substantial seductress?”
Crys had conjured one of her roses for him, and answered only “yes” as she kissed him while simultaneously bringing the force of her will to bear on his young open mind. She also did something else, something that she’d recently found made her connections with those that she scryed upon deeper. She let down the barriers to her own mind to him, so that he could tell and feel what she was thinking.
With only two kisses, he was ready to follow her back to the moonlit lakeside in the mountains she had come from. They half merged in the ether as she snapped them back to her body floating in the cold lake. She could tell already that their life experiences had some jagged differences, but their lakeside lovemaking was still frantic and sweet until he let himself start to slow down enough that logic and doubt crept into his thoughts.
That was when she’d had to construct an ice palace around him, pulling magic up out of the lake and cold air down from the mountains to spin a sort of stasis around him until she could explain to him how everything worked, and why it made sense for him to start a new life with her. But that task had proven beyond her. Even though Kai had been sad in his old life, he wanted to find his own happiness. As if there were such a thing.
Crys realized that she was crying again, and she was glad she’d finished the photo shoot. Even her magic enhanced skin would start to redden soon if she kept this up. The crying felt cathartic in a strangely good way, though. Almost as if it had loosened something behind her eyes that had been bothering her. Maybe she’d needed to lose something to remind her what was important.
Maybe she should think again about what she wanted to do in her comfortable “retirement.” Maybe connection with others wasn’t something to be avoided anymore. Kai’s youth had reminded her how it really felt to commit to something like a friend. Maybe there were causes she should be considering outside her her current existence. Or maybe she should go into the climbers’ camp just a bit farther up the valley from where she had her van, and see if anyone wanted to boulder nearby. She wasn’t confident with alpine climbing, but she did have a crash pad and pretty good acclimatization to the altitude. And maybe what she needed more than anything was to spend some time with people with other ideas about how to find happiness, that were different from her own.
___________________________________
This week’s entry is an intersection with awesomely patient and talented me-sonrei. Click on her username and scroll down to her related Week 24 entry to check it out. She and her partner last week did a beautiful fairy tale retelling with the topics we were given, so we decided to try for paired Snow Queen inspired pieces this week.
I hope you enjoy them both!
Crystalyne studied her face in the rear view mirror of the custom built sprinter van that she had hoped to share with Kai for the last few nights, right up until yesterday. Her peach and ivory hued skin was still dewey and completely flawless, except for the tracks of her recent tears.
Her thick platinum hair with it’s pale blue streaks was still artfully messy, arranged in a bun and half hidden under a blue hand-knitted wool beanie that warded her against the mountains’ morning chill. The jeans and worn merino turtleneck that hugged her lithe body provided dark contrast to the light airy interior of her home on wheels with it’s window-shutters open to the crisp morning light. She still looked great, at least. And she couldn’t help but start to smile a little at the jagged white-topped peaks she could see out the window. Goddess but she loved these mountains.
The pictures she’d set up this morning would form the backbone of a gorgeous instagram story about summertime #vanlife options on the Argentine side of Patagonia on her Sn0wQween account.
Ad revenue and sponsorships related to her Instagrams were funny things. They would never come close to bankrolling her lifestyle, but social media was a fascinating sandbox to play in. It opened up opportunities for her that she otherwise wouldn’t have known about. Social media wasn’t unlike magic in that respect.
Social media was also a lot more fun than her career had been. What young people like Kai didn’t understand was that a person had to provide for themselves first. Sure, Crys had been granted a bit of a head start on securing her own future with the Regina family fortune in hand. But her parents hadn’t really been interested in increasing their riches the way she was.
Crys hadn’t allowed herself the freedom to seek followers and friends until after she secured an empire of her own. Sure, people had called her cold in her hard-charging youth. She hadn’t even discovered her passions for mountains and road travel and snowboarding until after she sold her third tech startup, despite her early proximity to the Sierra. And in the old startup days she had scoffed at people who wasted time and became entangled on social media, especially as crude as it had been back then. Now that she was in her mid-forties and one of the richest women in the Americas, though, she had time to look down and see what other people were doing. And other people were all over social media in all of their spare moments, it seemed. So many of them were so disconsolate spending their energy there.
Kai was certainly a fool to go back to his little artist life with his artist friends. They were begging to be noticed by any media, trying to get their starts without any empires behind them. It was backward. That life even seemed more transient than usual to Crys, with the world in an uproar the way it was now. Everyone was looking forward to the turning of 2020 into 2021 with hope in their hearts. But the city Kai had gone back to was bound to remain a pandemic playground even after the way it had suffered in the first wave of the disease that it weathered in spring.
Crys gave herself a little shake. She had shown that foolish man magic; real magic. The kind that had required years of very well-funded research for her to harness. But apparently authenticity with a dear friend who wasn’t even physically attracted to him was more his speed than Crys’s precision passion had been. She shivered a little even now, thinking of their passions, when she’d first discovered him. Kai had been seeking a soul that understood beauty almost as much as she was. But experiencing the beauty of the world was not going to be enough for him. He wanted to capture it in art, too, where Crys was happy just to experience it.
It was her own fault, she supposed, for getting caught up in scrying, seeking first a soul who could appreciate the beauty that she saw all around her and then somehow shifting into a search for a lost and longing soul to compliment her own. Lost and longing? Longing maybe, but why had she thought of herself as lost? Crys met her own gaze in the mirror and shook her head, feeling herself slip back into melancholy as she replayed the last few days again. That guy had really gotten to her.
From her perspective, it started when Crys came upon a perfect alpine lake last week, with one edge still frozen, even as close to midsummer as it was here, and when she realized that the moon was full that night, she thought of the lake as she had first seen it with the sunset reflected on it’s glassy, icy surface and knew that the lake would be perfect site for an esbat scrying. The ley lines were strong beneath these wild mountains, and her midsummer longing, even though she’d already experienced midsummer this year in the northern hemisphere, was particularly intense.
She conjured red roses to use in her spell, since the mountain meadow flowers were such a riot of color around the lake and she always loved red roses the best. They would help link her back to Patagonia if she traveled the ley lines. As she swirled the petals along with those of the mountain flowers into the icy water around her legs, she had a strong premonition that she was going to find exactly what she most needed, but also that it was going to come with a price.
What Crystalyne had shown Kai after she found him had been authentic. But sometimes the real face of the world, even without arcane underpinnings was just too much for people. She had tried to show him the cold beauty of her beloved Patagonian mountains and the precise beauty of the magic of the ley lines that she had used to bring him almost halfway across the world. But as much as he wanted to believe in magic, he wasn’t ready to believe that it could be used to actually travel between continents. Because of his disbelief, she couldn’t fully bring him into her scrupulously clean van. She had to keep him frozen in a bubble of winter from his northern hemisphere- a simple enough task this high in the mountains.
He was so young. When she first felt the depth of his longing and followed it to the dingy apartment from which he stared up at the muted stars from his small open window, she’d expected a man or woman of twice his age. But she had to admit that his undertones of hunger for physical love were part of what made it so easy for her to follow the energy of the cold lake water into his space. The temperature there was even colder than the night air had been in Patagonia. The steam she brought with her as she met his hunger coalesced into banks of snow, covered in ephemeral flower petals. As he’d passed his hand through insubstantial columbine and into the very real snow that had formed beneath it, he asked her, “Are you the muse I’m dreaming of, or a substantial seductress?”
Crys had conjured one of her roses for him, and answered only “yes” as she kissed him while simultaneously bringing the force of her will to bear on his young open mind. She also did something else, something that she’d recently found made her connections with those that she scryed upon deeper. She let down the barriers to her own mind to him, so that he could tell and feel what she was thinking.
With only two kisses, he was ready to follow her back to the moonlit lakeside in the mountains she had come from. They half merged in the ether as she snapped them back to her body floating in the cold lake. She could tell already that their life experiences had some jagged differences, but their lakeside lovemaking was still frantic and sweet until he let himself start to slow down enough that logic and doubt crept into his thoughts.
That was when she’d had to construct an ice palace around him, pulling magic up out of the lake and cold air down from the mountains to spin a sort of stasis around him until she could explain to him how everything worked, and why it made sense for him to start a new life with her. But that task had proven beyond her. Even though Kai had been sad in his old life, he wanted to find his own happiness. As if there were such a thing.
Crys realized that she was crying again, and she was glad she’d finished the photo shoot. Even her magic enhanced skin would start to redden soon if she kept this up. The crying felt cathartic in a strangely good way, though. Almost as if it had loosened something behind her eyes that had been bothering her. Maybe she’d needed to lose something to remind her what was important.
Maybe she should think again about what she wanted to do in her comfortable “retirement.” Maybe connection with others wasn’t something to be avoided anymore. Kai’s youth had reminded her how it really felt to commit to something like a friend. Maybe there were causes she should be considering outside her her current existence. Or maybe she should go into the climbers’ camp just a bit farther up the valley from where she had her van, and see if anyone wanted to boulder nearby. She wasn’t confident with alpine climbing, but she did have a crash pad and pretty good acclimatization to the altitude. And maybe what she needed more than anything was to spend some time with people with other ideas about how to find happiness, that were different from her own.
___________________________________
This week’s entry is an intersection with awesomely patient and talented me-sonrei. Click on her username and scroll down to her related Week 24 entry to check it out. She and her partner last week did a beautiful fairy tale retelling with the topics we were given, so we decided to try for paired Snow Queen inspired pieces this week.
I hope you enjoy them both!