xxxholic fic: exhibitionist (clow/yuuko)
This is actually kind of on the short side (though this one is long in comparison with my other work ahahaha let's not go there >_>), so, um, enjoy while you can? Or throw rotten tomatoes at me, whichever works best for you. XD Also to add that this thing skips around with time frames and the like. I hope it's not too confusing. XD Comments appreciated.
Cross-posted to alcoholiclove.
EXHIBITIONIST.
Cardcaptor Sakura and xxxHOLiC copyright CLAMP.
1.
The lady was a failed poet, a starving artist. Her poetry had never been published, and after a while it laid forgotten, sheaves upon sheaves of paper spelling countless meaningless words. But where she had failed as a poet, she was the inspiration of poetry in others. Her long, slender fingers tapped ash from her smoking pipe in an everlasting metronome. Her eyes flickered momentarily: a blush of wine-sweet red, a pair of shimmering garnet. Then she laughed at a cute something one of the children said. (She was very good with the children. They liked each other so.) Her laugh was light and airy where her voice was not; a laugh that sparkled, like a drop of dew, juxtaposed with a voice that had volumes of dark hues, each more exquisite and luxurious than the last. She drank often (a euphemism), and yet her breath smelled only of the fragrant lush roses found in early spring; soft, and breathy.
"Is this the face," he said, "that launched a thousand ships?"
2.
When she smiled, low, sweet, drunkenly, it was as if sinister Eve had stolen the apple all over again, and the apple was his thrumming heart. He could hear it in his ears.
This is poetry.
3.
She was not, to be precise, a starving artist in any sense of the word, although she considered herself to be one. She starved not for food but for a fierce and inbred desire to be human(e). When asked who she was, her only response was to tell what she was. (A (failed?) poet.) In this manner, she remained clouded in a nebulous sea of mystery, never emerging from her silk smokescreen shroud as perhaps a brilliant, wholesome pearl might emerge from its nourishing oyster.
4.
"Materialism will erode the meaning of life." But she was not impressed; she smiled instead.
5.
It was during the excruciating (he can make a joke of it now) years of his soft youth that he was able to discern in himself, like an overhead ceiling light swinging at last into focus, a certain insufficiency about his character. He was able to make neither friends nor befitting conversation. At first he fumbled his way through awkward, stilted advances, but these were humiliating. His face would burn with embarrassment. Then at last his ever sympathetic father contrived of a simple remedy: Memorize the many "hello," "goodbye," and "how do you do?" conversations delineated in his books and apply them as is fit. He did this for some time.
6.
Loneliness was never an absolute--now that he had met her.
7.
They used to frequent a gazebo that was not too far from the sea. There were times when they would sit together, perfectly still, and watch the sailboats drift across the ocean blue, their masts a whisper white. Afterwards, a game of chess.
8.
He thought her throat to be not that of a swan's, but that of Queen Nefertiti's: a rose head swaying gently on its delicate stalk.
9.
The inky blackness of her luscious hair seemed, in the soft wind, like a smear of dark paint. A blurry mess of sunshine tumbled through the enclosure and settled between the two of them. Over the black and white chessboard, their hands grazed for but a moment (pause, look up), a collision bone-deep and inevitable, contracting from synapse to synapse.
10.
Skipping stones in the pond of a silent park. It was an overcast day, filled with floating cotton-like, hazy gray clouds; the sun was nowhere to be found. On a miniaturized bridge they stood, the path of each stone marking an echo (--and echo). Each murmur from her talk sounded amplified in his ears, a greater, clearer picture, as if someone had increased/tuned the white noise & static into sound & volume, an artificial crescendo. She was not looking at him but stood throwing the perfectly small, smooth stones into the pond water where they plodded in landing. He tried but he could not eviscerate from himself the sensation that a warm rush was reverberating within him. An untouchable and lovely person. What he remembered the most was her thin, slender white hand, caught back in each motion, as it was on the cusp of throwing a stone into the pond, fingers clasped loosely around it, a daguerreotype.
What was she...? She was saying, "[I am] a grainy black ink spot scratching at clean paper."
END.
Cross-posted to alcoholiclove.
EXHIBITIONIST.
Cardcaptor Sakura and xxxHOLiC copyright CLAMP.
1.
The lady was a failed poet, a starving artist. Her poetry had never been published, and after a while it laid forgotten, sheaves upon sheaves of paper spelling countless meaningless words. But where she had failed as a poet, she was the inspiration of poetry in others. Her long, slender fingers tapped ash from her smoking pipe in an everlasting metronome. Her eyes flickered momentarily: a blush of wine-sweet red, a pair of shimmering garnet. Then she laughed at a cute something one of the children said. (She was very good with the children. They liked each other so.) Her laugh was light and airy where her voice was not; a laugh that sparkled, like a drop of dew, juxtaposed with a voice that had volumes of dark hues, each more exquisite and luxurious than the last. She drank often (a euphemism), and yet her breath smelled only of the fragrant lush roses found in early spring; soft, and breathy.
"Is this the face," he said, "that launched a thousand ships?"
2.
When she smiled, low, sweet, drunkenly, it was as if sinister Eve had stolen the apple all over again, and the apple was his thrumming heart. He could hear it in his ears.
This is poetry.
3.
She was not, to be precise, a starving artist in any sense of the word, although she considered herself to be one. She starved not for food but for a fierce and inbred desire to be human(e). When asked who she was, her only response was to tell what she was. (A (failed?) poet.) In this manner, she remained clouded in a nebulous sea of mystery, never emerging from her silk smokescreen shroud as perhaps a brilliant, wholesome pearl might emerge from its nourishing oyster.
4.
"Materialism will erode the meaning of life." But she was not impressed; she smiled instead.
5.
It was during the excruciating (he can make a joke of it now) years of his soft youth that he was able to discern in himself, like an overhead ceiling light swinging at last into focus, a certain insufficiency about his character. He was able to make neither friends nor befitting conversation. At first he fumbled his way through awkward, stilted advances, but these were humiliating. His face would burn with embarrassment. Then at last his ever sympathetic father contrived of a simple remedy: Memorize the many "hello," "goodbye," and "how do you do?" conversations delineated in his books and apply them as is fit. He did this for some time.
6.
Loneliness was never an absolute--now that he had met her.
7.
They used to frequent a gazebo that was not too far from the sea. There were times when they would sit together, perfectly still, and watch the sailboats drift across the ocean blue, their masts a whisper white. Afterwards, a game of chess.
8.
He thought her throat to be not that of a swan's, but that of Queen Nefertiti's: a rose head swaying gently on its delicate stalk.
9.
The inky blackness of her luscious hair seemed, in the soft wind, like a smear of dark paint. A blurry mess of sunshine tumbled through the enclosure and settled between the two of them. Over the black and white chessboard, their hands grazed for but a moment (pause, look up), a collision bone-deep and inevitable, contracting from synapse to synapse.
10.
Skipping stones in the pond of a silent park. It was an overcast day, filled with floating cotton-like, hazy gray clouds; the sun was nowhere to be found. On a miniaturized bridge they stood, the path of each stone marking an echo (--and echo). Each murmur from her talk sounded amplified in his ears, a greater, clearer picture, as if someone had increased/tuned the white noise & static into sound & volume, an artificial crescendo. She was not looking at him but stood throwing the perfectly small, smooth stones into the pond water where they plodded in landing. He tried but he could not eviscerate from himself the sensation that a warm rush was reverberating within him. An untouchable and lovely person. What he remembered the most was her thin, slender white hand, caught back in each motion, as it was on the cusp of throwing a stone into the pond, fingers clasped loosely around it, a daguerreotype.
What was she...? She was saying, "[I am] a grainy black ink spot scratching at clean paper."
END.