There are nights when Sera breathes in smoke and breathes out fire. There are nights when she breathes in fire, and breathes out ash. There are nights she knows will happen before they ever do, and there are nights she will never remember. January is a month with an odd sort of clarity; new beginnings, and resolutions. She does not make resolutions of any sort and she never awakens early enough to wonder at dawn coming earlier, at the brightness of the sun in the sky, but sometimes (often) she sees dawn from the other side of the table. Quiet streets and garbage trucks and church buses. Food carts shut up tight, or opening for the day. Someone sweeping, someone hosing down salt stains from the last storm on the sidewalk.
Yesterday morning she spent a solid-she-does-not-know how long coming down from a long, strange trip in the seventh pew from the back of the Church of the Good Shepherd, considering whether or not she might like to have a conversation with the Virgin Mary. Offering up a different sort of prayer, that the good woman did not actually die a virgin. That she had some pleasure of her own in this life beyond answering the mumbled prayers of the devoted and the desperate. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting, a little bit breathless, for a spark she could feel like a seed inside her. Like an egg made of flame.
Mary was stubbornly quiet and Serafíne embraced a priest instead, murmured her wishes into his ear and peeled herself away then, and took herself home. Slept it off, well into the day and night.
Saturday was a bust. The acid hangover raw behind her throat and her eyes, the low dull ache of it a different sort of pleasure, and she allowed herself to lounge around the house in flannel pajamas, drinking toddies and toasting the sky and singing the complete album list of the Beatles' Revolver when she gave up on the group game of Settlers of Catan because she always fucking loses.
Sunday she wakes up in her morning which is everyone else's afternoon actually alone in her bed, tangled in a winding mound of sheets and blanket and comforter, and spends the next several hours drinking tea spiked with whiskey and doing Sunday things. Spreading out the newspaper and watching a quarter of a movie and padding around downstairs barefoot, in boxers and an old t-shirt, trying to decide whether she's going to take a fucking shower and go out tonight.
A bit surprised, then, when Dan asked her what the fuck, wasn't she going to get ready, didn't she remember that they had a show.
No. No, she didn't remember.
--
Two hours later they're setting up at the Buffalo. The crowd's small; Sera wouldn't let her friends tell anyone about this. Didn't tell anyone herself; didn't want to. She hasn't played out since she was infected and kidnapped and yeah she sang some fucking Christmas carols during her Christmas party but that's not the same. That's not the same at all.
The air tastes like ozone and whiskey and Sera has a bottle of tequila in hand while Dan's running connections for all their fucking amps, and the room feels strange - golden but fraught. She wants to ask Dan if he has any more of that acid. She does ask Dan if he has any more of that acid and he does and he doesn't want to hand it over but he always does what she asks so he hands it over and she kisses him.
They play for an hour. She floats down off the stage. It feels like is lasted for no more than one brief seizure of her heart.
SerafíneStamina
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
SerafínePerception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
katabasisIt lasted no longer than one brief seizure of her heart. Her body aches all over, Serafíne, her skin prickles, or to be more accurate, the air prickles against her skin, as if it is counting each hair on her arm, each skin-cell, each flutter of her pulse, as if the air - the sweat-soaked air, the metallic ozone air - would put a wet mouth beside the hollow of her throat, above the clavicle, and inhale her, scrubbing her skin away like peeling an almond, revealing what is naked and true beneath what is unabashed in its bitterness or its sweetness or its hard edged silk on the tongue. It lasted no longer than one brief seizure of her heart and as she sang, as she played, as she sang and played with her band, the lights smeared like a god was finger-painting with them leaving finger-prints all through the light thick ridges where the light rippled over into darkness and the faces of people watching except for right there where the smearing of lights like a banquet of candles and how sweet the candle-smoke curls on Sera's tongue when she hits a low note that vibrates in her belly sends her hips singing how sweet the candle-smoke does curl vanilla and bitter-sea salt but no go back do the faces of the people watching finger-painted too smeared along with the light and the colors except for right there where the smattering of lights like a banquet of candles is and
Serafíne is watched and can see herself watched by a wild-haired woman with unblinking eyes, a scrawny, knock-boned woman, her hair a shamble of elf-locks and her eyes the angry bruised flint eyes of someone who is often angry bruised flint-y, of someone who remembers wildness in her bones and gives herself to it often lets it give itself to her that wildness that no creature may know and not long for, and she does not look injured, this watching woman fixated on Serafíne, but it is right and proper or at least it is that there is a pulping of bruise-purpled grapes all over her shoulder smeared past the drape-open of a tank and one breast and one hard nipple and
Serafíne, when she sings a high note, can see the woman blotted out by the banquet of candles, candles that are just lights smearing, gods finger-painting, candles that are not candles, that are just an interplay of shadow and light and song and
Serafíne can feel her heart beating, each beat distinct, like a clear cry, like a greeting,
where are you?
why, for this, have you forsaken me?
katabasisooc: grump! should be:
Serafíne, when she floats down from the stage, can feel her heart beating, each beat distinct, like a somebody else's clear cry, like a greeting, a wail,
where are you?
why, for this, have you forsaken me?
Serafíne
Everything's familiar. Everything comes back. Hardly matters that is has been months and months she was on the stage, with the neck of a bottle of booze occasionally in hand and a guitar mostly across her back except when she remembers that she likes to play it, to feel the strings beneath the pads of her fingers and the hard striking immediacy of the frets against her hand. Her friends are behind her and there's a sort of communion; it hardly matters when she fucks things up because they follow her the way rats and cats and children follow a piper, piping.
Hardly a crowd, not even a crowd, just some lucky bastards who decided to go drink on a Sunday night because they cannot imagine why they might want to see the morrow come; because the beginning of the week sets off that panicked need to put it off again, for five minutes, or ten. Because: time moves for then, as it does.
She doesn't remember taking the acid after all but her mouth is dry and the night is clipping itself into compact little sense memories, the sort that feel hard, distinct, faceted, and melt like myrrh on the back of her tongue: bitter.
sweet.
The bottle's still in hand. She has this grace when she hops down from the little stage and no one in the band ever expects her to help break down their gear and the patrons are turning back to their conversations, ears still ringing from the last crunching cord and Sera's searching through the deliciously smearing lights the faces like thumbprints, mouths open, passing and they come and go, it seems, like light, both particles and waves, and she catalogues and registers and disregards them each in a breath because there's just one person here she wants to find.
A woman at the bar; with wild eyes and wild hair. A smear of light.The thumbprint of the gods.
If Sera finds her, she knows that she will kiss her. Open mouthed and without regret.
I'm right here.
I'm always here.
I'm looking for you.
sometimes.
sometimes.
SerafínePerception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6) ( success x 3 )
katabasis[Mysteries]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (9, 9) ( success x 2 )
katabasisDan says something to her, so does a man by the bar, an admirer, steeled himself up to say a word. Serafíne can hear the word but when and if she looks at the man if her eyes glance past him stone-skip they're all water under the surface reflective if she looks at the man the word looks like a leaf wind-blown storm-wet something thick and edged and tropical something from a place where the earth is black muddy like coffee grounds and the next word he says is another wind-blown storm-wet leaf which gets caught on his chin until he wipes it off or lifts his glass to his mouth to take a drink and Serafíne seeks and she can feel the woman although she cannot feel the woman as she might feel another Will-worker she just feels the woman can sense her now that she is trying, sense her like a thin sharp thread knotted under the first joint of her thumb (or is it the second? count in, count out?), like the twist of that twine and a tug, like filaments gleaming, and follow find does feeling the woman mean that Serafíne finds her?
First she follows, or seeks, all the way to the emergency exit where the woman's shadow seemed to spin but no it was just the shape of the woman's hair and her shoulder spun out've shadow and more lights smeared and there on the ground if Serafíne is sharp there on the ground the Ecstatic can see a broken shell out of place dinge-y un-illumined because the ground is not well-loved by light and there is water drooling from the shell gleaming from its space it is cool on her thumb if she picks it up spills across her knuckles and the shell is real she might show it to someone and they will say weird you found that where and it smells like the sea it smells like a woman it smells like the presentiment of a change and that close to the door Serafíne notices how it thuds in its frame as winds beat at it from outside trying to get in
let me in, let me in, let me in always, you are always looking away, baby, let me in
and the woman, there she is: Serafíne finds her after a particularly loud shudder-sound from the door
Their eyes meet across an eddy of emptiness in the center of the bar-club-whatever just in front of the stage; somehow the woman has made it along the edge of the space like a jackal-thing, like a shadow-thing, and she is now leaning near the tangle of wires, equipment not put away yet just waiting in silence the equipment not the woman, there is something so angry about the woman's eyes that she cannot be a quiet presence and
if Serafíne comes on the woman looks away sharply, a human gesture because what else could she be; fire-light skims across her collar-bone and shoulder, then stays there on the surface of her like a mirage like a trick like oil on water like fire is a silk and
if Serafíne kisses the woman, open-mouthed and without regret, the woman speaks a word just before which is so scornful and so loving and it is not a storm-wet leaf to rub off the chin or to accidentally swallow;
it is lightning, a fork of it, a shiver-flicker of it;
why, querida, are you always here?
Serafínestamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 5) ( fail )
SerafíneOh,
the man the stranger the loved-one, oh, she remembers him, sees him and cannot see him and smiles for the way his words move out of his mouth. Smiles and feels the way her mouth sharpens with the expression, the way her lips move across her teeth. The way it changes the shape of the breath she's exhaling, would be exhaling to tell the man and stranger something, something - not tonight, or I fucking love that shirt or tequila? or kiss me or
I don't know your name, but I remember you.
--
The sharp tug of the thread knotted around a thumb-joint. Why does it pull precisely against three particular fibers of her particular heart? Why does that make tears spring so easily to her eyes. Sera who is Sera who is Sera circles that thumb with the forefinger and thumb of her opposite hand and licks her lips licks salt from her lips and remembers the sea.
Picks up the shell, yes, broken, yes, and spills salt water across her fingers and inhales the myriad scents that come with that cool water and turns, listening to that voice, calling, and pivots to rest her spine against the shuddering door, beaten by the wind so that it rattles in wind. Bone shoulders and clavicles, wingrooted, flat hands and her heart in her throat,
sometimes it hurts to look. I -
and there, there half-way across the bar, where the stage bleeds into shadow or shadow bleeds into the stage, framed against a papered over backdrop of old flyers and posters and ads and setlists scrawled with the signatures of all who have come before. She has eyes for no one but the woman and laughs, delicious,
delighted,
when she is found. When she looks away like that, firelight cutting warm to burnish her sharpest bones and deepen her darkest shadows and kisses her, of course, nevermind that it scorches, electric, humming copper on her tongue,
I remember you. hushed and shot-through with wonder like wire, live. I don't remember you. this is where I live. where else could I be?
katabasisThis is what others see: Serafíne, dropping to the ground; shaking, gripped as if by a seizure -
- and the floor is hard and wet and there is a noise like a moth trapped against a light
going up in flames.
--
But that is not what Serafíne sees and that is not what Serafíne feels. There is no floor tacky with the accumulated layers of half-assed cleaning, there is no risk of biting her tongue off, no cyclone moving through her bones, no tremors, no --
That is almost a lie because Serafíne has inhaled the lightning-word the burning of it has sent it forking back and her lungs feel as if they are blistering, but it is a good blistering, it is that poignant chord of surpassing sweetness, the next level beyond sweetness, something that is beyond pain and beyond pleasure, understand, and what Serafíne also knows is
that the woman is still looking at Serafíne with those anger-bruised eyes, and her fingers are clawed, are flesh-clawing, could tear-through-flesh, and she draws back ( -- have her features changed? They have, subtly: become something younger, one moment; older, the next), draws Serafíne back-in-her-wake, and says
i want to shake your bones out of your flesh you silly girl(beloved child)i want to tear your face off(i want the wind, do you understand?)this is where [else?] you live?
while the air is dying different colors by storm-light and the sky is in fact a sky now something with a sheet of clouds purpled and silvered and blued (blewed? blow,) and blacked light held captive behind the clouds and the occasional calligraphic streak of lightning. They are standing on a pebble-caked sea-shore and surrounded by scrub by sparsity a hill with a perilous path a small hut a small coracle on the waves, cracking open like an egg, and there is a gate by the stones by the cliff by the path that goes up the hill and beyond the gate there are interesting shapes but it is dark. Serafíne's hair is wild.
What wouldn't you do for the answer?
SerafíneI like my bones,
Sera returns, laughing, fucking exultant, to find herself in so changed and charged a place. Her voice is like a shout beneath her skin and she feels it vibrating, vibrant, violent, and she feels like it like the memory of a scream, the furious battering of bruised fists against a barred and locked door.
I like my flesh.
She feels that bright spark inhaled like a fireseed inside her, deep. In her spine, shielded by her ribs, this bright high centerpoint that makes her pull her shoulders back sharply. She does not understand that she is on the floor, convulsing, that someone thinks it is just those fucking shoes she wears, that she tripped on the cords but then no, a shout and Dan, of course Dan is cursing volubly, dropping the laptop he was wrapping up and packing back into its bag as he crosses the stage and jumps off and tells strangers to back off and sinks to his haunches and has no idea what to do.
they serve me well. you. you keep changing. you keep
- a tightness she finds beneath the root of her tongue, a knot drawn taut by a skilled sailor's hand. She does not understand that because she is here, she is Elsewhere. She is on the shore and the storm that is on her tongue and raw in the back of her throat and tangled beneath her skin and bright and wild in her hair is churning all around them.
but I'd do anything and she's turning, pivoting on the balls of her feet, feeling the tide churn around her toes, taking in the path and the gate and the coracle churning on the waves and the bruised sky-at-twilight and the place where she also lives. I'd do everything.
there is a path and there is a hill and there is a hut and there is a girl, climbing the hill and she may begin her climb in the perilous path but she is not one for following the way-laid-out, even if she intends to find that shelter and open that door and climb those stones and devour those clouds and eat that lightning, consume it until her belly-is-full,
so she begins on the path. strays into the scrub - climbing, climbing, still.
Serafíneno italics!
SerafíneI like my bones,
Sera returns, laughing, fucking exultant, to find herself in so changed and charged a place. Her voice is like a shout beneath her skin and she feels it vibrating, vibrant, violent, and she feels like it like the memory of a scream, the furious battering of bruised fists against a barred and locked door.
I like my flesh.
She feels that bright spark inhaled like a fireseed inside her, deep. In her spine, shielded by her ribs, this bright high centerpoint that makes her pull her shoulders back sharply. She does not understand that she is on the floor, convulsing, that someone thinks it is just those fucking shoes she wears, that she tripped on the cords but then no, a shout and Dan, of course Dan is cursing volubly, dropping the laptop he was wrapping up and packing back into its bag as he crosses the stage and jumps off and tells strangers to back off and sinks to his haunches and has no idea what to do.
they serve me well. you. you keep changing. you keep
- a tightness she finds beneath the root of her tongue, a knot drawn taut by a skilled sailor's hand. She does not understand that because she is here, she is Elsewhere. She is on the shore and the storm that is on her tongue and raw in the back of her throat and tangled beneath her skin and bright and wild in her hair is churning all around them.
but I'd do anything and she's turning, pivoting on the balls of her feet, feeling the tide churn around her toes, taking in the path and the gate and the coracle churning on the waves and the bruised sky-at-twilight and the place where she also lives. I'd do everything.
there is a path and there is a hill and there is a hut and there is a girl, climbing the hill and she may begin her climb in the perilous path but she is not one for following the way-laid-out, even if she intends to find that shelter and open that door and climb those stones and devour those clouds and eat that lightning, consume it until her belly-is-full,
so she begins on the path. strays into the scrub - climbing, climbing, still.
katabasisand so she begins on the path, and so she strays into the scrub - climbing, climbing toward the Heavens. The woman does not come with her. The woman curled her lip like a leopard and turned away, again; turned away, with such sharpness, from Serafíne's pivot - although Serafíne will remember, as she climbs, or maybe it is a future!Serafíne remembering, maybe it is a younger (forgotten) Serafíne remembering, looking through this moment to that moment which is the same as this moment because all moments are happening now, Now is the only moment, the point is Serafíne will remember it as if the woman had whipped out a sinewy hand to curl around Serafíne's wrist and had hauled her close to bump foreheads. Turn like a dancer. That fire-sheen licks from the woman's skin to Seraíne's and it burns her so but once again there is a place beyond pleasure and a place beyond pain and there is no word for it in any language Serafíne knows and
there is a path, which Serafíne begins up, and the woman is no longer there. Gone. The steep slant and the prickles are unforgiving, once Serafíne leaves the path, unforgiving and, just behind her, she can feel it in one of her shoulder-blades, the lightning strikes sand and water where she'd just been standing, it follows her footsteps, one, two, three, four, sea-glass in the sand, sea-glass in the dirt, sea-glass in the stone, and
there is a grave stone. Serafíne knows it is a grave stone, an old, worn-out grave stone, because she trips over it, because it has the look of a grave stone although to read the name on it she would have to clean it. There are a couple of bottles, of offerings: an empty tequila bottle, an abalone shell, a braided bracelet, a blunt. There are more grave stones, some less weathered, dotting the hill, and although the storm rages around her, although it is loud, loud, loud
there is this pregnant silence between thunder-words; the air is full with child;
the air watches her, and the lightning limns goat-eyes in the dark, and then there is a little circle of stones, of fairy stones, over-that-a-way, and then over that a-way there is a photograph, a sound under the storm, a jangle-sound, nerve-jangle sound, a metal-against-metal sound, like a handful of coins or bells, faint as a butterfly kiss of lashes sweep
and over that-a-way, further up, there is a dark dark wood, all a-snarl
Serafíne(Elsewhere, people are trying to hold her down and there are a half-dozen different theories about what should be done right now to help her. Hold her arms and legs down; or don't. Let her body flail itself in the throes of that wildness. What if she chokes; on her own tongue, or her own vomit, or her own anything. It's a goddamned bar. People are drunk. There is more than one call to 911 and more than one person trying to google what to do about a seizure and blood everywhere, Jesus, head wounds. Dan is cursing quietly and his hands are not shaking though he has the conviction that they are; Dee has followed him around and they are both trying to hold her now and a few other people too, from the bar, in the audience, but first Dee's hands cool and white on his shoulders, her breasts against his shoulders as she bent over him to ask, rhetorical see, worried too - what the fuck did she take? - right into his ear.)
Breathless and wanting; isn't that how she feels all the time. Not this betrayal of her body, no - no the air hunger, not the terrible pounding of her heart, in her chest and in her head, in her ears and at her throat, not this awful physical betrayal (not recently, mind. not for weeks and weeks, at the least) but metaphorically, at the least.
So she runs; so she starts to run and finds pieces of her body starting to betray her even as her darting hands and nimble little feet find purchase on the steep and crumbling slope. Thighs like water, arms like lead, breathes in these deep and ravaging heaves and cannot get clear.
Falls and curses herself for falling and starts to crawl or something when the scrub just seems to shiver and that scent fills her eyes and her mouth, fills her nose entirely; she breathes it full and brackish and salt-laden and pushes herself up until her elbows are locked, arching her body through the upper third of her spine, shoulders forward, bleeding palms flat and open on the slanted, mud-laced rock. Her knuckles are scraped and blunted, swollen and bleeding.
Staring at the shell of the mask, but looking slant-wise, see -
at the reflection of the lightning in the shallow pool of rainwater, the inverse shadow of the eyes and nose and mouth.
I would've thought there'd be a fucking party inside me.
- says Sera, then. She is already reaching for the mask.
Studio fuckin' 54, man.
Lifting it up over her head. Pouring the rainwater over her brow like baptism, before fitting the mask to her face and breathing: in and in and in.
SerafíneWP
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
katabasisIf Serafíne fits the mask to her face from a horizontal angle -- that is to say, she lifts it up over her head; the water, cold, 'plashes on her brow, on her nose, on her lip, perhaps she breathes some of it in, can still feel her ribs straining, her body wearying; and then she lowers the mask and fits it like putting in a puzzle piece, then there is a moment of disorientation (visceral [gut]) -- something caught in her eye-lashes -- or perhaps the moment that the silence descends and hits; and then through the mask's eyeholes she sees a changed world, and
If Serafíne lowers the mask on her face from above, lets it follow the rain-water path, baptismal, washed clean -- that is to say, she closes her eyes for a moment (or doesn't), lets the mask's chin bump against the bridge of her nose or glide above it, continue downward, over her mouth, over her own chin; if for a moment, she is in the mask's shadow, its total darkness; if all that, there is a moment -- a wind-swept moment where it is a whole-body clap, the silence descendant and bam; and then through the mask's eyelashes she sees a changed world, and
and the water on her face, tear-tracks, blood-tracks (her fingers and nails worn down, worn down), rain-water, mask-fount water, it: adheres
to the cool and dark and safe safe (safe?) interior of the mask
and the mask is her face. It is still the mask. But it is her face, completely covering her mouth with a mask-mouth, only nose-holes to breathe by, only those eye-holes no longer dark but colored in Serafíne, through those eye-holes she can see:
The dark wood is still a snarl above, but through the trees there is a sprawl of a building, something with carnival colour -- people, laughing, the apex of the hill. Festival lights in the gloom, where there is a crack in the storm or it doesn't matter quite so much. It is not so far away, though she aches.
The grave stones, two scraped half-clean, half-revealed, are still to her back: the wild hill, the paths, the mausoleums, the shanty shack, the unlit candles.
The wild, wild sea -- the sea-glass footsteps.
Movement she sees also: something processional, in her perepheral. The mask has a certain desire to undo anything that should not see what there is to see. That desire curls like a fern ready to unfurl: taut, tautening -- ready to spring.
SerafíneIt is hard to say how she puts the mask on; Serafíne is not much given to the wearing-of-masks. Oh, costumes, sure. Elf or angel or what the fuck ever: vamp-hooker-manic-pixie-not-dream-girl. None of the above; but not masks. She does not wear them well.
This one, though. Because it is there when she is failing and there's got to be a reason for that; because of the silence and the rain and the wind; because of the water accumulating in its bowl because of the beating of her heart, because of the promise of the
clamourous wail
all around her, god knows.
So she puts on the mask; does it imperfectly. Fits it over her face, eyes closed until it sinks solidly against her, then breathes in sharply, pushing herself to stand, reaching up to slide her hands over the mask-face. To feel the mask-mouth and the mask-nose, to see the shadow of her fingers over the mask-eyes. Turns in a slow-circuit to take in: the hill and the wood and wind and the wild sea. The half-cleansed graves and the unkindled candles. Feels the curling tendril of something beneath; in the mask-skin, the infection of it in her shoulders and spine.
is the lightning mine
yours/ours?
Another lingering glance back down the hill toward the graves, as she opens her mind to the people above, and her eyes to the movement in her periphery.
Serafínearete
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 2) ( fail )
katabasisDice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 6) ( success x 1 )
SerafínePerception plus awareness as empathy
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
katabasisSerafíne opens her mind and -- no. Her mind gets tangled up in the mask. Her mind gets tangled up in her own skin. It is a curious feeling, that density; that sudden lack. There is Nothing, for a moment. There is Nothingness, the answer to the question: what came first, the chicken or the egg; the answer that some people find. It is not cold. It is only Nothing; and then it is her mind again, outside the confines of the mask which are not confines at all, because it Serafíne's face, stiff and smells-so-good and not-quite-used with ribbons when and if she lifts her hand next, fat ribbons and horse-hair braids falling, falling. Her mind again, open to the people above: the rowdy, reverent clot of them; they are celebrating; they are in celebration, although she is still removed from the crowd, and at her periphery:
there is the woman again. The woman from the bar, the wild-haired woman, although she has changed. Now she is wearing bangles, some rubber bright color rainbow, some copper, verdigris, older than old, some resinous, glass-caught. She is not near. She is beyond the processional --
it is a processional
-- she is a shadow, see, against the storm, briefly leaping to light and color and a sharpness, and she says very clearly (and as she speaks, perhaps Serafíne's eyes meet hers; and if they do, oh, then she sees a certain compassion, a certain wild - restrained - unrestrained will, ferociously compassed by love),
Find my altar, querida; find my altar, and do what comes naturally, then you can tell me.
She stays very still until Serafíne moves again, and then: the woman, the shadow, the collection of color, she whirls away; it is fire-grace, see; it is fire-grace, storm-eaten, and
the peripheral. The processional. The procession. The parade. No: it is somewhat solemn, although the young men and women: some she recognizes, some she does not; one, she knows in her heart matches one of those graves; some of them are masked, some of them are not. There is one woman whose face has been clawed away, skin scraped away, scraped clean and clear, but she does not seem distressed: she is smiling, faintly. They are all smiling faintly, holding branches of iron, holding little votive lanterns, some with fire, most without.
Serafínenothing. Nothing and nothing and nOthing solid; made as such and she finds that so remarkably frustrating, doesn't she, impatient creature that she is, used to having everything she wants when she wants it; used to wanting what she has, now, immediately before her. Used to wanting and being wanted; the insidious and delicious dance of it.
And then; oh, the tangle dissolves or something Christ there are things for which she lacks words and things for which words lack meaning. But she can feel the revelry above her and it baths the back of her mouth and glides sweet down her spine; a certain pull of that knowledge pools somewhere in her belly and she feels also the wind and remembers the graves and closes her girl-eyes behind the mask-eyes and sees Her. Directly; the wild eyes and open, the challenge of her mouth like a snarl, the stars behind her tongue, the storms behind her eyes.
Well,
well -
Sera turns and says goodbye to the graves. Says it with her heart in her throat and her fist over her sternum, she will come back, she will remember. Someday she will remember them all, but not today.
That knowledge like a knot tied into the tissues of her throat; her tears falling and drying on the mask-cheeks painting like a drifting sunset behind a falling star;
and then she starts upwards again, though this time on a slanting path that moves at nearly cross-purposes with the hill. A slanting path meant to intersect the procession of strangers, with their half-lit lanterns and their clawed off faces, all of it. Her path is meant to intersect with theirs, slightly ahead of theirs to be fair - out in front, out in front, out in front, because she was not meant to follow them, was she?
SerafínePerception and ze awareness!
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 5, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Serafínestamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
Serafínedex + athletics
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
katabasisand Serafíne is quick when she cuts across the hill and she can feel that the elevation is different that moment when one goes from low to high altitudes that liminal moment where there is a transition an adjustment she can feel it hanging in the air like a note of music like maybe those bells she heard earlier are still there (of course they are [that faint shiver of a sound]), lingering, not frozen, but forever fixed and mutable, and that is what Serafíne can feel when she cuts across the hill to take a place [or her place] at the head of the procession
and now she is there.
Now she is there, in the front, a straggle line of strangers behind her, and she can feel the air change again, this time because of a swift-moving, weather-shift of emotion from the people in the procession, she can hear their footsteps slow, accomodate, and wait, yes, waiting, because now she is in the front, now she is in the front, and she is leading, and what do they do now?
Nearest to her is a dark-skinned man in jeans and sandals and a leopard skin holding one of the unlit lanterns and a girl she knew once but does not know anymore (who might've had blushes like strawberries smeared across cream speckles of it stains like a berry dressed) wearing many skirts, instead of sandals, no shoes at all, a very very tall woman in a mask similar to her own but with no eyes behind, though her bare skin is clearly living, breathing, dark mask-sockets watchful holding one of those iron branches, and then a Dionysian man with heavy-lidded eyes and a beard and a sensuous mouth, also wearing a skirt or a wrap, and if she looks back to look along those strangers, a lion cub ambling, a spill of rosary over hands, an iguana trying to hurry past the lion cub
and before her, looking ahead, she can see stone steps (or glass-steps? lightning-struck?), weaving unsteadily through bracket and around the hill toward a drop of cliffs, a certain knot of darkness
something in the dark, something that is unlit
SerafíneStrange how the air changes and the earth changes and the voice changes; strange how the ears pop. Strange how the lungs burn, just a little more breathless. She is already breathless but nimble, picks her way slantwise across those slopes to take the lead and turns with her mask and her Sera-eyes, her bloodied hands and her scratched and bleeding legs and her tense shoulders and her need,
her need,
her need,
glances back down the the line of worshippers or pilgrims or supplicants and smiles a strange smile, all savage and sad, behind the mask-mouth.
Sera breathes in deep, then. Deeper, braces herself and her shoulders and launches herself, as she does, spiraling upwards and into the dark. Those lightning fused steps, all dark and glimmerglass, carved into the side of the mountain or cut obsidian; she starts to climb, fast as she can, both hand over hand and foot over foot. Some part of human-her recalls the first time she rapelled down the side of a cliff somewhere in the fucking Alps. She was already a little bit stoned and then: freefall. How her lungs sang.
Up and up and up, past the here and into the dark; into the darkness where even perhaps her eyes cannot see, where there is something,
unlit.
As she reaches up into the darkness, she reaches too for the mask - to take it off. Sera needs her mouth now; or so she thinks and if the mask will be removed, she removes the mask. Unlaces the ribbons and then laces them again, holding the mask loosely woven around the slender width of her palm.
Climbs until she finds the place where things are unlit; swallows hard and feels: the seed, the seed, the firespark. The burning beyond pain and beyond pleasure. The kiss of her mouth on brow, the scorched blow-back of a shared breath. Sera kneels and leans forward and braces herself with her hands if there is some Thing upon which to brace herself,
and breathes out,
fireseed,
burning.
katabasisHer path is not an easy one. Those steps have edges. They might cut her palm: her already injured hands. They might be too slippery there, too glossy; they might obscure depth, sudden concave patches. Her path is not an easy one. The air pressure changes and, through some trick, around this corner there is a place where the roar of the sea is nothing, it is as the thread of her own pulse, and then come out've that corner and it is suddenly all sound again -- all madness: too much; the mountainside trembles and to fall would be a very great adventure but not the kind of adventure one comes back from. The path dips lower, suddenly: lower, narrowing so that it is barely wide enough for two of her feet, but Serafíne toddles around on ridiculous shoes, she can balance on a ledge. The path goes under stone and then sea-spray hits her toes.
Behind her, the procession. They come on and they come on, following her even as she races when she can race, runs when she can run, climbs as quickly as she can with no heed to grace. Behind her, there is a shouted laugh once, swallowed up by the air and the wind like a gull's cry -- or an ember. Another laugh, once; and then, for an instant, a low buzzing, as of a half-begun chant that five of them decided to at once enter into, then let un-lace.
And then they are at the dark.
The dense knot of unlight.
It is a cave. More accurately: it is a hollow in the cliff-side, across a handswidth-wide strip of stone. The cave has been made into a room and, when Serafíne in the dark goes into the dark and becomes Serafíne in the dark, she finds a stone -- altar (just so), a stone table, a stone something -- with her hands, that she can brace herself against. The altar (table?) has a hollow, too; has edges she can feel, and niches, and smells of oil, candle-oil, of things once burnt.
Serafíne kneels; swallows hard; feels: the seed, the seed, the firespark,
and she breathes out.
As she breathes, the top of that table moves under her palm: the sound of a passage opening. Lightning comes, storm-light to illuminate Her altar. There is meaningless grafitti on it, and cracked-bones, oracle bones, and in the hollow at the center of it, things burned once now-ash, and above there is hanging lichen and flowers and green among all the stone, and beyond the table-altar there is a man-made arch of a stone that does not come from that cave. More niches for lanterns and candles. At the center of it, emptiness where something was but is not now, a crack from some earthquake -- or maybe the lightning found its way here.
And Serafíne has time to see all this; to look around at all this; to touch it with her hands.
Time to do all that, before
won't we see?
katabasisHer path is not an easy one. Those steps have edges. They might cut her palm: her already injured hands. They might be too slippery there, too glossy; they might obscure depth, sudden concave patches. Her path is not an easy one. The air pressure changes and, through some trick, around this corner there is a place where the roar of the sea is nothing, it is as the thread of her own pulse, and then come out've that corner and it is suddenly all sound again -- all madness: too much; the mountainside trembles and to fall would be a very great adventure but not the kind of adventure one comes back from. The path dips lower, suddenly: lower, narrowing so that it is barely wide enough for two of her feet, but Serafíne toddles around on ridiculous shoes, she can balance on a ledge. The path goes under stone and then sea-spray hits her toes.
Behind her, the procession. They come on and they come on, following her even as she races when she can race, runs when she can run, climbs as quickly as she can with no heed to grace. Behind her, there is a shouted laugh once, swallowed up by the air and the wind like a gull's cry -- or an ember. Another laugh, once; and then, for an instant, a low buzzing, as of a half-begun chant that five of them decided to at once enter into, then let un-lace.
And then they are at the dark.
The dense knot of unlight.
It is a cave. More accurately: it is a hollow in the cliff-side, across a handswidth-wide strip of stone. The cave has been made into a room by -- Someone, once. Someones, perhaps. When Serafíne reaches up to take off the mask, it is difficult: it has fused to her skin, with her skin, by virtue of the salt of her tears, the iron of her bloody fingerprints; it has taken her face, and left her her girl eyes. But it is just a mask; it is just skin; just physicality; and when Serafíne peels off the painted clouds and fall of night the gilt-brushed coils of hair the pretty mobile mouth it leaves her with a sound like an open mouthed kiss;
and its ribbons are warm around her wrist;
it does not crumble away. It is still a mask, although the contours of its face are more familiar now: the emptiness of its eyes, familiar.And, when Serafíne in the dark goes into the dark and becomes Serafíne in the dark, she finds a stone -- altar (just so), a stone table, a stone something -- with her hands, that she can brace herself against. The altar (table?) has a hollow, too; has edges she can feel, and niches, and smells of oil, candle-oil, of things once burnt.
Serafíne kneels; swallows hard; feels: the seed, the seed, the firespark,and she breathes out.
As she breathes, the top of that table moves under her palm: the sound of a passage opening.
As she breathes, lightning comes, storm-light to illuminate Her altar.
There is meaningless grafitti on it, and cracked-bones, oracle bones, and in the hollow at the center of it, things burned once now-ash, and above there is hanging lichen and flowers and green among all the stone, and beyond the table-altar there is a man-made arch of a stone that does not come from that cave. More niches for lanterns and candles. At the center of it, emptiness where something was but is not now, a crack from some earthquake -- or maybe the lightning found its way here.
And Serafíne has time to see all this; to look around at all this; to touch it with her hands.
Time to do all that, before
won't we see?
SerafíneSerafíne keeps hold of the mask; the ribbons warm around her wrist. The sunlit mouth, the starlit, twilight eyes. The emptiness behind them except when she chooses to fill it. Sera keeps the mask-ribbons around her wrist, fingers all coiled up with them, the skin of the mask breathing-warm and drifting somewhere around the level of her thigh. Skimming past her hip as she catches up the ribbons and pulls it from from its dangle so it will not be cracked against the rock as she starts to explore the darkness of the cave that is her altar. Her altar.
Sera takes her time. Runs her fingers over that meaningless graffiti, following the liquid scrawl of it; scoops up a handful of ash, smooths her thumb over one of those oracle-bones held loosely in hand, until she finds the flaw in the bone, the divot from the knifeblade with which the sacrifice was made. Then she worries her thumbnail into that mark, following the slice of it over the aging ivory. The searing pain and the cold that comes after, as eyesight begins to dim and death gathers all around. How you want to hold on to those last few breaths, even as breathing becomes all but impossible; a task too exhausting to contemplate -
oh, she is seized by the shadow of the memory, licks the saltwater from her lip, and lets it go.
Back to the altar, a circuit that swings wide and then narrows, that brings her back to this precise place at this precise time.
Sera runs her free hand thoughtfully over the pockmarked granite of her altar, feels the weight of it and the age of it, the way the granite has started to pit, worn away by time and salt, as so many things will be. Studies her hand, the shape and feel of it in the shadows if she cannot see, splayed open on the altar.
When the decision is made, Sera turns around quick as you please, and lifts herself up to sit on the altar. Insoucient. Irreverant. Legs dangling and swinging down from the height, her head cocked to listen to the echo of the waves without, the way their memory is dampened or magnified by the chambers of this cave.
Sera still has her mask in hand. Holds it against her thigh and turns to look at her followers. The Dionysian man, the lion club, the girl with strawberry cheeks, the inguana, all of them. Watches them where they still and where they stop or where they come and how far.
Sera's posture is loose, open, casual. Her knees and her thighs are parted, and her spine has the casual, boneless elegance of a young murder, a budding racketeer.
"Come here," to the man and to the woman; to the animals, to them all. Her eyes are likely first on the mask-woman, without eyes, with only the empty sockets surrounded by her living skin. Or perhaps to the Dionysian man, with his sensual mouth and heavy-lidded eyes.
"Come here."
Direction, invitation, prayer, plea.
And if they do, the woman with the blank-eyes and the mask-skin face, the man with the grapes, the girl with the strawberry-skin blush, Sera welcomes them, each, with an open-mouthed kiss.
Which she repeats.
again
again
again.
SerafíneStamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneDice: 2 d10 TN10 (8, 9) ( fail )
SerafínePerception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 )
katabasisCome here, Serafíne says, to them all. But first to the tall tall mask-woman without eyes (darkness where a presence should be), and then - perhaps - to the Dionysian man. The cub. Come here, she says, and they do one by one to meet and to take Serafíne's open-mouthed invitation. First is the man with the leopard skin who kisses Serafíne eagerly, forcefully; a rush, like being hit by a sudden wave: you see it coming, but you do not expect it. He kisses her until he is suddenly replaced by another mouth. He is followed by the blushing, strawberry girl, who whispers, Again, her breath hitching, her voice small. Again? And that 'Again' was a benediction -- the little god(dess) of blessings whispered in a moment of shared sensuousness.
Come here, Serafíne says, and they have followed her this far, are enthralled, this moment a kindle-thing, an awkward knocking of knees against other knees, a warm press of thigh against thigh against -- ; and there is the iguana, rilled and heavy and sharp-toothed, gripping Serafíne's shoulder, biting hard because that is what iguanas do, biting hard to hold her to nuzzle against her cheek and then biting again, and you know: this is when Serafíne leaves her own skin just a little: enters into their skins as well, then falls back into her own, leaves, falls, rises, falls: and that motion is good, too. Punctuated by the storm, you see, which provides backlight for her cult. The rain is falling hard;
and now it is the Dionysian man with the heavy-lidded eyes. He licks the blood from her shoulder and then he licks the salt from her arm and gently bites and breathes and sucks on the nipple of her left breast before he kisses her mouth too. His eyes stay open and they are as gold as the leopard who gave up its skin for that other man to wear. And now it is the lion, frisking around her ankles, paws heavy, fur liquid gold as it laps at her belly, and then it is
again, and again, and again, a will to touch her and to touch one another, to crawl inside to go home, to
comehere
-- but of course there is the tall tall mask-woman without eyes. What of her, hm? And what of their candles, their lanterns, some settled down, some not? What of all the other bodies pressing into the cliff-side temple now? It is warm; it is an oven, heat-kindling; it is thunder outside and rain outside and the sea outside. It is flicker-shiver of shadow mingling with storm-light: it is a certain reverence one moment -- and, next, not.
And the tall tall mask-woman: she comes last to Serafíne, pulling her mask away from her face if not quite off with two fingers, and she says,
What now, querida? You gotta answer for me?
Or perhaps she says,
[Do you have the answer to my question?]
Or maybe,
Are you the answer to my question?
Or even,
What now?
SerafíneNo difficulty
Dice: 2 d10 TN1 (2, 4) ( success x 2 )
SerafíneWP
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 8, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
SerafíneWhat kind of a fucking question is that?
That is what Sera tosses back; Sera with her bruised mouth and bleeding hands; blood coiling from the wound on her shoulder right down her bicep, serpentine all around. Sera in the crowded and now-humid cave, the press of bodies filling it, the steam rising, the noise from the storm rumbling beneath the noise of the revelry, or keening over it.
When Sera wandered into this no-place she was half-clothed and now she is barely half-clothed, the remaining scraps disappear when and as she wills them. She pulls her revelers close and feels the beat of their breath against her skin, she leans back and pulls them after her.
More come; strangers who are stranger still. Loved ones she does not remember in this lifetime, and may have forgotten, too, in the last.
Somehow, and for quite some time, Sera has forgotten about the woman with the mask, the woman with no-eyes, the woman she sought out, first and last and always, among the procession, but now she is here again,
Sera still has her own mask in hand. She does not wear it. She feels it warm, the promise of its skin against her skin, remembers how it sealed itself, salt-tears and blooded copper, to her own, mouth and nose and brow and eye lashes.
Of course I'm the answer to your question.
Sera is saying, as she slips down from her rather obscene, rather insouciant pose on the altar, feet bare on the slippery rock of the floor of that seacave.
Always have been. Always will be.
You know that. You remember that better than I ever do.
--
What now?
Sera holds out her hands, palms-up. And closes her eyes. And pulls herself up and up and up and up
and up
and up
and up.
Into the storm, into the lightning, into the sea.
Or at the least, she fucking tries.
SerafíneStamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN9 (6, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
katabasisYou're comfortable now, aren't you, the woman says, says the woman, unmasked, looking at Serafíne.
The woman just looks at Serafíne. Her jaw is a hard edge and her eyes are knowing, are a lick of fire-flake or a spark of cinnamon and incense and bitter-salt. Serafíne tries to become the storm. Becoming is a difficult thing to do: transitional, immanent. The members of the processional do not touch the un-masked woman unless she wants them to. Unless she wants that lion cub to do reverence at her feet and lick her toes. Unless she wants the Dionysian-eyed man to do the same. The woman just looks at Serafíne, insouciant, much-kissed, on the woman's altar, her question and her answer, always have, always will, and the woman curls her lip, and it is a tricky expression to read.
You gon' do something?
You gonna remember?
Or just let tired reverence get tired, huh, honey?
You gonna do something?
-- as Serafíne reaches up. As Serafíne what nows. As Serafíne closes her eyes and pulls herself up and up and up and up
and up
and up
and up. Serafíne can see the woman watching her, even though Serafíne's eyes are closed. Because Serafíne can feel the savage moment (and it feels just like those moments before sound crashed upon her; broke against her, after being held back; after silence echoed like a church or a temple or a cave under the sea filled with sea-song and sea-shadow and there was nothing) that the woman reaches one (strong) arm to take Serafíne around the waist. Serafíne can hear her procession people she knows people she will know people she knew react and Serafíne can feel the woman drag her, drag her to the edge of the cliff-hole hermitage, to the edge, whirl her, whirl her, send her whirling,
and, whirling, Serafíne can see under her lashes the closure of them the glimmer simmer hiss of gold on her arm a sheet of fire
and she can feel nothing at her back, just the woman, pausing, holding Serafíne over the edge,
contemplatively,
before she kisses Serafíne. And then: it is swallowing the storm.
katabasis[Char + Perf + Specialty.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
SerafíneWITNESSED!
katabasis[Oh, this one too. Manip + Performance.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
katabasis[And this one! Dex + Ath + C!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
katabasis[Er, no, that is Art. THIS is the Dex+Ath+C one.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
SerafíneWITNESSED!
SerafíneShe is comfortable now, is Sera. Much kissed; worshiped, adored. Adored by the people she knew and the people she will know; the people who have been and the ones who will be. Sheltered in the cave, where her blooded hands and blooded feet can start to heal. Tasting the seaspray and hearing the storm without standing in the midst of it. Without bearing the breaking waves, the countervailing tear of a riptide, running back out to sea.
Breathing deep, the smoke in her lungs, the spark-and-flame of it, the seed caught like a flare between her sternum and her skin. The strangers-who-were and the strangers-who-will-be, her procession, receding into a faceless smear of strangers and lovers as she curls Sera curls her fingers thoughtfully around the ribbons of her mask and refuses to put it on.
She is reaching; god, she is trying to pull herself upward and upward right? to find the jagged burst of lightning and sink her teeth into it and let it pull her tearing afterward into the heart of the storm. But see: becoming; she is still in her skin, just longing, just yearning, just breathing, and her breath is coming harder and her breath is coming faster and her heart beats in ways she does not always remember that hearts can beat but she is still here, surrounded, loved and beloved.
You gon' do something? the woman asks and Sera whose eyes are closed cracks one of those eyes open, watches the woman's mouth move, between her lashes, feels the crack of challenge in it like a whip along her spine.
Yes. It is not even aloud. It is not even allowed. But yes: fuck, yes. Sera is gonna do something. She doesn't know fucking what but she's trying to climb some ladder, to pull herself brightly upward and that doesn't seem like it is working, does it. She wants more: not merely goddamned transcendence, Jesus Christ that yoga shit is Jim's bag.
You gonna remember - and Sera is on her feet now, has slid her skinny ass down from the altar to the cave floor, scattering her procession outward in eddying waves and she wants to say yes to this but she doesn't fucking know. The answer may be no. The answer is often no.
Remembering is not something Sera's do well -
tired reverence
- and her eyes flash open, briefly and wholly open. Some part of Sera is still trying to climb, see. Some part of Sera is pulling herself and pulling herself and longing and yearning and tearing herself up without tearing herself open.
Her procession will adore her; touch her only when she wishes them to. Kneel and nuzzle her feet, wipe her tears with their hair, hold her up, hold her down, just hold her. And yet, some part of her wants them to tear her apart.
--
Then the woman, drags her, whirling, whirling, drags her across the broken floor of the grotto, past the candles lit and unlit, the niches and statuary, the nameless, meaningless graffiti, through the worshipers congregated in her hall.
Sera's eyes are closed right? But she can see the woman still, feel her hands, on her skin and at her back, can feel her consideration, can feel the quiet, susserant cessation of the sea, the body-blow of the sound as it comes in waves, like the concussive blast of a piece of ordinance. Can see the flames licking her skin and feel the nothing at her back, the lashing storm again, its voice louder now, redoubled, furious.
The woman kisses Serafíne, and oh, Sera kisses her back. Hungry, open-mouthed, both hands burying themselves in her wild hair. Sera makes this noise that is lost in the storm-surge and feels the lightning fork and scissor and sizzle and strike inside her.
The wind lashes the cave mouth; there is nothing behind her.
She can feel the cliff's edge crumbling beneath her feet. She doesn't know if she'll remember, but she'll do everything in her power to make sure that she doesn't fucking forget. So:
Sera leaps, into the goddamned storm, whirls herself into the front. Throws herself off the edge of that cliff.
There was nothing else to be done.
katabasis- and elsewhere, Serafíne asleep, sleeping, but finally back.
She will wake up soon, and if she will remember everything; she will know, or construct a story about what, she knows. She will remember the woman and she will remember everything that happened with an unrelenting clarity, clear-cut, a moment out of time which quietly refuses to be sublimated into new moments, which stays beside them.
She will wake up soon, and that is when, perhaps, some trouble will begin.
But that is soon.
katabasis[EXIT, DISCIPLE.]
