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From Namen's Past: 'Colour' |
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Vaguely, she was aware of colour: greens primarily, but there were also incredible reds and yellows, and flashes of pink, orange, purple and countless combinations. The ground beneath her boots was a rich brown sludge, and the sloppy dead leaves strewn in it ranged from ochre to black.
Mostly, though, she just saw the world in shades of grey. Rain, an unfortunate, preset irritant, especially such on a rare day out, was draining all of the life from the plants and flowers on either side of a dirt path leading up to a steep slope. All of the vegetation in these huge gardens drooped as miserably as the young woman standing in its midst, even the endless evergreen trees which seemed to brush the dark sky.
Strong, lean arms surrounding the woman’s form. A voice which suited them:
“Do you like it, yet?”
In reply, the voice received only a scowl. Large, feminine grey eyes locked on smiling brown ones, and the woman turned fully around to face her reason for being cold and wet.
“I’d probably enjoy it more if it wasn’t quite so certainly going to be the cause of my eventual, slow death.” Her own voice was flat and seemed very quiet as the rain splashed down around them. Irritated, she flicked a lock of thick, damp black hair from her forehead, where it had escaped from the low ponytail. “It’s raining, Jer. Why are we here? Aren’t there enough dry places to go?”
Smiling brown eyes danced, and strong arms released their hold. Their owner was tall, middle-aged, brown-haired and bearded.
“It’s not far to the top. So, please,” he said a little, gesturing to the summit of the hill. This was a command, spoken as a plea, and the woman, nodding resignedly, knew it all too well. After four years, she was used to it. But it was all okay; that was just how the game was played.
More trekking, more climbing. Namen led the pair, although she didn’t know the way, and she felt a strong mixture of excitement and unease as she walked. She hated being followed like this, even though she loved the man who followed her, and she was more than a little nervous at being led so deeply into unknown, uninhabited woodland. After four years, she had not stopped worrying that one day only one of the pair would return.
Shut your eyes: best not to think of that. As she did so, she found to her interest that all the surrounding sounds and smells were instantly, fantastically, enchantingly magnified for her to examine.
There were a few birds in the trees, of course, though most had taken shelter and were silent, and the constant snuffling noises of the many rodents scrambling under the endless ferns, and of course the constant, rhythmic sound of the falling rain. The more she concentrated, the more they echoed in her skull, making her feel faintly sick. Pitter-patter-dip-drop.
Grey eyes opened to check Namen’s bearings, then closed again to concentrate on smells. Now, these were a little more interesting.
The heavy smell of the gardens was close to overpowering. Hundreds of smells blended seamlessly to form a dense, close air. Imagining what it would be like in the summer, Namen grimaced slightly, and moved on to something else; she cared little for horticulture.
The dull smells of the earth and the rain came in bursts, and were generally strong and unpleasant – nothing unusual there. Another pause, and grey eyes opened again to look on a seemingly grey landscape. They closed once more, but failed to notice a hidden dent in the ground and the little woman slid backwards a few steps.
Falling, sliding, a dull thump, and a new smell, enveloping her from all sides. It was more faint, but it was the one she knew best. It was the scent she considered to be far superior to all others, and her mind filled in the more subtle components which were covered up by her surroundings. An odour laced with strange chemicals, and soaps – cold, clean substances made all the stronger by the damp – a bluish smell, she reckoned, far cleaner and brighter than anything in the garden. But it also had flecks of red and gold, rich in a kind of gentle spiciness which Namen found irresistible. She often thought it was strange that his smell was the very thing she had once been repulsed by.
She opened her eyes slowly, reluctantly, wanting desperately to just linger in the moment. Still standing after her fall, she was held up by – propped against – Jerold, who looked bemused, though pleased, and they both stood very still so as not to disturb the delicate balance on the slope. She leaned further into his chest, the softest of sighs slipping from her delicate, colourless lips.
Both were in danger of slipping; neither moved. What seemed to Namen like hours drifted by, as they both got soaked by the rain. Then, in one single, fluid movement (though not without a grunt of effort) she was in his arms, legs swinging gently, too surprised to protest. A laugh, as the woman’s five-foot frame squirmed childishly for just a moment, as a token gesture, then relaxed completely, surrendering before she was defeated, this time. Sometimes she won this round of the game, but she usually lost, and today she was happy to do so.
As they moved up the hill once more, she gave in to her senses altogether, curling up against his chest so as to absorb him properly; his movement, the beating of his heart, the feeling of his strong arms and his unmistakable scent, all the while the voice of reason screaming that it was all wrong, all wrong. But she was used to this voice, and it wasn’t hard to ignore it anymore.
A small clinking noise escaped from a pocket somewhere and the voice shut up completely, left to scowl by itself in some lonely corner of her mind. Her heart began to race as she identified the sound and suddenly her anxiety turned into a helpless longing and impatience. She buried her head into him to shield herself from the rain, and waited.
“We’re here, princess.”
After none too short a time, Namen’s feet were set lightly on reasonably solid ground, and she exhaled deeply, eyes wide, at her surroundings. She stepped forward into a small, circular clearing, framed perfectly by a ring of glorious white roses, bright and pure, shielded from the rain by the tall firs leaning over them and so retaining all of their splendour. Their pure, delicate smell filled the air all around her and she laughed in delight.
In the very centre of the clearing was the largest, oldest willow tree that Namen had ever seen, its top so far in the sky that she had a notion that it must reach the very Gods above. Through its thick, drooping curtain of leaves Jerold walked, pausing before he disappeared to wink back at her in invitation. She accepted immediately.
Inside the walls of leaves it was dry and a little warmer, for which Namen was grateful. She saw white roses again, this time curling up the enormous trunk of the tree and disappearing into the uppermost branches, their fragrance once again filling the atmosphere. She was concentrating harder, however, on the four small glass vials which Jerold had removed from a hidden pocket, and was now examining their identical contents slowly, teasing, tempting. He sat close to the tree itself, though Namen kept a respectful distance from the thorns as she sat down opposite him, her back to the clearing.
An angry kind of hunger bubbled within her very core, an uncontrollable desire. It was not focused in her stomach like a normal hunger, nor in her throat like a normal thirst, nor even directed at the site of her passion, although that feeling was present also. Every single inch of her being felt this hunger, cried out for the substance within those little vials that would be their release. She was hungry for the man who held them as well, she knew, but the two went hand in hand – or, at least, the one was in the hand of the other.
She crawled forward to sit directly before him, not reaching for the bottles yet, as much as she positively itched to, because that wasn’t how the game was played, and he would be forced to delay the moment even longer, which neither wanted.
He leaned forward to kiss her, a swift, brief movement, and then sat and leaned back, legs stretched straight out in front, hands leaning on the ground behind, to look at her lovingly – her small face with its square little jaw, the thin line of her lips pressed unconsciously together, her unruly black hair framing her face in strands which she twisted in her fingers. Large, bright eyes; smooth, rosy skin; and an impatient tension making her whole body quiver.
“Do you like it yet?”
Namen grinned in answer and leaned in for another kiss, eager to get this part over and done with, but to her annoyance he looked away at the critical moment to look thoughtfully up at the climbing flowers.
“I used to take Lydea here, you know, when we first met.”
No. Oh no, no, no. After her delight just a moment before, it was suddenly all Namen could do to keep from crying. Naturally, she was careful to place the mask over her anguished face, but inside the voice of reason laughed at her cruelly and she wondered for the thousandth time why this man enjoyed tormenting her so – for he must know how much it stung.
“We spent all day here, after we were married. Of course, it was sunny, then, and the whole garden was much better kept, too.”
He often talked about his wife to her, but it never became any less painful. In fact, it only made it all the harder to remain acting normally around her later on. Sometimes he would mention his children, too, although that was not quite so unpleasant. And other times, he would just mention mundane things: the weather, some local gossip or plans for a gathering of his friends – which, of course, she was never invited to.
“She laughed, just like you did, when she saw it.”
He winked at her, and she automatically smiled back, although now she merely wanted to break down and weep, or possibly run away. After four years, the woman reckoned they were long past the point of no return, so he couldn’t possibly still be trying to make her see sense.
But she smiled, hiding it, and just focused on the vials again, her ultimate prize, her reward for bearing this. That was how the game was played. When she had regained her composure and as much as her former mindset as she could manage, she leaned forward again and nuzzled into his neck. Her voice was dark and as seductive as she could manage as she whispered,
“I’m hungry.”
Needing no further incitement, Jerold’s smile became darker and he began to move with practised ease, urgently, smoothly. His lips traced her lips for a time, then moved on to her cheek, her jaw, her neck and his hands slid from her waist to her hair and then back again. Each shrugged out of their heavy coats and woollens, not pausing for a second before his hands pulled her body into his again, gripping her arms – one more gently than the other, for it was bandaged under her dress.
Lost for a moment in her desire, it was only when she felt his fingers slide beneath the fabric of her dress, down her back, resting as always on her old tattoo, that she felt the danger-signal, the trigger to pull back. Hidden on her shoulder blade, to Jerold’s constant fascination, was roughly but permanently sketched a spidery black anchor, the rope twisted around it into the letters of her name. It was framed in an uneven, deep blue teardrop, and was the symbol of her youth. It was here that his hands always rested for that beat too long, long enough for his student, ward, companion, mistress, lover, to snap back to reality and begin to make her now-unspoken demands with serious eyes.
Sighing, he did not wait to be asked, too tired of that part of the game and eager to move on to the next stage. He uncorked a small vial, and quickly poured its contents down Namen’s throat, to her visible satisfaction. He followed it with another, and left the rest for later. A solemn pause, as he watched the drug slowly take effect – watched the other’s muscles slowly relax and her face soften. It saddened him, how she always needed this tool, now, to loosen up enough to forget her doubts of him, but it offered interesting… advantages, when she was not in her right mind, as well.
With a jolt her eyes fixed back on his, filled now with a kind of artificial predatory lust, and they locked into one another’s arms again, all thoughts of drugs, wives and the outside world forgotten in an instant.
And then the games really began.
 Namen · Sun Jul 13, 2008 @ 01:34am · 1 Comments |
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