Flashback [Evalin] Our Share of Night to Bear

[Philomena]

The neck does not resist, but puts just enough rigidity in the muscles as they are drawn back as to make the witch's movements seem graceful, sinuous, full of curvature and power. Minnie's breath falls deep into her breast, and she shivers, panting slow breaths in and out, her blood pulsing to the surface of her narrow neck, the vein shivering with heat, the skin flushing with it. The teeth scrape against the flesh and she mewls softly, ever so soft, shaking in the woman's arm.

The book, though. The book changes things. The book comes like a cross in a brothel. The book falls like the whisper of divinity against the grave. She steps slowly to the table, and her hand rises, stroking the battered volume, stroking it, at some level, with the same sensuous languidness with which she had touched the woman's red lips. Her voice came very soft, "She is broken this one. The binding stitches, they are too loose, the leather is beginning to... to crack... I..."

She reaches to her desk, into a little box, at the bottom of it drawing out a pair of white gloves, cautiously, carefully. She slips them on her fingers, and bends over the book, stroking the spine, slowly, then pinching the cover in two fingers, opening it. The inlay is marbled paper, and she strokes this as well, then brings her fingers up to her nose, breathing deeply. Then turns the flyleaf, and see's the author's name: "Evalin". She turns, looks at the witch woman. Her hand reaches, somehow absent, consciousness taking no part in a purely spiritual exercise. Her fingers stroke the name across the page, then reach and stroke, gently the witch's fingertips, "This is... yours. You have in you a touch of Qalaya. But... but you did not... expect me. You thought I would be something less? Something less, yes. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am something less, perhaps... perhaps I am only what you expected, one to use, to pay or discard..."

The hand then moves up, the soft cotton of the gloves stroking the smooth, cold cheek now. She meets the witch's eyes, and nods solemnly, "Yes... I will make it beautiful for you, lady mine. I cannot give you all. But blood of my veins, thought of my mind, work of my hand. These are yours to ask of me, lady mine."

[Evalin]

Like a solemn guardian, an unspoken protector Evalin loomed over the book, her greatest possession she thought. Her eyes never leaving the broken cover, her lips whispering soft of comfort to the pages as she brushed a hand along its cover. With the rustle of cloth and unsettled dust Evalin's body would move to stand very close to the woman's back, leaning close to examine to gentle caresses she grazed upon the secretive tome.

"She has been with me for many a year, and traveled as far as I in the span of time since her creation. A marvel, a grand story worth telling, though perhaps not all at once for never is there enough time in the day to let whispered tales linger past the falling sun..." Her words were softer now, caressing, soothing almost if such could come from the course windpipe of the long dead witch. It seemed, if only for this singular object, there existed the possibility of compassion in any cold heart, as could be denoted by the near loving gaze lit upon the book in question.

As if the caress of the inked name upon the page were connected to her very soul, Evalin's expression softened somewhat as she whispered, stained lips close to the ears of her listener, "Think you not so little of what you might be, for even as a master smith might receive praise for his work, never could it have been accomplished without the hammer and tongs with which the metal was forged."

A thin smile, an expecting smile lit her lips as her eyes turned when beckoned by the hand upon her cheek. Ruby red points burned as teeth revealed and words were spoken deep, "Dearest child, I know your words to be true. Give me everything you are, give me your being, your heart and your soul. Say you will grant me my hearts desire, and I shall awaken unto you your truest purpose." Her hand moved forward, grasping the back of Minnie's neck and pulling her roughly within a breath, their lips almost touching as her eyes burned deep into the woman's, "Make a contract with me. Become mine in body and spirit. Do this and I may promise you stories beyond your wildest dreams. Give your soul to me, and become the scribe that carves my tale in fire into the very fabric of this world."

[Philomena]

Minnie felt the hand grip and pull at her neck - the natural response would be, perhaps, to brace one's self for a blow, or to be thrown to the ground, the rough power of the grip spelling pain, oncoming pain.

Minnie is no longer protected by natural reactions.

Her throat lets out what was meant to be a cry, it catches, though, for her head arches langorously back, her breast jutting out, her check seeking flesh to press against. The cry, caught, strangled, is reborn, and comes out in a shuddering moan. Her breath comes fast now, and her face twists, her head turning slowly, her eyes thrown shut. It is the instinctual rotation of an infant towards warmth, of the lip seeking the breast. She is shiveringly close, the flesh of her lips grown rich with blood, her teeth tiny, yellow pearls glistening behind them.

Her ears drink the words of the woman, her own hair tickling now in wild strands at the corners of her ear-flesh, like tiny tongues, licking the words into her skin. Blood. Heart, Soul, Being. Everything... everything... everything she has. Everything.

Body.

And Minnie tenses, freezes, the sublime, exquisite pain on her face devoured quickly by another emotion, a hungry mouthed, and empty hopelessness. Her eyes, hungry and lonely, fly open, but a sadness fills the, a desperate sorrow that wells into the beginning seeds of tears. She stands now, pulling gently from the woman's grasp if she lets her. She stands, silent, utterly, silent, and reaching to her back, her fingers start at the uppermost, and popped the wooden buttons free, one by one, to lay her narrow back bare. She pulls the folds of fabric back, and leaves the skin clear and lucid in the moonlight. Minnie's back is a map of scars, across ehr back - smeary bubbling scars of burns, the long thing silver-lines of lacerations. There is no order to them, they fly across her flesh like a wild archipelago of treasured, ancient sorrows. And over the center, nestled like a child between the corners of Minnie's shoulderblades, there lies a single name, painted in india ink, in long black flowing strokes:

'Evalin'

Minnie spoke, her voice thirsty and shivering and eminently, eminently vulnerable, "And did you have the book, the night the murder-man was born, in the empty rooms of Zeltiva, Mother Evalin? Was it there, somewhere? I... would give you all. But only what I have, only what I have. My body is not mine. You need no thief for a scribe, and so you will leave me here, for I will not sully you by stealing that which belongs to another. Leave me here, like every other mother I have had."

And her voice cracks, the whole tense force of her crumbles. The grace of enthrallment crumbles into her clumsy, ugly collapse, the thrill and queer power of her throat falls into choking sobs. She falls, falls to the floor, and sobs, sobs like a child, sobs like the inconsolable. There is no weeping here. Weeping is what beautiful souls do in stories. Sobbing is what the damned do, those who must live, and die, with no tale to be told.

[Evalin]

Evalin's eyes widened as she looked at Lefting's back, at the name engraved there just as she had done to another so long ago... Could it be that she knew? But how? How could she have stumbled upon such knowledge? It was... Evalin stilled, Workings beyond what I have seen... Yet still it all leads to the same. Matter it not, for now...

A flurry of cloak and Evalin moved forward, wrapping the woman in darkness, leaning against her back and pressing her lips close to Lefting's ear, "Indeed I did... I held it wrapped close to my soul as I struck down that fool of a man and brought him back as he is now. That wretched existence that I spared on a whim..." Evalin's smile widened as she whispered, "And be it so that your body do not belong to you... So say it upon your skin she who has claimed you. Thus it is proclaimed in blood and flesh, thy master is 'Evalin'." She laughed as she moved to whisper in her other ear, "I cannot steal what is already rightfully mine, whether I had claimed it or not before means nothing for now I do take you as my own. Upon your very flesh is carved our contract, scared to the very soul the promise you have made to me so unwittingly. Say it... Accept it. You are my hands in this place, you are my voice when I am lost in darkness. You are my will upon the world. You are my vessel, for not and ever more Philomena Lefting." She spoke the name with absolute authority, the voice of an ancient wisdom, of fires that consumed the flesh of the ages.

[Philomena]

Minnie hunched and sobbed, until she felt the cloth of cloak, whisk soft against the bare flesh of her back. HEr body cringed first, waiting for a blow, then counterreacted, curling backward, nestling into the cloth of it, curling softly up, as her sobs turned into slow shuddering tears. Back, back, back, curl back into the slender, chill-fleshed arm, back, back, so the the hand is on the opposite shoulder, back back, into a voice, like a queer, uncomely flesh-flower blooming up from the dusty floor.

And the voice, the voice spoke, and Minnie froze, her eyes shut, her breath coming now quick and shallow, her tears shuddering in her eyes behind the spectacles, the crooked braids of coarse hair trailing now to run against the flesh below her shoulderblades.

//My voice when I am lost in darkness.//

She closed her eyes.

//My voice, when I am lost. In darkness.//

She breathed deep, deep, stilling, stilling, stilling. Setting the heart still. The thousand voices of her insecurities stilling in the midst of it.

//My voice. When I am lost in darkness. Philomena Lefting.//

Her eyes remained shut, and slowly, slowly she turned. The cloak stayed caught the rough buttonwork of her back, and pulled round her, staying moored to her with the slowness of her movement. It pulled round, and round until almost she was encased in it, and soft, ever so soft, she murmured.

"We two, like sisters, late at night -
Coiled tight inside our winter's quilt,
As if we wore the self-same shift."

She turned the last instant, and her cheek, sweaty and almost feverish, presses firmly against the cold, strange rot-yielding flesh of the woman's cheek, the strange hollowness of skin without blood. Her lips she rested just short of the frozen white shell of the witch's ear, and breathed in once, out once, the shivering heat flooding the ear, the hair, the neck.

"Someday, yes. Someday. Someday, perhaps thou shalt come to me, like a child, frightened, and lost in the dark that thou hast woven round thee. Then... then thou shalt come broken to me, I shall smile, and thou shalt be my little one. Come to me, and my hands will wrap around thee, and my lips will press against thy forehead, and my voice will pour across thine ears like the oil of the healer's palms. And on that day, yes, Dark Lady. On that day, yes. On that day, we shall be each other's hands. On that day, we shall pour our voices together like a cistern, and thou shalt be the vessel that will hold my voice, and I the vessel to hold thine. And I, Dark Lady, on that day, shall carry thy voice up to the gods. I shall pour my blood into the ink pot, and write my flesh into a prayer for thee. Do not forget me. Do not forget me."

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[Evalin]

Evalin's brow knitted together and she pulled back from the woman on the floor, reclaiming the darkness of her hood as she took up her staff once more. Staring down at Lefting from the safety of shadows, Evalin's frown and ever so slightly troubled expression would be hidden.

"Ah... Miss Lefting know this and know it well. Never shall I forget you." She turned and knelt down, extending one hand to Lefting as she looked out from the darkness, "Accept this hand and our existences shall be bound together forever more. Refuse it and I shall strike your life from this world, as you know I would."

Evalin smiled, though the smallest fragment of doubt plagued her mind, "Do you accept this offer? Will you become my servant, my lips, my vessel, in this world and do my bidding for the sake of the greatest story this world has ever known?"

[Philomena]

Minnie looked at the woman, now eye to eye with her, and her own eyes burned. The feeling was strange, and wild, and made her chest quiver. Those strange, dark eyes, were so beautiful, just as they had been, that night, as Minnie had peered through the glass skylight.

"I want... I want ter see you, with my own eyes..."

She murmured the words, very softly, and took her spectacles, and folded them carefully, then looked back at the woman with unfocused eyes. The witch woman became a blur of black and white, wavering around the edges, the only sharpness those deep pupils, deep and black, like the ink that Mara had used to paint the names on Minnie's back, that morning. The deep ache of a longing filled Minnie, a thirst for something. If she submitted now, this woman, this strange witch-mother, would she take Minnie up in her arms? Would she soothe her, wrap her close, and give her work to do? Minnie closed her eyes and imagined it, her head close against the frozen breast, and the deep, rich voice of the woman. "Yes, little one, yes. You have done well. You have done well."

Then she opened her eyes.

"No... no. I... the Evalin, I love her. I love her, and so I will serve her. And the greatest disservice I could do now would be to become her slave. The worst... yes. The Evalin has many slaves, and she will have many more. She does not need me as a slave - the things she wants of me would disappear if I were to serve."

She breathes once, "I extend my hand, oh loved one, as a sister, then, and I will fix your book, and be here as your harbor, and do as you bid - not for obligation, but for love. Obligation is the trap your God would cage you in. But if that cannot be..." she breathes again, "Very well."

She extends a hand toward the witch-woman, but tips her chin to open the pale, flushed expanse of her throat.
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