"Some days," she said with her eyes closed and her lips parted in a toothy grin, "melancholy is a beautiful thing."
"What's melancholy?" asked Star from the ground, sitting against a boulder on the cliff they stood upon, watching the planets and distant suns come out in the night. Picking idly at shoots of grass in the sand, she waited for a reply.
"It's an adjective," the other girl said matter-of-factly in her low alto voice from her perch on a higher stone, her arms outstretched and her inky hair billowing in her face. Her skin, though olive in color, was anything but dim in the moonlight; her blouse, loose and gypsy-like had it's first three buttons open to the world, displaying a crest between her collarbones. It was a wonderfully balmy night there on the seashore. She stood too closely to the edge. If Star had actually cared enough to be afraid for her, she would have told her to step back. At the moment though, she would have liked to think that the girl would just jump.
Star raised an eyebrow at her, wishing she weren't so cynical all the time. She was like David, only worse.
Worse than David? Was that possible? David practically kept Star like a prisoner, a little servant girl, a doll tossed about a bit too roughly. Silence fell between the rustle of the trees and the rush of the water.
"Why melancholy, Iris?" No answer.
Star could never decide whether or not she really enjoyed Iris's company. Iris was older than she, but not by more than two years, and much more mysterious. She was a dark and comforting haven at times, or otherwise a sharp-tongued viper. She only seemed consistant in her yearning for something more.
"Melancholy like you?" Star asked again. Iris jumped off the stone and onto the sand, barefooted and sleek through the air like a fish through it's home of liquid ice; she began to dance in circles, throwing her hands in the air and tossing her hair about.
"Melancholy like the ocean, Star! Melancholy like the boys and girls who don't know who they are. Melancholy," Iris stomped her feet and stood still a moment, let a dramatic pause hang in the air, "like your eyes." She chuckled and resumed her ritual of motion.
Star already expected the rhyme, and finished it for her with her own tang of spite. "Melancholy on the girl we most despise." She tossed a rock over the edge.
"Bullshit." Iris ceased hopping and turned to glare over her shoulder at the girl's hunched figure. Her voice was hurt, almost disbelieving. Her eyes searched for a sign on Star's face; her chest ached with her words. "Your eyes are melancholy." She sank to Star's eyelevel and placing a hand against her soft cheek, "Your heart is a song," she crooned. "We are lotuses in the wind, child, and must embrace--."
"Embrace our
gardener--."
"Like a hole in the head," Iris spat.
Both smiled at the thought of David. Both loved him dearly: the
younger for no reason and the other for many reasons. A moment of
comfortable silence.
"Some days," Star began, "I just don't know about all this." She thumped a hand down on a root of the tree beside her. Her eyes looked up as the swirling cosmos swelled for her heart. It seemed to echo Iris' message: Pain is still beautiful. She didn't want that beauty, but she had no choice but to accept it.
"There is more out there," Iris assured her. "David may run things around here, but--" something caught in her mind, yet she continued, "There's more for you out there. Don't think that the world ends with him. Those waters would swallow you up in the blink of an eye if you wanted them to. You do have choices, child. Don't make your existence revolve around someone else's."
Star absorbed her words like the balmy air on her skin. She took a deep breath and connected with her companion's eyes. Who was this strange mother-sister? Why was she so dynamic? Loving, hating, cursing, teaching?
"There is comfort in the world, Star. You have good cousins always in the night sky." She pointed upward to the miniscule twinkling specks above their heads. "They will never restrict you. They will never abandon you."
Comfort seeped into Star's heart. She felt more peaceful and not so wrathful toward Iris. She reached forward and clasped her arms around the woman's neck. Iris startled for a moment but wrapped her arms around the girl likewise. Their eyes closed. The world rocked soothingly around them.
"I miss the day," Star confessed. She wanted to feel sunlight again and taste real food and not be limited to David and their brothers.
"Some days," Iris replied, "You just need the night."
FIN
6-13-05
11:01 pm