This fic is based on a poem "A Spell For Sleeping" by Alastair Reid, and
the parts that are in italics are the poem.
Sweet william, silverweed, sally-my-handsome
Dimity darkens the pittering water
On gloomed lawns wanders a king's daughter.
Dagger stares over the lake. Dusk's here and the atmosphere is dyed twilight-blue. The castle behind her is casting dark twisted shadows falling over the water. The lake is still, treacherous deep and black. There's a moon tonight, high and bright and set deep into the sky like the jewel in her pendant. Silence. Silence everywhere and it feels like its choking her. All there's been since Zidane had gone. Silence and lonliness. She should be happy with Kuja gone, but did Zidane have to go too? She stands alone, waiting for somethng to break the suffocating blanket of quiet; the soft coos of some birds, settling for the night, owls awaken, these birds who have remained here unaware for so long.
Curtains are clouding the casement windows
A moon-glade smurs the lake with light
Doves cover the tower with quiet.
She's wearing her white dress, long with tiny green flowers embroidered on the necline. She loooks like a lost spirit, wandering, waiting. Why is she wearing the dress anyway? There's no occasion, but it reminds her of that night a year ago when she first saw him, bright eyes and rushing emergy. Inwardly she curses herself for being so pathetic as to need him, miss him and wilt without him in this way., but she does and now she's angry with herself for her sadness, and Zidane for not being there. But she can't stay angry - just sad is what she stays, alone and unreachable within her cloud of tears.
Three owls whit-whit in the withies
Seven fish in a deep pool shimmer
The princess moves to the spiral stair.
Dagger sighs and wipes unstoppable tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Thre's nothing left for her until Zidane returns. She can sit on her meaningless throne for eternity, feeling alone and empty with no one to lift her spirits. She knows everyone is waiting for her to get married to someone, anyone as long as they're nobility, surely a queen can't cope on her own? They're wrong, of course they are, isn't she a summoner, hasn't she fought through so much more than lonliness? No. . . She will cope, or pretend to, and she'll never marry some soulless lord, but underneath it all it remains she needs Zidane. Oh, how can she let herself down and be so weak? Crying again, she turns her back on the midnight-coloured strip of dark water and moves towards the castle. Maybe tonight she'll sleep. But probably not, she hasn't slept properly since Zidane left. Whay little sleep she'd had was broken by horrible nightmares. Zidane's twisted body impaled and wound around the gnarled mossy roots of the Iifa Tree, his pale ghostly face visting her in the half-light before dawn, and however hard she hid her face in the tear-stained pillow that image would never leave her mind.
Slowly the sickle moon mounts up
Frogs hump under moss and mushroom
The princess climbs to her high hushed room
Dagger runs her hand over the bare stones in the castle walls as she climbs the tiny staircase, tightly wound around a tower. These bricks are old and damp, the only light they'd ever seen came form a guttering candle. She reaches the top of the stairs and pushes open her door. Hidden and isolated, her roomis where she likes to spend most of her time. Inside her room is meaninglessly grand, but it's grown dusty inside, mostly untouched for months. Se has no interest in anything and doesn't notice the grey dancing motes that settle and stir when she moves. She walks silently into her room. Dagger catches a glimpse of herself in the large ornate mirror above her mahogany dressing table. She's a little surprised - her skin looks grey, and her red swollen eyes have dark circles underneath them that look like black smudged charcoal.
Wait.
Someone else was in the mirror.
She looks again. No, there is no one there. Her room is empty, completely empty. But she had seen him. She had. Purple hair and quick liquid eyes and a cruel smirk playing around his mouth.
Kuja is dead.
He is, he cannot be here. She's imagined this just like she imagines Zidane's pleading corpse-face. Kuja is dead, Zidane is not.
Step by step to her shadowed tower
Water laps the white lake shore
A ghost opens the princess' door.
Kuja is here, there he is, standing behind her, closer. . .
Her eyes widen and she whirls around to face him.
Gone again. .
Suddenly her chamber is icy grave-cold. Her breath comes in misty tendrils drifting into the half-dark. She feels something here, she's not alone, she is being watched.
In an instant there are arms wrapped tight around her waist, from behind. . . Kuja's arms. He is chanting something by her left ear in a language he doesn't know, his breath freezing, deadly blows. Her eyelids are heavy and her eyes ache with tiredness. There's a dulled feeling in her head like this is all happening in a dream and there's nothing she can do. Kuja's low chant finished and he gently bites her ear with his sharp teeth, almost like fangs.
'Be still, my pretty canary.'
He says it playfully, like he owns her. That disgusts her but her head is drooping, heavy, too tired, like she just wants to sleep forever.. .
Seven fish in the sway of the water
Six candles for a king's daughter
Five sighs for a drooping head
Four ghosts to gentle her bed.
Three owls in the dusk falling.
Two tales to be telling.
One spell for sleeping.
Quick as lightning he takes one arm away from her waist, grabs a dagger from a sheath at his hip and holds it to her throat, all in one quick, fluid movement. She can't utter a word, the need for sleep is all too great. He pushes the knife a touch harder, leaving a faint red mark. Tiny drops of blood begin to well up and trickle down her neck. She knows she should feel pain, she knows she should be scared, but all she can feel is the long low ache of exhaustion.
Kuja slides his other hand across the front of Dagger's body, and runs it up her side. his tomb-chilled fingers touch her face lightly.
'You're so beautiful, it's a terrible thing to have to do this,' he whispers in her ear. He's mocking her, she knows that, but what can she do now? It's over. All she wants to do is rest.. .
Kuja pushes the knife, gently, steadily, almost, almost, almost. Dagger's blood feels pent up in her throat, ready, waiting to flow in sweet release.
Quick, sharp cut.
All Dagger feels is nothing. Blackness comes up like a sweeping hand and grabs around her consciousness from the inside of her head. In an instant for her it is dark and she is free. It's a release just to let go of every tiny tense muscle and be disjointed fully at last, the end of wandering as a ghost with its corpse still to carry.
What Kuja feels is some sense of satisfaction as Dagger's head jerks forwad over his pale-skinned wrist. Garnet-red blood, gushing from her neck, staining her pure white sress, running down to his elbow, falling to the floor like gory rain. Her head hangs, useless, windpipe nealty severed, one half on either side of the knife.
Kuja pulls his hand with the knife away and she slumps, doubled over. Gently he lays her on the floor, smoothes her bloodstained gown like a burial preparaton. He surveys the body and bends down, prising open her left fist, closing her hand around the knife
Undoubtably, Queen Garnet committed suicide, broken-hearted. Zidane will return to only a gravestone and an empty room. No note, but, of course, it was he who broke her heart and it was his fault. He knows that, his friends know that. Each night when he tries to sleep her dead eyes will stare into his head and she will speak to him but he'll never know what she says.
She says 'It wasn't your fault.'
Tamarisk, trefoil, tormentil
Sleep rolls down from the crowded hill
A princess dreams of a silver pool
The moonlight spreads, the soft ferns flitter
Stilled in a shimmering drift of water
Seven fish dream of a lost king's daughter
Review please!
Sweet william, silverweed, sally-my-handsome
Dimity darkens the pittering water
On gloomed lawns wanders a king's daughter.
Dagger stares over the lake. Dusk's here and the atmosphere is dyed twilight-blue. The castle behind her is casting dark twisted shadows falling over the water. The lake is still, treacherous deep and black. There's a moon tonight, high and bright and set deep into the sky like the jewel in her pendant. Silence. Silence everywhere and it feels like its choking her. All there's been since Zidane had gone. Silence and lonliness. She should be happy with Kuja gone, but did Zidane have to go too? She stands alone, waiting for somethng to break the suffocating blanket of quiet; the soft coos of some birds, settling for the night, owls awaken, these birds who have remained here unaware for so long.
Curtains are clouding the casement windows
A moon-glade smurs the lake with light
Doves cover the tower with quiet.
She's wearing her white dress, long with tiny green flowers embroidered on the necline. She loooks like a lost spirit, wandering, waiting. Why is she wearing the dress anyway? There's no occasion, but it reminds her of that night a year ago when she first saw him, bright eyes and rushing emergy. Inwardly she curses herself for being so pathetic as to need him, miss him and wilt without him in this way., but she does and now she's angry with herself for her sadness, and Zidane for not being there. But she can't stay angry - just sad is what she stays, alone and unreachable within her cloud of tears.
Three owls whit-whit in the withies
Seven fish in a deep pool shimmer
The princess moves to the spiral stair.
Dagger sighs and wipes unstoppable tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Thre's nothing left for her until Zidane returns. She can sit on her meaningless throne for eternity, feeling alone and empty with no one to lift her spirits. She knows everyone is waiting for her to get married to someone, anyone as long as they're nobility, surely a queen can't cope on her own? They're wrong, of course they are, isn't she a summoner, hasn't she fought through so much more than lonliness? No. . . She will cope, or pretend to, and she'll never marry some soulless lord, but underneath it all it remains she needs Zidane. Oh, how can she let herself down and be so weak? Crying again, she turns her back on the midnight-coloured strip of dark water and moves towards the castle. Maybe tonight she'll sleep. But probably not, she hasn't slept properly since Zidane left. Whay little sleep she'd had was broken by horrible nightmares. Zidane's twisted body impaled and wound around the gnarled mossy roots of the Iifa Tree, his pale ghostly face visting her in the half-light before dawn, and however hard she hid her face in the tear-stained pillow that image would never leave her mind.
Slowly the sickle moon mounts up
Frogs hump under moss and mushroom
The princess climbs to her high hushed room
Dagger runs her hand over the bare stones in the castle walls as she climbs the tiny staircase, tightly wound around a tower. These bricks are old and damp, the only light they'd ever seen came form a guttering candle. She reaches the top of the stairs and pushes open her door. Hidden and isolated, her roomis where she likes to spend most of her time. Inside her room is meaninglessly grand, but it's grown dusty inside, mostly untouched for months. Se has no interest in anything and doesn't notice the grey dancing motes that settle and stir when she moves. She walks silently into her room. Dagger catches a glimpse of herself in the large ornate mirror above her mahogany dressing table. She's a little surprised - her skin looks grey, and her red swollen eyes have dark circles underneath them that look like black smudged charcoal.
Wait.
Someone else was in the mirror.
She looks again. No, there is no one there. Her room is empty, completely empty. But she had seen him. She had. Purple hair and quick liquid eyes and a cruel smirk playing around his mouth.
Kuja is dead.
He is, he cannot be here. She's imagined this just like she imagines Zidane's pleading corpse-face. Kuja is dead, Zidane is not.
Step by step to her shadowed tower
Water laps the white lake shore
A ghost opens the princess' door.
Kuja is here, there he is, standing behind her, closer. . .
Her eyes widen and she whirls around to face him.
Gone again. .
Suddenly her chamber is icy grave-cold. Her breath comes in misty tendrils drifting into the half-dark. She feels something here, she's not alone, she is being watched.
In an instant there are arms wrapped tight around her waist, from behind. . . Kuja's arms. He is chanting something by her left ear in a language he doesn't know, his breath freezing, deadly blows. Her eyelids are heavy and her eyes ache with tiredness. There's a dulled feeling in her head like this is all happening in a dream and there's nothing she can do. Kuja's low chant finished and he gently bites her ear with his sharp teeth, almost like fangs.
'Be still, my pretty canary.'
He says it playfully, like he owns her. That disgusts her but her head is drooping, heavy, too tired, like she just wants to sleep forever.. .
Seven fish in the sway of the water
Six candles for a king's daughter
Five sighs for a drooping head
Four ghosts to gentle her bed.
Three owls in the dusk falling.
Two tales to be telling.
One spell for sleeping.
Quick as lightning he takes one arm away from her waist, grabs a dagger from a sheath at his hip and holds it to her throat, all in one quick, fluid movement. She can't utter a word, the need for sleep is all too great. He pushes the knife a touch harder, leaving a faint red mark. Tiny drops of blood begin to well up and trickle down her neck. She knows she should feel pain, she knows she should be scared, but all she can feel is the long low ache of exhaustion.
Kuja slides his other hand across the front of Dagger's body, and runs it up her side. his tomb-chilled fingers touch her face lightly.
'You're so beautiful, it's a terrible thing to have to do this,' he whispers in her ear. He's mocking her, she knows that, but what can she do now? It's over. All she wants to do is rest.. .
Kuja pushes the knife, gently, steadily, almost, almost, almost. Dagger's blood feels pent up in her throat, ready, waiting to flow in sweet release.
Quick, sharp cut.
All Dagger feels is nothing. Blackness comes up like a sweeping hand and grabs around her consciousness from the inside of her head. In an instant for her it is dark and she is free. It's a release just to let go of every tiny tense muscle and be disjointed fully at last, the end of wandering as a ghost with its corpse still to carry.
What Kuja feels is some sense of satisfaction as Dagger's head jerks forwad over his pale-skinned wrist. Garnet-red blood, gushing from her neck, staining her pure white sress, running down to his elbow, falling to the floor like gory rain. Her head hangs, useless, windpipe nealty severed, one half on either side of the knife.
Kuja pulls his hand with the knife away and she slumps, doubled over. Gently he lays her on the floor, smoothes her bloodstained gown like a burial preparaton. He surveys the body and bends down, prising open her left fist, closing her hand around the knife
Undoubtably, Queen Garnet committed suicide, broken-hearted. Zidane will return to only a gravestone and an empty room. No note, but, of course, it was he who broke her heart and it was his fault. He knows that, his friends know that. Each night when he tries to sleep her dead eyes will stare into his head and she will speak to him but he'll never know what she says.
She says 'It wasn't your fault.'
Tamarisk, trefoil, tormentil
Sleep rolls down from the crowded hill
A princess dreams of a silver pool
The moonlight spreads, the soft ferns flitter
Stilled in a shimmering drift of water
Seven fish dream of a lost king's daughter
Review please!