i know you won't give me the generic stuff, and will tell me the truth, as well as what i can improve on/fix/edit/etc. don't be gentle - let me have it! if i couldn't take tough love, i wouldn't be in the field i'm in now. ;D
a quick intro and request: i've found that, despite the many other, stronger, more independent and witty women in Shakespeare, Ophelia is the one that will always fascinate and worry me. there's something about her tragic end that leads me to believe that it was intentional.
also, i would ask that you would look up "ophelia's death" on youtube and listen to it, while reading this or not. it's a beautifully melancholic piece, and seems to describe Ophelia's dark end far better than i ever could. gorgeous piano and strings. just a good, classic bit of music...
okay. i've stalled enough.
~x~
Down, down to the water she stumbles with her flowers, laughing and humming a vaguely unbalanced song to herself. She stretches out a lily-white hand, slender and delicate, and flits it outward and palm up. It is a sanctuary of sorts, this stream, surrounded by willows and moss, sheltered and secluded and safe. She has no fear here.
"Doubt thou, the stars are fire," she quotes quietly, and a mad spark gleams in her wide eye. "Doubt, that the Sun doth move..." She pushes her foot into the water, feeling the coolness seep between her toes and along her heel before creeping upwards, to her ankle, her calf, her thigh. She is waist deep in water before she fully realizes it.
Her head tilts back and she closes her eyes, her lips parting slightly. The sun filters down through her hair like warm hands, and she cannot help but lean into the touch. The water creeps higher and she gives a little hitched gasp at its sharpness, its unfeeling, yet smooth persistance.
Her dress is looser now, floating in the water, and the flowers she's gathered drift outward over the wavelets, released from her twining fingers. Her bodice is uncomfortably hot, and her sleeves cling wetly to her arms, chaining her, holding her back even as her strewn blooms bob away.
The noise around her dwindles to nothing but the water and her own harried breathing. She laughs, quick, short, bordering hysteric, but the line between reality and hope blurs with her eyesight, and now water burns down her cheeks, dragging over her skin, leaving stinging, salty trails until at last meeting with the cool bubbling brook around her chest.
She makes a mewling noise, pressing her lips back together, tasting her own sadness and bewilderment. The water reaches her collarbone, enveloping her shoulders. Her feet feel out the map of the smooth rocks of the bottom of this bottomless stream. She sees the shore, a world and a stone's throw away, but she has no desire to return to it. Instead, she presses through the yeilding liquid, and it begins to lap at the hollow of her neck.
She sighs, expelling all the air in her lungs, then inhales slowly, filling them back up. The water ripples, and a breeze shifts the willow's limp branches. The light stream pours itself over her ears and cheekbones. The sounds of the earth become a watery muffled hum, and then the coolness spills over into her mouth, pools into her nose.
She is suffocating, quietly, painfully, but she has been dead for a very long time.
She opens her eyes in a repressed panic, searching for guidance, for permission, but the point of no return has been passed. The sparkling water closes over her still-gazing eyes, and for several minutes, she hangs in limbo, the tips of her toes entangled in the weeds in the mud, her arms outstretched and feeling the swirling currents with a frightened pleasure.
Her hair, like a halo, sinking and gliding about her face, lightly traces her forehead and cheek and neck, gentle and soothing. It brushes her lips, and she nearly chokes, but the liquid has filled her up where she has been empty, and though her throat constricts, she is more alive in dying than she ever was before.
In the last moment, the watery light gives her skin a glow so pure that her veins pulse, fragile, under her thin, pale skin. She smiles, lips parting and curling up, and no more water whirls into her. She is balanced, at peace with the stream and herself, her clothing and hair wafting about her ethereal body.
I am an angel, she thinks with childlike wonder, and then the cerulean blue darkens to indigo, then to midnight. At last, the sun blinks once through the flickering water-light, and blessed darkness encompasses her form.
Blissful drifting, an instant of no regret, and Ophelia floats free.