ch: a nameless sea.
characters: others.
notes: forever a gift for shannon.
…
i. she doesn't believe in miracles
but watch the stars come out
…
This is the first night he hunkers down along the jagged shoreline, feet swinging over the star-reflected river, and she feels the cracks of invaded intimacy at his presence here, because she twines with the river each night, soaked to her spirit in the rippling, ink-splashed darkness of the water. She knows each constellation that is reflected in the current, each trickling tributary that runs shallow between homes.
She always comes to lay alms in the water and watch the leaves eddy down the stream in silence, but she is not alone, so she cannot. Instead, she watches him, clear eyes ticking over the rise and fall of his chest, the incessantly anxious twiddle of his thumbs.
He is foreign, an intrusion in the cycle of nights, and something cold burns at the tips of her fingers as she listens to the heavy sigh that drags his skeleton down into a broken huddle against the dock. And before she can embrace chilled thoughts of frightening him away, he is a white-blind silhouette under the moonlight, traipsing away.
It is these moments that she remembers: I had a life before this, before I met him.
…
She counts the days it takes for the half-moon to curve itself crescent and on the following day, he returns. It is by no stroke of luck that she pokes her fingers between the splintered cracks of the dock and glances through at him. He is a willowy figure with night-black fringes of hair sweeping back to a tail at the nape of his neck, he is storm cloud grey eyes that cannot settle still, and he is holding something between large worn palms.
The water swallows her shoulders and crests against her chin as she floats, steady ripples pouring out from her body. He falls down overhead into a sitting position and she barely hears the murmuring sound of his voice, a smooth silk being pulled through water, and strains to understand his words.
"…and I will finish by morning."
Something scrapes, drags, flicks into the water not far from her and she wouldn't dare to move into his sight when she does not want to be seen, but her eyes narrow on the curdle that floats towards her with gentle movements, the sway of the river.
It bumps against her fingers just as another scrapes and flicks into the water and from above her, she can hear the prolonged dragging noise. Her fingers close around a sliver, a curl of wooded bark, and she lets it bite underneath her nails longer than she should before she releases it.
She spends the night beneath the wood carver, floating in a sea freckled with stars and splinters.
…
She knows the space of two weeks' time because she counts the changes in the cycle of the moon and measures them with days. But tonight she sits on the dock wrapped in a royal wisteria dress with the hems soaked in the edge of the water, bare feet tiptoeing across the surface. She has cried with the burden of one thousand tears and she is tired, in all ways there are to be.
"I didn't know other people came here," a voice slips between her thoughts and stirs her, because she turns her head and tilts it up to look at him. His jaw is a bristle of dark stubble and his eyes are as prickly, as guarded as she senses. He stands with his feet shoulder width apart, gives every read of unapproachable that she can imagine. But there is still something about a wild tearstained woman in a beautiful dress in the middle of the night that keeps him from whipping out lashes of hesitance at her.
"I am always here," she says in a thick tone and turns her head again to stare at the bare blackness of the sky.
There is a sharp point to his voice. "I have been alone every time I've been here."
"I," she counters with her nails digging into the rotted wood of the dock, "am always here."
Silence leeches into the air and she smears her cheeks clean from any sign of distress. Her hair tangles in a bun atop her head and loose curls tickle the back of her neck, keeping her mind off of the steady burn of cloud-grey eyes needling into her. She knows nothing of this wood carver and wishes to know nothing, but he lingers paces away from her.
His steps are heavy and his body is heavier at her side, a constant, radiant heat blending between the tangential lines of their skin at all the points that they touch; their shoulders brush together and his thigh flattens against hers and he cradles a wooden block in his hands, a knife pinched between his thumb and index. His eyes fall to the side of her face but there is too much for her to articulate and not nearly enough air in her lungs to scream it out.
She watches him flick the curls of wood shavings into the water and dries her eyes completely.
…
He comes back the next day.
She isn't surprised. (She was waiting for him, after all.)
He sits down beside her at the edge of the dock with a mottled carving in his hands and she wrings her fingers into the rough texture of her usual dress. She had been elegant last night, she had brought part of her own life down to the river for the first time, and she wanted to believe it had changed everything right down to her companion.
But she knows she is ordinary and she rubs the coarse fabric between her fingers as a reminder. "What are you carving?" She mutes her thoughts by watching the slivers of wood peel from the surface. It didn't look like much, but her serenity was now tangled around curiosity, and the only way she could sate it was with these questions.
His eyes are still pools of water with reflections of rainclouds inside of them because she gets lost in them with alarming ease, clear and grey. "It's a toy boat." He wedges his thumb against the back of the knife in his hand and carefully strips away a section of wood. "For my sister's son."
It is the first and last question she will offer him. This is her nightly solace and underneath the oblivion-black sky, there is no moon to ripple luminescence over the water. Each star looks so deep set into the sky that the only lights glow from outside houses by the water.
She lets her eyes crest and roll along the horizon of the water, tracing each tiny wave that curls against the rocks, and it drags on for what feels like hours.
"Are you going to tell me your name?"
Negativity flows to the brim of her lips and rests in the shape of her face as she whips her head to the side. Her eyes lock onto his face, her brows draw in lines of disbelief, and it holds for one, two, three.
"I just thought…nevermind."
She stares hard into the side of his face even when he resumes his carving. "Why should I tell you my name?"
His fingers freeze over his block of wood and she twists her fingers into knots in her hair.
"I—I'll probably be out here a lot more often from now on. And…and you said you're always here."
Her mind shifts over several thoughts in the space of seconds before she answers. "A terrible reason," she punctuates offhandedly, "but you can call me Tlaloc." She clicks the syllables meticulously over her tongue and between her teeth, and it is he who stares into the side of her face now.
"Like the Fourth Sun."
"Like he who brought eternal rain to the world."
It is her favorite story, the one of the Five Suns, but especially the Fourth. Maybe it is something deep within her that wishes to curve cleansing hands around the world and wipe it clean, break open the clouds and spill rain across the landmasses.
Something connects in his mind because his eyes change; they darken, fill in with an even spread of emotions, but a smile narrows his eyes and rounds the rise of his cheeks.
"What terrible luck." She meets his gaze for seconds, revels in the sudden depth and intensity of his eyes before he speaks again. "For a rain goddess to befriend a wood carver's son."
…
ii. love like wading in the water deep
and love is like you're drowning me
…
Her mother's fingers rattle like bones through her hair. "You're beautiful," she says in that toxic-heavy way she does when her words wish to carry manipulative weight, "any man would be a fool not to fall in love with you, flower blossom."
It isn't her fault she pictures him, smiling so brightly that the moon glows on his lashes, whittling with soft fingers and careful slices.
She does not want to marry into gilded manacles; the last thing she wants is to be a trophy-prism wife. "Of course, mother."
There are knots of curls in her hair and slicks of red over her eyes, and she feels as though she could kiss blood off of her lips. Her mother traded vases and coins for this dress, a deep-sky violet that makes her skin luminescent bronze. She should feel beautiful, but instead she feels restless.
"Smile." Her mother rubs bitter fingers over her teeth, picking away at miniscule freckles of paint before prodding her thumbs against her cheeks. "The river water makes your skin so sallow."
To her, it makes her feel alive, but she knows her mother wouldn't want that.
"The governor and his son will be here soon, flower blossom." Her eyes are narrow and cold, but her voice betrays them by oozing plastic-fake sweetness. "Don't wander far."
She briefly entertains the idea of going down to the docks but the absence of presence keeps her rooted to her room. Maybe she can allow her mother to dress her and make her up, dark brown china doll, if she can wipe herself clean down by the river at night.
…
"We are not friends, okay?"
Heat floods her cheeks and she feels the rip, tear of his nails inside her wrist. It burns as the blood clings to her skin, swells out of bloody furrows.
"You're crying," he insists as if it matters. She must tell him that it doesn't matter, that better she drown in sadness than allow anger to swallow her heart-and-soul whole. "And we are friends, we are."
She rubs her bloody wrist against the dark drape of silk underneath her breastbone and ignores the burn that results from it. "You don't even know me, okay?" There is no question in her voice.
Just jilted, bitter reality.
He stutters incredibly and her eyes roll, delicate and glassy and wet.
"You can't avoid me; you won't stop coming here." He doesn't have to grab her wrist. She feels like he has when her feet root against the dirt and her beautiful violet dress swipes across the ground, but it is her own soul that grounds her.
And just like that, he stands in front of her in a show of pride. She reacquaints herself with the hook of his nose and the vibrancy of his clear eyes and the shavings of wood curled against his tunic.
He kisses her and it is clumsy and awful.
It is the first time she feels free.
So she pinches his chin to tilt his face down, coaxes his mouth open, and gives him time to learn the right way of things.
…
She is far from sure of anything. When she sits down on the dock underneath the frail light of the moon, she examines everything (his motives, her motives, her life, his life) but never anything all huddled together.
They are not together; they are as far apart as the land's edge and the expansive sky, vastly coexisting but never once touching.
Men are selfish, greedy little things. She is certain of one thing, that he will not steal any more kisses from her lips for the sake of calling them his own.
"You're here."
His whisper drags down her bare arms and for a moment she wants to teeter forward and splash into the water. (And he will probably try to save her, but she will probably try to drown.)
She doesn't want to, but she crawls onto her hands and knees, pushes herself to her feet. Her dress is tearing rust-red on one side, her hair half pulled up to one side of her head; she should feel something like pretty with rich curls neatly arranged with fancy clips, but there is nothing but empty cold spaces in her lungs. "I'm here, but I should go now."
She doesn't ever remember his boat being carved to completion, but she can see a window peeking out of one side, his fingers tucked inside of it. He quakes with shy indecision and she just needs to slip past him and go home.
(The funny thing is that she doesn't kiss him; she just happens to bump into his mouth with the crinkle of her own.)
"Are we still not friends?" He asks against the dart of her tongue on his lips and it is then that she realizes she doesn't even like this stranger and they have kissed, they have shared in this together.
"We can't be friends," her words whisper out in a sigh. Her mouth pulls away but her eyes stay locked on him, on the gentle pink swell of his lips. His fingers hook inside of the boat again.
Friends is dangerous, it is rushing river water silence and stolen things like kisses and breath and it is lovers.
She cannot. And she should not.
"How am I supposed to stop myself from kissing you then?" When he tilts his head, she can see the pinpricks of his stubble on his cheeks and breathe in the warmth of his scent. "Or how am I supposed to stop you from kissing me?"
I guess you can't.
She banishes that thought with wildfire rapid speed. "Control yourself."
"You weren't saying that last night." She hears the shock and hurt in his voice but the statement rings with bitter bravado in her head. (She slaps him across the face for it anyway.)
"Don't be a fool, boy," she hisses, and then she is gone. But she should have known better; it is the sky's temptation to kiss the earth twice with the glow of the sun.
…
Two kisses and she is mental.
Her hair soaks in the river water and the moon is only a crisp yellow glow in the sky, a fingernail hanging from the stars. She should have stayed in the water, stayed underneath the dock where he couldn't see her.
When he shows up, she floats back from the edge slowly, lets the chill of the water shiver through her bones. There is a heavy sigh from his lips and she can almost see it and the breath that curls like fog in the air in front of him.
Two kisses and he carves his wooden boat alone.
…
iii. daydreams of you
where we can hold hands and just be
…
She gives it a week. The water is graciously cold and she doesn't mind it because it distracts her from simple things. (Like the fact that he continues to come to the dock, even after a week.) She kicks her feet and floats with ease and the moon glimmers overhead, slipping between broken boards to glide across the water.
He sits on the edge of the dock and swings his feet back and forth with a slow ease. She contemplates swimming out into the open water, underneath his feet and twisting through the ocean, but she finds herself frozen as he begins to carve and toss wooden shavings into the water.
Something clatters on the dock overhead and she flinches.
"Hey," he mumbles and she stares up through the cracks as he picks up the thin shiv by its handle; his eyes focus and then widen and then, "hey!"
It's a long story, but he drags her out of the river, dripping water across the dock and bare feet slapping against the wood.
"I didn't know you were a river spirit." His laugh is teasing and he doesn't have much to offer in the way of warmth except his hands moving over her arms as she wrings out her skirts.
"I told you. I am always here." She tries not to smile but it breaks apart her lips with shining teeth.
He touches warm fingers to the tip of her face. "Stay out of the water, all right?" She must look a sight but his eyes don't move from her face, don't dissolve the look of adoration in grey gaze.
She shakes her head and sprays water over the both of them.
When he kisses her, it is like an offering.
…
Without the starlight dappled over his features, she almost doesn't recognize him.
But syllables click in the air, and, "Tlaloc," a name only she would recognize. And she isn't wearing her fine purple silk, but she is still adorned like a gem on the arm of that governor's son in the middle of the village square.
Her eyes pin onto his and speak volumes of their own, familiar stares and smiles contained in clear eyes.
The governor's son, Kenta, has a pale, shimmering grin for him, personally. "It's nice to see you're doing well." He relinquishes her arm to twist and face him, and it is her own strategic choice that leaves her face in the opposite direction. "I hope everything is coming along well enough for the festival."
A festival. "Perfectly."
She feels like an ornament strapped to his wrist when she is finally regarded with a nod and a smile that she returns, shaky. "The lady and I will see you and your father there, then."
She tips her head down in deference but her eyes are steadfast, even when he walks away.
…
"The festival?"
"I am a wood carver, you know." He looks down at her hand uncertainly, but he doesn't reach. Only part of her is grateful for it, but she doesn't speak. "I helped my father make some of the masks."
Her dress from earlier that day is still tangled around her legs, smooth scarlet fabric tight against her frame. Her hair is not elegant at all, stringy and loose, but she can slide into the water and float away, and that is all the feeling she needs to retain.
"Will you really go?"
She blinks. It should stand that she doesn't have a choice, especially when the governor's son plans to ask her in front of her mother, who would never refuse him. Her nod is hollow, but sturdy.
His smile tempers her nerves. "I'll have a special mask to wear, just for you then."
He leans until he's entirely too close and she wants to drag her lips across his, but something locks up in her bones. And he senses it, because he kisses the rise of her cheekbone gently, and walks away.
…
The star-light lanterns trace pathways through the center of the village, sparkle and glint off of the water as people walk along the organized vendors on the shore. The governor being in town with his son is great enough cause for a celebration, especially for a festival with luxurious foods and elegant masks and a night swaddled comfortably in the arms of summer breezes.
Her mother makes sure to spend more time on her hair tonight, curling each strand to perfection with impatient fingers and pins and heated combs over coals. And she feels pretty with war paint makeup and decorative shoes and a dainty tilt to her walk. Something about being on the arm of the governor's son makes her stomach curdle and turn over on itself, but Kenta is a gentleman in every way.
"Hey," his voice interrupts her thoughts, and she honestly doesn't mean to smile. "I brought my mask."
He is stunning, with dark curls of hair and clear steely eyes, and gripped tight between his hands is a grotesque smirk painted bone-white with expert hands. It is blue, like rushing water, and it soothes her completely. Her fingers crinkle as she grips the ends of the mask, pokes the teeth that stick out.
"It's pretty ugly." She laughs, but holds it up to her face regardless. "I thought, maybe, if I could carve a mask from rainwater and personify a storm, then maybe it would be impressive enough for you, Tlaloc." He still calls her that, and she doesn't know whether to be happy about it anymore.
Her fingers skim over the smooth polish of the wood and the snarling grin of the impish figure. "It is everything you said it would be," she says quietly.
It is dark on the beach but his fingers are pale, bone-thin against her dusky cheeks. The sky is clear but her head feels heavy, dripping, swaying+ with eternal rain cracked open from clouds inside of her skull.
She kisses him first, jaw working deeper and deeper, but he is the one who move away first, though his hand is still anchored on her waist. "Have fun tonight," he murmurs gently.
Her fingers burn where the mask had been tucked in the bends of her knuckles and her lips burn where his had touched hers.
…
She finds him before the festival is over, after she wipes the smudges of her lips into normal, pale color again.
"Come meet me on the docks?" Her whisper is almost inaudible, the tip of his head almost unnoticeable.
…
She can't bring herself to climb out of the water when she hears his footsteps on the dock. Instead, she drags her hair through her fingers and over her shoulders, wonders if she could surprise him. He sits on the edge of the dock again and she almost expects him to peek over the side and peer towards the underside in an attempt to see her.
(Well, almost.)
Footsteps sound overhead and between river water sloshing in and out of her ears, she hears snatches of gentle words, glances up to see feet huddled in close proximity.
And then there is a splash, and then there is a scream.
The scream is hers.
She swims strong against the fear turning acidic in the bottom of her stomach and she sees thin hands push down atop black hair. "You're both fools!" She should know the venom and disdain of her mother's voice but she looks like the harbinger of vengeance with paint streaks in her grey-black hair and the beautiful drape of violet cloth much like hers.
Her eyes freeze around the image of him underneath the water, swallowing up a ribcage full of water until he is as still as the cloudless night sky.
On the dock, she sees the wide brim of a hat with a veil sewed around it. On the dock, she sees an extravagantly detailed wooden boat.
…
iv. drain my heart of color
in a world without you
…
He drowns (her mother drowns him). She holds him in her arms when her mother wades out of the water as if she is thick with blood instead.
She floats with his body in the river and ducks her head down enough so that her tears are nothing but river tributaries.
…
She is a painter's daughter without the skill.
Messy, shaken fingers smudge their prints across the polished hull, dirty blue hues spread along the bottom and bright reds across the top.
She is no artist but she carries his masterpiece to the other side of the village. His mother, a woman whose bones cry from exhaustion, wraps her up in a hug. She expects hatred to waft off of her, holding the daughter of the one who wrung her son's air from his lungs, but there is nothing but sorrow. (Maybe she feels their kisses in her embrace, maybe she smells like him and fresh water, maybe there is love burrowed deep under her skin that lingers.)
His sister is incoherent but her son bounces on her hip, ignorant giggles drowning out the distress. He takes the toy boat in his tiny hands and waves it with a noise that sounds like train tracks.
She has given away everything she has.
(She has given away everything he gave her.)
…
She, too, is drowning.
She cannot go to the docks without being surrounded by curious, judging eyes. Everyone sends her stretched sad gazes and whispers about the wood carver's son and the painter's daughter and those poor darlings and her desperate mother and she is fixing to give her away to royalty.
She wants to burn that beautiful violet dress but instead she rubs scarlet blood red all over the front of it.
And then she pushes past them all and hurls it into the river.
…
Her new lifeblood is that beautiful boy. He is happy to go to the water's edge and skim the chipped paint of his boat through the froth on the shore.
His smile is crooked and clumsy like his and it drags a terrible ache through her chest. He is so much like his uncle, like Yori.
Funny how she learns his name once he is gone.
Once she can never call it.
"He liked you more than I've ever seen him like anyone," his sister says when she finds them where they always are at the crest of the river. "He always insisted he couldn't carve a gift in the house if we were around, but he never left until night."
"Hanako," she says, and blinks back tears at the sounds of infantile giggling, "I never got to tell him that my name…it's Hanako."
"Hana," his sister perforates the syllables, and for all the judgment she expects to see in her face, there is none. "He would have liked it."
She dips her hands down into the water and it is such an unfamiliar chill that she has to draw them back and warm them over. "He would have liked any name," she corrects sadly.
…
It is a miracle that she returns to the river so soon.
The water drags her down and bubbles in her mouth tragically. And she almost spits it out but the salt bites on the inside of her cheeks and she is crying, too.
She doesn't drown that day.
That is the miracle.
…
"I'm doing you a favor, Hanako."
It's been so long since her mother called her anything but beautiful, flower blossom, the pride and joy and apple of her eye. Her distaste runs bitter in the back of her throat but she doesn't take any offense. A necklace is draped around her neck from behind and fastened, and her hair is a complex spiral of curls stacked in the center of her head.
"You are doing nothing for me." Her tone is the acerbic tone she expects a woman of politesse would have, the way she will become when she is to be married the same day.
She is bitter because everyone will be at this wedding, even Yori's family. They will all watch her give herself away to someone a shadow less worthy than their son, watch her vow to lies because she has already promised herself, her heart, to someone else.
"You look beautiful." It doesn't feel like a compliment at all. "So smile, you only get one wedding day."
She would rather die than get married.
…
v. let them live, let them live
before they come for us
…
It is by the water she spends her mornings, making empty promises to sea foam waves and offers to merciless gods to snatch her away from this Spirits-forsaken place.
One day, she will walk the river looking for his restless soul.