The Butterfly Dreams, Always
Oblivion gave people the chance to conceive veiled fantasies. Among other things. Riku/Sora, Axel/Roxas, Marluxia/Naminé. Pre-CoM.
But the devil never offers her candy.
xoxoxoxo.
tiny naughts and crosses line the edge of her thumb. golden zeroes. black exes. all exact and identical. her palm is a mess of red; sticky and cakey like drying nailpolish. half a pulpy crayon lies under her chair, forgotten. powder, whiteyellow and smelling of dust and roses, is settled over her eyelids and cheeks. she thinks she's scrubbed it all off her face, but she's wrong a little. even so, it doesn't trouble her any. just like any bated whisper, her fingers find the imaginary trail of rusted metal chains around her ankles and she traces them with her right forefinger. the make-believe chains lead her, as she crawls on hands and feet slowly, to the doorknob at the end of the silent room. she wonders if the pale-hued door is locked, and doesn't try opening it. it's midnight that she gets to try. today, it is only yesterday—the past, the present. she's sure there never will be a midnight in the near future.
she can smell dust and roses in her hair. it makes her sick to her stomach; makes her want to heave and throw up her insides.
she sinks to the floor, props her tiny back against the barricaded doorframe, stares into the whiteness of the room and thinks to herself in sepia…
petit corneille.
An ill-made crane sits in his palm like an innocent crow, all angular and sharp-edged. It's created from flimsy, dyed-black paper. Even so, he's rather proud of his work and sets it gently on the tabletop, between his mug of cold peppermint tea and a copy of the Holy Bible. He hastily picks up his feathered quill, loads it with ink and scrawls something on a scrap piece of paper in rushed calligraphy. It starts out almost illegible and full of loops, finally ends in "-Birthday. iloveyou. -fromRiku". Then he wonders if boxed candy will suit the occasion better.
He shrugs belatedly and folds the note in half, quarters it, places it on the bible. He picks the cranecrow up and artfully puts it in the large, nondescript cardboard box situated on the ground, where ninety-nine hundred other cranecrows sit, staring lifelessly at nothing. Then, he closes the lid of the box and sticks the note on top haphazardly.
Eventually, he slinks into bed and blows his bedside candle out.
-
quasi scherzando—
Early morning sunlight enshrouds the surrounding landscape, save their one little spot. Pollen-filled air is drawn into her yawning mouth. Her pinks lips pout a little after. But then Sora kisses them softly and sweetly and she smiles into the kiss. There's music in the background from somewhere far off in the village of Metzengerstein—something by Beethoven, maybe, or Wolfgang Amadeus—and so he thinks it's okay to thread his fingers through her red hair and hum along. Of course, her hair is very nearly purple-blue in the shadows of the tree they are lying under. But slivers of sunlight are only just now piercing one-by-one through the dark jade-tinted teardrop leaves as the white clouds start undulating overheard.
"Tomorrow," he tells her, kissing her brittle fingers lovingly.
"Tomorrow," she agrees, head pillowing against his chest.
The wind picks up. Somewhere, the music fades away and eventually dies. And Kairi somehow falls into a shallow slumber.
-
(Metzengerstein)
"Ev'rybody has a dream," the man nods to his companion, setting down his violin carefully and reaching for one of the chocolate biscuits, neatly arranged according to size, on the china saucer that has been solicitously placed on the antique veranda table in the middle of the glass palace courtyard. "Everybody has a dream," he says again, flicks the golden hair out of his face, wistfully eyes a passing anise swallowtail—papilio zelicaon. "Most of 'em are the same as everybody else's. But mine's diff'rent."
"What is your dream, my lord?" his companion, a tiny man dressed smartly like a butler, asks after a moment of brief and contemplative silence.
Demyx smiles a little sadly at Zexion, eyes like the endless and troubled waters of a deep sea.
"Always want'd t'be a musician. Nev'r the heir to the throne of Metzengerstein."
Zexion fidgets a little and looks down his nose, adjusts his necktie.
"Some dreams just don't have a habit of coming true, sir."
"'fraid you'd say that," Demyx mutters.
The swallowtail curiously lands on the brazilwood of his violin bow and stays there for awhile, sunning its delicate wings.
-
tomorrow.
The small, hole-riddled potato sack banner tacked to the wall says 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY SORA' in blood red paint with irksome pomp and grandeur. Only blood red because it's Kairi's favourite colour. And anyway, she ran out of all the other colours in her precious paint box (except yellow and green, but nobody ever likes those colours). And everyone is now seated in a small circle, laughing away as they watch the birthday boy open his presents one by one by one by one;
a candleholder from Belle,
a vintage timepiece from Alice,
a crystal windchime from Cinderella,
a clay flower vase from Megara,
a bronze thimble from Aurora,
a silver bell from Jasmine,
a freshly-baked mince pie from Wendy,
a small bag of marigold seeds from Selphie,
a bouquet of wildflowers from Kairi (along with a card that says 'I love you, my darling'),
and,
"What's this?"
Sora lifts the nondescript cardboard box—clearly the largest and least adorned gift in the pile—and shakes it. He hears muffled tumbling of many somethings inside. So he opens it excitedly, at first completely ignoring the messy note stuck on the box's lid.
What he uncovers is a thousand rainbow-coloured paper cranes.
"Oh!" he exclaims, and scratches his head a little, almost staining his fingers a chocolate brown.
Finally, not knowing what else to say, he flips the cardboard lid over and squints to read the messy note.
It says—
"DearSora. haveaHappyFifteenth—"
Clack.
chronological.
… butterfly wings unfold, powdered eyelids flutter open. a noise has startled her back to the present. she scrambles away hurriedly from the foot of the door and goes back to sit on the waxen chair in the corner of the room quickly, smooths her rumpled dress and straightens her back primly.
then, he enters—
and watches her hungrily for a long moment. and she says nothing. satisfied, he leaves the room and shuts the barricade behind him noiselessly. she knows she smells strange ardour and deceit amongst the soft scents of cherryroses and frisky thunderstorms and briefly wonders why the fire's climbing higher and higher to a place it's never been to. her thoughts wander off track a little to notions of brass keys and lightbulbs and she shakes her head sorrowfully.
her shackles are still wound tightly around her ankles, though she does not see them. so, she scratches at her eyelids and goes back to dreaming again.
this time, she sees smoke and mirrors in her mind like twilight. and her world transforms into echoes of heaven.
…
(Berlifitzing)
When he recalls, he thinks maybe he first met him there. The little boy. Small, frail, pretty, blond… and much too innocent for what was probably his own good. The village square, cobblestoned and patterned, had been crowded with scarfed women and milling farmers and milk carriages. But Axel clearly remembers seeing the boy standing in the middle of it all, shoulders pulled back and beautiful eyes lifted to the sky, as though offering a prayer to the gods above.
He's never seen the boy in the small city of Berlifitzing before. And he's never seen such a bizarre sight. A fish out of water, maybe, would be less eccentric. But the scene is so exquisite before him that he doesn't quite care. Fifty-seven days now, and he's seen the same thing happen fifty-six times over. Same time, same place, same posture, same defiant glare at the sky, same beautiful eyes,
same little boy.
And on some of those days—days where golden sunlight artfully pierces through dark roiling clouds and falls exactly where the boy stands—Axel will swear to you that he can see partially-unfurled wings, elusive and ethereal.
-
Mephistopheles;
The first time he goes up and talks to him (in the middle of Spring, maybe, when filmy soap bubbles and the aroma of freshly-baked bread permeate the air) is around about the last time he goes up and talks to him. He approaches steadily, almost as if in a daze, stops dead in front of him, and says, "Excuse me, but, I have to know. —areyouanangel?"
Startled out of a reverie, the boy looks at him, almost too quickly, replies, "Um, pardon?"
"Are you an angel?"
"I…" Eyes dart to the floor uncertainly, then back up again, burning bright and blue with hints of bruises. "What does it matter to you?" he whispers bleakly. And the boy is actually looking into the sky above and not into Axel's face, really.
And Axel doesn't say anything (because there isn't anything much to say), just swoops down and kisses him hard on the mouth. Because it's what he's always wanted to do since he's laid eyes on him.
When he pulls back, he grins at the boy and tells him a secret.
"Well, I've never kissed an angel before."
The boy, lips still slightly parted, twin windows of darkened sapphire glinting through half-blinds, breathes in quietly.
"I'm Axel," Axel says.
"I know."
"Of course you would," Axel murmurs, fingers touching the porcelain curves of pale cheekbones. "Do you have a name?"
The boy leans into the touch, laughs a tinkling laugh and says, "I'm Roxas."
"Where do you come from, Roxas?"
And glassy eyes bleed purple-blue.
"Nowhere."
-
"SHADOWS."
Runaway trains. It is what they are, now, atop the crisp linen sheets of Axel's small divan. The musty air is filled with soft cries, breathy moans and ragged panting. Nothing but pinpricks of candlelight glisten off sweat-laced bodies and half-lidded eyes in the sheer darkness of the room.
Little sinful noises escape Roxas' puffy lips as Axel's lean fingers play along his collarbone and sweatslick chest and ribcage and soft stomach and smooth thighs. And it's Axel who offers him gentle murmurs of hush, love, hush and you're so beautiful.
Sometimes, Roxas' eyes would be wide open and staring up into Axel's shadowy face. And other times, his eyes would roll back so only the whites show.
And eventually, arching and writhing underneath Axel's searing body, Roxas spills, and his vision goes white, and everything is terribly quiet around him as he screams and screams and contracts tightly around Axel so Axel grips at the underside of his thighs firmly and cries out into the night as well. And then they're both underwater, drowning in each other's air.
&
It is later, when the candles are all burnt out and they're both drowsy and close to sleep in each other's arms, that nimble fingers brush over fine, rusty-black spidery scars that run right across Roxas' abdomen, from hip to hip.
"What happened here?" Axel mumbles quietly, tracing each jagged line delicately.
Roxas' eyelids flicker. "I… fell."
"Did it hurt when you fell?"
Roxas twitches at this and for a split second, Axel envisions broken wispy feathers, insubstantial and delicate and every single one twisted and bent at the oddest of angles, pooled about the boy's bony shoulders.
"Only a lot," Roxas whispers back, semi-translucent aphrodisiac dribbling down thin cupid-bow lips and puddling onto Axel's chest.
-
((domino pieces—))
"I used to be an angel, you know," the boy admits some days later (when he's seated in a pool of sunlight in the middle of the village square, uncaring of the people milling around), in Axel's lap and wrapped in Axel's arms.
His companion gives a soft grunt of acknowledgement, like he's sort of figured it out already. Then he asks,
"So, what are you now?"
And Roxas is silent for a very long moment.
"Only human," he says at last. "Or maybe not even that."
And Axel kisses Roxas on the head and says nothing, because maybe he doesn't care what Roxas is and what Roxas isn't.
angelfishes.
she colours the sky red, the sea green, the clouds yellow, the mountains blue.
(A SANCTUARY. THEIR SANCTUARY.)
and then she draws in little pretend-hearts all over the page. and not one not two not three not four not five not six not seven and eight not nine not ten not eleven not twelve with thirteen not fourteen. not zero. and she has a fake smile-frown etched on her face while she does this, like she thinks everything is a puzzle in disguise. and maybe it is, really, but she doesn't want to think that far. her hands tingle and itch. the yellow clouds reflect into green waters and the red sky kisses blue mountains.
and then—
knock knock knock knock knock.
a muffled sing-song "liiittle Naaah-minaaay" disrupts her thoughts and she cuts the side of her tongue with her teeth. she knows who it is, so she hastily scribbles her drawing out with black black black, turns the page over and hunches in her seat and looks at nothing but the floor.
the white door creaks open. a head (red sky, green water) appears round the corner, and then a body (black, black, black).
"hey, kid," axel greets her, epitome of carbon-copied cheerfulness so very out-of-place here in the omnipresent silence. "the lord of the castle wants you to have this." and he hands her a bouquet of twenty white lilies—like it's her funeral—and almost half of them are dead (charred and burnt and swinging limply in the air).
he smiles innocently, eyes glinting snake-like, and leaves without saying anything more. (even though he's already said so much that his soundless words and pitiful thoughts fill up her crowded mind and almost half her sketchbook.
but there's still so much hidden.)
eva, N'minyáy—
The daughter of King Xemilli Nas von Zengerstein is not happy. She feels like she's living in a cage of ersatz diamonds, seeing the same impassive stone-faced inhabitants of this hollow bastion day to day. Golden harps, silver flutes, bronze-tipped quills, curtains of silk and velvet runners everywhere. It smothers the poor princess in an ocean of avarice.
So she runs away from Metzengerstein with only the clothes on her back.
-
Armageddon.
And somewhere in Berlifitzing, it's the End Of The World for Axel, because Roxas—angel, fallen from Heaven, not-quite-human, devil, demon, evil creature, Satan, LUCIFER, Mephistopheles—disappears into the flurry of a storm one night and he never comes back.
And to Axel, everything that's been teeter-tottering on the edge of affection, adoration, worship melts and disintegrates into oblivion at the same time.
-
bene-(malevolence).
Two years and Metzengerstein has a new ruler: the successor to the throne, Prince Demisaiah Ryx von Zengerstein (though he likes to be known as Demyx). Prior to his inauguration, he's composed several symphonic pieces, including The Kingdom of Water Overture #9. He has also been through meticulous instruction of sovereignty. And Zebediah Xion (fondly christened Zexion) has long since been watching over the blue-blooded prince. They've been nigh inseparable for years.
The prince's dearest sister has now been missing for seven hundred and thirty days. And her subtle presence has all but been forgotten by the stony people of the glass palace.
-
Ciarán's lament.
Sora knows what he's doing is probably wrongwrongwrong. But he doesn't believe he can think about right or wrong now, because surely this is not wicked nor evil. This cannot be. Not when he's clutching onto fistfuls of silver hair and biting breathlessly at sweetly swollen lips and sucking at the nape of Riku's neck.
This isn't a sin, he repeats to himself over and over, again and again.
"You know, you're not mine to keep," Riku tells him gently, fingers splayed across Sora's hips. "You're not mine to hold."
Tears trickle down Sora's chocolate eyelashes. "I know," he mumbles against Riku's warm chest. He can smell something like peppermint tea. "I know."
"She'll want you back."
"I know, I know. But, but Kairi… she's… she—"
sanctuaries.
—she wants the heartless blossom to go away;
go away go away go awaaaay. wants him to walk out of the room, wants him to erase the lovebites on her neck, wants him to stop smiling that terrible smile, wants him to stop stripping her hollow with his smouldering gaze, wants him to just leave her to die, wants him to commit suicide,
wants him to justkissherpleaseandthankyou.
and then go away.
but she never has the resolve to say anything whenever he's around, whenever he tears her sketchbook out of her hands and drops it to the floor, whenever his hair tangles with hers like this, whenever he starts touching her tenderly, harshly, soullessly. like this. and there is nothing left in her lungs as he drags a tongue down her face, tastes dusty-rose pollen and the ghosts of tears on her cheeks.
it's not unexpected that he attempts to pour salt into her open wounds later when he has her pushed up firmly against a wall. "i want you to know, little button seedling," he whispers wickedly into the pink shell of her ear as his hands furtively explore her breakable body, "that no matter how hard you try, you will never dream of life."
his eyes are frigid and molten at the same time. and his body is ruthless and gentle. she's never known it to be anything else. it is sooner rather than later that he takes off her white summery dress. and when he has her lain upon the floor (her naked back digging against a bed of thorny roses, creeping vines slithering against the insides of her damp thighs), his tongue slides hotly against hers, his fingers pluck laboriously at hardened buds, his length thrusts deep and relentless inside her. she squeezes her eyes tightly shut; brings a hand up and bites down hard into it to stop her from panting and screaming and crying and moaning darkly.
"you're wrong."
somewhere in the middle of it all, in flickering moments of coherence and rationality, she breathes silent words into her crayon-smeared palm, inhaling crumbs and fragments and scents of red paraffin and wax.
"i always dream of life. many of them. many, many, many lives. all beautiful and all sad and
all. very. real."
and somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks that maybe what she tells herself is not really even a lie.
(because she reminds herself that there are beautiful, faceless characters behind her blue eyes.)
(because… maybe if she believes real hard, it's they who dream of her. not the other way around.)
Quinoa de Castilla
The princess returns to Metzengerstein ten years later, and she's different, with dark-rimmed eyes and rouged cheeks and sunkissed skin and exotic flowers in her flaxen hair. She is accompanied by a stunningly beautiful stranger. And his smile is secretive and strange and strongly intoxicating. He smells of cocktails and nectarines.
They stop for three days to stay at The Silent Inn, just two miles east of the glass palace. The proximity of home brings back her nightmares of diamonds and statues and harps and flutes and feathers and silk and velveteen carpets. But her beautiful stranger fends them off with deliberate kisses and soothing whispers.
"Little flower girl, you are my princess, not theirs."
-
//Frank-en-stein…
She conjures up the replica of a phantom with a ball of silver yarn, a couple of green pebbles and lots of paraffin and wax; gives him life and love and wingless desires and feeds him false hope. Only because the beautiful stranger tells her to. He says, "they will serve him well, the pitiful marionette. He has nothing to lose, anyway." And she only obeys the man willingly. Because the beautiful stranger loves her so very, very much.
(And there aren't even make-believe shackles around her ankles today.)
-
aubergine dreams—
It is not entirely her fault that her flawless creation finds and annihilates him.
Him—Zebediah Xion—explodes into monochrome sparks and ninety-nine hundred butterflies—all of them black-and-white swallowtails. And then, there are anguished screams echoing out of the throne room as though the glass palace is dissolving into rainbow melodies and musical notes.
The air is filled with "youkilledhim, youkilledhim, youkilledhim!"
-
fithos lusec wecos vinosec.
Within the hour, the crowned king of Metzengerstein declares the evil butterfly witch (his sister, but he doesn't know it's her, because she looks like a harlot wench) to be burnt at the stake until nothing but the insides of her eyeballs and the cinders of her brittle bones remain. But, within the minute, the evil butterfly witch's beautiful stranger says to her with ferocious intensity:
"We'll run away. We'll run away to Oblivi—Berlifitzing," and his eyes are gleaming like that of molten ice. (And he never made that slip—Cover it up, she screams in her dream, cover it up).
"Yes. Alright," she replies with a faulty, courtesan smile, eyelids fluttering like paper-thin wings.
And hand-in-hand, they flee the kingdom.
-
[désir / noir]
There they stand, at the altar of Berlifitzing's largest cathedral, painted saints and divine angels smile down at them from purple-blue windows.
"… do you, N'minyáy Eva von Zengerstein, fairest maiden princess of all the lands, take me to be your husband?"
"I do. And do you, Margrave L'shia, my one and only true love, take me to be your wife,
till death do us part?"
"I do."
"—and be our hearts, from this thy holy hour, Bound each to each, like flower to wedded flower…"
Reverend Joachim du Nevex smirks down at them both.
"I now pronounce you—"
-
one decade later.
Berlifitzing and Metzengerstein are at war.
"—dead."
midnight.
quivering wings are crushed beyond recognition, wet trails leak down to her chin and marluxia caresses her cheek with pollen-coated fingers, looks cruelly into her beautiful blue eyes, and tells her.
he tells her,
"today, my little rosebud princess, today is finally the day you will make him—
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—forget
everything."
You may kiss the bride.