The heat, Delirium observes, as she wades through the feversickness of the sun, is unbearable. If she had skin it would be boiling (she boils, red curls bursting forth in painful waves of lava from her skull).
The humidity, Delirium reflects, is embracing. She feels good. She feels wild and free, and the sun is blistering. Her eyes are molten in this lighting. Starlit, for the furious sun is a star for all its gaseous bluster.
Good. She feels good; there is nothing more to the world than this. For the first time in a million centuries she concentrates. She darkens her skin.
"What," the voice is unmistakable, slurring and sneering messily with c(unt)ontempt, "are you doing?"
"Oh, Desire."
She wonders about clothing, about her own which is her skin and is not (she changes it, it changes her; plaid tweed pants which itch, silky blouses which touch her chest and make her shivery until she begins to sweat, though she does not sweat).
She wonders about Desire's clothing, about the lean white lines of Desire's legs.
Flirting slowly, voice shades of black and white, Desire's tongue darts from between two full lips.
"Having fun are we?" Sisterbrother wonders. Touching and taunting, those lips pressing gently to the soft skin behind Delirium's listening ears.
The heat is glorious and the joy which white-Delirium exudes gives birth to a thousand imaginations.
Desire's skin is like silk and Delirium feels as if she is encased inside Desire's silk cocoon. Flexing and writhing with euphoria from where she is cradled deep within Desire's being.
Delight had been born from a cocoon, had risen on wings of starlight and mercury.
"I was courted by a star once," Delight recalls as Delirium and Desire begin a dance of bodies.
"As have we all," Desire replies, a hand tracing the curve of sister Del's thighs. "However, your suitors all went mad for love of you, mine with lust. Dream's starling lovers know all too well that he cannot be held onto. Who does that leave, sister? Destruction? His namesake curses him worst of all. My twin? An unrepentant necrophiliac and voyeur. Destiny and Death? Who could tempt the likes of them, certainly not you or I."
Delirium floats free in an explosion of giggles. Delight's tendrils wrap around her, like fingers splayed across her ribs, pushing up against the curve of her small breasts.
Desire kisses her throat, and the sisters weep and wail at the realization of their barren bodies.
"What will be born from me?" Delirium moans, sinking into madness.
Desire embraces her, kisses the tears from her eyes, licks them up like jewels of candy.
"Abandon, my sweet sister. Abandon."
And it is sweet, Delight's cry of orgasm is like an eagle's hunting screech.
all the white, all the white horses
Despair loves her sister. Her twin she loves, desperately and unwillingly, how she loves the broken souls her twin leaves out for her to scrounge.
But Delirium she loves, for sweet Del has already suffered so much. Delirium understands Despair's longing, Despair's frustrations. She understands about Desire. Like sisters, they draw strength from one another.
Like siblings, Desire loves to take all that Despair holds dearest, yet Despair would give everything to Desire. Even Del, mismatched and tattered.
"It hurt Desire most of all," Delirium is whispering as she tenderly strokes the rats. She is not frightened of this world. Her beloveds all know the taste of despair. It is the bite to Delirium's syrup-sweet potion which brings them back for more. "The first twin was such a part of Desire's heart… that chamber was flooded with blood for days and you should have heard how Desire went mad with the loss."
Despair knows in that way in which her beautiful twin can never hide anything from her. While Desire accepts her, loves her as a twin, Desire does not know her and resents the pale comparison she makes.
"And you?" Despair inquires, brave with this sister that she loves for her pain. Death is too well, too gentle, and too responsible. She is a sweet older sister to be feared and to be respected.
Delirium disappears into the mist, losing herself to the disassociation of its particles. From the windows, a woman weeps and a man takes the slow procession to the gallows.
"You're my sister," Delirium declares in laughing solemnity.
And so, when Desire calls upon its twin to watch the proceedings, Despair sees Delirium's hair spilled like blood all around her. Despair watches and hungers, hungers for Delirium's suffering and for Desire's cruel regard.
The steel sharpness of her envy and her sickness is satisfying to her. The pins of her broken desires bleed, her own stigmata and penitence, her foreplay.
Delirium loses herself to the fever creeping from Desire's loins to her own. Her shape melts and molds, chimerical and writhing with only the constancy of ache and desire that kind sisterbrother gifts to her with all its heart.
Love in Desire expression, but not its eyes, it turns to regard its twin, to include her in this orgiastic blasphemy, incest and power and so much lust. Perhaps Desire takes lust as synonymous enough.
Desire's kiss is acrid, but tastes of sugar water at its edges. Delirium lies still and blissful, spread open on her siblings' altar. Despair touches her unhesitatingly. She feels how Delirium does not sweat, and how her flesh, her body in all its forms, is cold and clammy like a corpse.
and my mayflowers and meadow grass
Dream's voice whispers of dust. His eyes tell stories The Madman of Layla, The Lady of Shalott.
But it is his spirit which spreads raven wings and flies, not his lovers'.
So much like himself, muse of Layla that deadly Desire, and commiserate of that poor cursed Lady Delirium. Like himself, they do not grow half-sick with shadows, for they are the Endless, rooted as they are in the balance.
Sometimes, he thinks, family really does know best.
Death comes to him in reason and content, he loves her for triumphs, life giver and death dealer, she has made her peace.
He is to her her Hypnos, another name in his pantheon of forms and thoughts. He is her brother, they have no mother but the emptiness of nothing and he is destined for the heartache of his unrequited loves and to tumble in an explosion of wax and feathers from his happiness.
Ah yes, the dreamer, for all his stories, he never takes his own advice.
He has learned he is not above the humans. He too is frightened in the face of happiness.
And perhaps it is his own son which turns his eyes back towards his family, his affections rekindled and renewed, for they understand.
When they call upon him, he does not turn them away, no matter what his mood.
Delirium has grown beautiful beneath his attentions, smiling at his presence and if he listens to her flutter of words, he finds sometimes he understands as only family can.
His son… denying Orpheus had nearly stolen the spark of change from him. The tears he shed brought back to him what Delirium so delightfully calls, "His Dream-is a-nice-big-brother-ness."
She speaks in the same fluctuation of pop culture as Death does and Dream finds the similarity between his sisters to be endearing.
He kisses her beneath a tree of bright pink flowers, like some Asian fantasy from the days of the Jade Palace.
She does not understand him when he speaks about the ages of Stone, of Brass. She is a creature of the infinite and eternal moment. Dream, like his brothers, is always about what has come before, of tradition and of timelessness.
"But I understand you, big brother," Desire sends on the air. "You desire her, you desire a perfect companion. Why not just… dream one up?"
Dream will not play these games, he has seen all the endings of undiluted desire, and he likes not a one of them. "Because you too are my family, you too understand," he replies.
"Do I?" Desire wonders, all cat and flirtation, sharp ringing intelligence and a dangerous streak of destruction. Like sister, like brother. But it is rare to win this moment from Dream, in this game they have been playing since the story of Lilith and Eve was first told.
They kiss like a fairytale and go to greet their littlest sister, hand in hand.
Delirium bursts into a cloud of liquid sunshine when Desire kisses her cheek with warmth and familiarity.
This is family, these are Delirium's loves and perhaps that eases her pain for a while.
They eat together, Dream so enamored by the tradition of fete. There is wine which tastes like a forgotten fruit and there are greens and spirits all laid out before them. Delirium lovingly plays with a little spirit on her plate before she eats it.
Desire can, of course, eat nothing but hearts.
They talk about things, Dream tells old stories, and Delirium mumbles new ones born in the minds of mortal things, patched together from Dream's knotted world of tales and strings. Desire flirts and innuendos, taking out a long cigarette with a pink filter, a convenient sacrifice to the sensations while in polite company.
All suppers end and Delirium takes both their hands, loves them with her touch, with every fiber of her cracked mind that she can call together. It is their desires which lead them to touch her deeper, to imprint more closely that they are the Endless and she is one of them.
Dream tells her stories about the bridge of birds and about the tree of life, his words seep into her, and fill places in her imagination with uniformity. She holds to him, lets him inside of her and feels exposed, but safe.
Desire takes its prize from Dream, sibling rivalry fulfilled for now. It is smiling at its little sister as it says throatily, "I believe in this family too."
A tendril of love, sweet sweet Del knows what a liar Desire is.
Dream knows not just what he has done.
Delirium misses her brother in these moments. With his memory as her weight, she sinks into her sadness, losing her way and descending deep into the blackness where that silly talking dog that smells of her brother will find her again.
She is still cursed for Delight's beauty and no one can save her.
She sits down, weary with pain, and distracts herself with the minds of mortal things.
Standard Disclaimers.