Disclaiming... disclaiming ...

Moonlight slips like treacle through the pane of glass. I cannot sleep.

I feel the hum of Felicity's rage crackling on my skin. Yes, she is awake, and so am I. I could easily tiptoe down the corridor and round the corner and perhaps knock quietly on her door and she would open it and there would be a pause as we looked into each other's eyes and saw the fear and loneliness and desperation slowly drowning us both. I could talk without a pause for breath and that would keep the pain away.

Last night, I cried. Not just for myself, for Felicity and Kartik, for Ann, Pippa, mother, father. Tom. I cried for this whole fractured world, for the pressure of disapproval slowly crushing us and moulding us into flat, placid smiles of girls who'll take their tea with two sugars and an awful lot of milk. I cried for the scars that cross Ann's wrists, for the calluses on the hands of the gypsies. I cried for the wide, empty eyed stares of the street urchins we draw the curtains to. I cry for the huddle of woman sewing under gaslight to feed their family, already too dead to care. I cry for the sweet plains of India, the herbs and spices that filled their air and used to make me dizzy. I cry for the tugging lurch of homesickness, as I remember watching with awe, no more than a child, a man charm a cobra in a little braid box. I remember watching a monkey do a trick in front of a group of infants, no more than six years old. I remember peeping down a side alley, seeing the girls, some no older than I am now, sitting or standing languidly outside shop fronts, closed drapes. They would call out the lecherous old men sitting opposite, drinking in a dusty group of aching backs and stiff, worked fingers. They seemed so friendly, I remember pointing them out to my mother. And she did not hurry me away as a proper English lady should. She did not close my eyes to the horror or poverty and despair. She gazed down the alleyway with such aching sadness in her eyes, looking at each girl as if she were a lost daughter, something to pity and love. She bade Sarita and I wait at the corner, strode down the street with those forceful steps of hers. She was jeered but did not respond, and entered the house as though she knew it inside out. It took five minutes, no longer, but she appeared once more, an older woman with a harsh painted face and garish gold jewellery in tow. Mother walked back up the alley towards us just as this woman muttered something to the gaggle of girls on the steps. They followed her inside and shut the door.

I remember. Mother would not tell me what she had done, but she told Sarita, and I overheard. Eavesdropped, if you will. Mother had paid the old lady enough to 'cover the days takings'. It meant nothing to me, and I discarded it.

I have always been such a fool.

Yes. I took my tea and ate my dinner and excused myself with a headache soon after. I removed my dress and layers of petticoats and found that I could not untie my corset on my own. So I slid into bed and pretended to dream of nothing but light.

Now, the moonlight is slicing. It slices through everything, leaving only the bleached bones and desiccated hopes of all us good little girls.

I could do so many things. Yes, I could go to Felicity. I could wake up Ann. I could stumble down to the gypsy camp and beg Kartik to talk to me, to look at me. I could travel to the realms, all on my own, and sit and dream of Pippa. Of choice, both good and bad.

I do none of these.

The moonlight is fresh and dewy on my back as I tangle down the vines. The spindly leaves catch and tear on my chemise. I cannot go through life without causing just a tiny bit of destruction. It makes me smile.


When a bone is broken and sets wrongly, you must break it anew to truly heal it. When something so fractured as us has been that way for so long, you must break us all again to set us right. To create, you must destruct.


The grass is soft and cool under the arches of my soles. I feel the deliciously dirty mud oozing its way into the crevices of my toes. This is not what I am supposed to be doing. I am supposed to be tucked up tight in starched white blankets, drifting through sleep as easily as I should drift through the waking hours. I should not be stealing away to the lakeside, determined to feel the silk of depths under my feet and sweep with splayed fingertips through the soft protection that surrounds me. I long to swim naked, and perhaps even drown. To be truly free in my skin, float inside it in a soft membrane that will protect me always. Protect me from hurt, from the danger of lust, from conflicting feelings and how having too much love can be as deadly as having to much hate.

I cannot undo my corset. I cannot unravel the cords that bind me, mould me and shape me and break me into the perfect figure of a wife, a high society lady, with high sights and high hopes and high snobbery. I detest them all.

Falling against a wizened, wise old tree, I sob in frustration, my fingers becoming more frantic and less nimble as I tug at the laces. Again, it is as though I cannot breathe. Why is it that now the visions are coming fast and thick, and I cannot control them? I used to understand, I used to be able to bend them to my will. Now I seem to be nothing more than a ragdoll that ye gods delight in shaking.

Collapse to the ground. Feel the dry scratch of leaves against the softness of my cheek, the sting of that recent slash. It was not noticed at dinner. I don't think we are ever truly noticed, and maybe that is what makes some of us so very unbearable. Desperate for some feelings, even if they have to resort to hate. Like Ann said, slipping away inside yourself is dangerously easy. Learning not to feel comes second nature. After all, we are English.

The laces do not give, and I cannot easily soak my corset and chemise, weaken the boning that may bend and buckle as my lungs struggle for breath. Imagine the horror of lungs expanding. Go on. How ghastly. How... unnatural.

I sink to the earth, trying desperately to dig myself into the forgiving comfort of soil, dark and deep and peaty. Rich. I could bloom each spring as the softest of daisies, delicate stems of slender grass. All who loved me could come and sit and be with me, feel the brush of my fingertips as they stroked their hands through the life that surrounded them.

Insanity is so much easier to embrace when you are lonely. When you have nothing.

Tonight, there are no eyes watching me. Tonight, no one cares enough about a silly little schoolgirl to come and sit with her, loosen to cords that bind her, stroke her face and braid her hair and whisper that everything will be alright. Some kind of alright. I cup my face in my hands and rock gently on my heels. It is overwhelming, this desperation, and now I see how mothers will murder to feed their children, fathers will slit the throats of defenceless maidens just to get at the jewels of their rings or the coins of their purse. Children are always the cruellest. It in unbearable, sometimes, remembering my childhood and how selfish, how arrogant and precocious and spiteful I could be. We are meant to protect children from harm, but no one considers protecting children from children.

The breeze is colder on my skin here than by my window. How tragic, and yet how beautifully telling. Nothing is ever quite as good as you imagine it to be. Nothing. Nothing is pure and good and true, nothing will withstand the greatest, deepest, darkest sins.

Thou shalt not kill.

That shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not disobey the word of God because no one will know what to do if you do. No one will be able to control you. They will condemn you, discard you, perhaps even hate you, but they will not control you. Yes. I know what I'm saying. Please do not patronise me.

I stretch out, breathe out, relax. I extend my fingers and my toes to breaking point. I feel every particle of me joined together in solemn unity. I will be my own battalion.

And then it comes, as before, slowly, deadly, creeping oh so quietly. I have not the strength to resist. If I let it pull me under, would the pain be less intense? Would the pressure flicker and fade? Would I be able to breathe? Would I be able to die?

I feel myself falling through my body, slipping out of my empty skin and flying towards the gypsy camp. Kartik is not around the fire. I wander amongst them, wave my palms in front of their blank faces, whisper secrets into their ears. I dance in front of them. Nothing. I hesitate, then raise the hem of my chemise to an indecent height. Nothing.

This vision is different. I am outside, separate, I suppose half dead, but I am controlling it. I did not resist it, and I am controlling it.

I approach his tent. He is sleeping; I can sense the essence of dreams on the air. I reach out my hand to push the material back, but it swipes through the fabric. I walk through it instead, and there is a wonderful moment, a split second, where I an encased in worn, warm canvas.

And there he is, sleeping not soundly. His forehead furrows and puckers, and he murmurs indistinguishable words into the empty night around him. I strain desperately to hear my name. He does not utter it. It hurts more than it should. We are not in control of our dreams. He may be thinking of me every waking hour, desperately sorry for leaving me alone in the woods, desperately sorry for his cruel words and crueller actions. We cannot control our dreams, I know that, and yet every night as I dream, I dream only of him.

heyyyyyy ... am on a total spurt (ooer) at the moment. As always, reviews make me smile. They actually do. I'm adopting a policy of replying to all of my reviews for all of mon oeuvres (that MIGHT mean eggs, it's not supposed to) as of ... NOW. Tara pets.