F L E U R
de
L I S
- Dim Aldebaran -
XII. le R U E au J A R D I N
Paris: it stunk of humanity. Prostitutes with short skirts instead of red ribbons; mylar wrappers flashing silver and gold in the gutter; dark men with darker intents, shadowed glances spreading out behind them in a wakeof suspicion on the Styx; newspapers blown by a nicotine wind; cars washed away by their own flood; monsters in high heels and high fashion in high Gothic horror.
Age seeped from the little girl who sold flowers only to see them thrown to the gutter ten paces away and she goes to pick them up and sell them again with those sad gray eyes of hers; from the pale man who walked with clouded eyes and gloomy heart and hazy memories and precipitous worries; from the painter who made each man David, each woman Venus de Milo, and fancied each reflection Botticelli; from the woman who walked with a gun in her hand and a knife in her heart.
She walked, but did not run. There was no urgency in death.
Furthermore: her eyes did not wander to and fro like a peculiar fish, for she herself did not wander but rather strayed in an organized sort of disorientation, in one direction and then another, studiously so.
She found nothing with the fall of night: so still she wandered amidst the terrible shadows cast upon the street, demons that followed in twisting dances and twining nightmares as she past by the streetlights.
Each road darker than the last: each shadow more spindled, more tangled, more tortured, and still she walked, onwards across no sea but dreams to no shore but death—
And she walked: foot in front of the other, sand grains so silent they might not be falling at all, butterfly across the cheek, was it there, or was it not—
XIII. en F A C E du R O S E
Beneath a bridge: no tolling troll, no Scylla. There were other invalids as well, piled in a heap like a child's toys in the attic, forgotten, ragged, but still so covered with dusty memories it was all that kept them alive.
She found a corner to herself, away from the general huddle; she curled tightly into herself beneath an old rug, Persian patterns faded but still warm against the Parisian night.
—but no, she couldn't sleep. Mist curling from the river beaded her face with little diamonds, their fire extinguished by the cold. The ghosts uncurled into the white ribbons of angels, unraveling but then weaving themselves into a second Vocalise, sweet and rich and sad like a rose blooming and wilting as the petals fall to the floor and the scent curls upwards but it reeks of death, not life, but you love it anyway for it smells just as sweet—
She stirred: the mist from the river shifted to let her by, seraphim laughing solemnly.
She stirred: the rug fell from her shoulders, no coat of many colors, no coat of dreams.
She stirred: and she was alone upon the streets like a bad Utrillo but so much darker, capturing those thoughts his picturesque therapy could never quite express.
She stirred: and she walked down those streets. There was pale mist and dark shadows, all part of the same dream but it all felt different, buildings blotting out the stars like a vanGogh mistake, history bleeding from the gaping gargoyle mouths and piercing steeples.
She stirred: and so did the ghosts, music sweetening, tea at the bottom of the cup, last few drops always were the best.
She stirred: and cried out, running now along those long streets that branched out into fractal systems, Mendelbrot sets of roads and alleys that split and twined and broke apart only to intersect once more—
She stirred: but Vocalise drifted away, not on the Loire or the Styx or the Lethe but on time's own river, drifting away until she could scarce hear—or perhaps it was her that drifted away, her that drifted with the irrevocable flow of the river until that they reached an end to the river which flowed to a circle, that repetition of the finite eternal: her life, her very life—
She stirred: and stilled.