Summertime Blues #18, Byzantium #5, Bittersweet #4

[shadowsong26]

Name: shadowsong26
Story: Waiting
'Verse: Feredar
Colors: Summertime Blues #18. Bummer of a trip, Byzantium #5. 'The grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought.', Bittersweet #4. fond farewell
Supplies and Materials: bichromatic, frame (approximately 1015 FY), brush (brown study), oils, feathers, modeling clay, charcoal, pastels (my current gen + romance card O2 "childhood romance"), chalk, yarn, glitter
Word Count: 871
Rating: R
Characters: Tana
Warnings: Impending character death, references to character death, references to torture, references to genocide, references to one-sided incest, Tana. If I missed any, please let me know.
Notes: Constructive criticism welcome, as always. From the lint roller, Kat's question: Tana-- Why/how the hell did you fall in love with Kellom? Tana at this point is dying of bone cancer. Last Summertime Blues yay!



I was wild, once. Passionate, angry, lustful. I won’t say I repent of this—no, I wish for it. And not like old women wish for their youth restored, because it’s not the youth I long for. I don’t mind the pain in my bones, or the wind wailing around the fortress, as wild as I was before the War. I would live with it a thousand years, growing worse every day with no respite, if only I could see him one last time.

I used to wander, late at night. Not so much anymore—the pain is too great—but I used to. I would wander, and think, and dream, a ghost-light bobbing in the windows with every step to frighten anyone who saw.

I like the idea of giving rise to ghost stories. It is a marvelous joke, isn’t it? There are so many ghosts in my homeland now. And it feels right, that I end like this. That I never forget.

Some people suspected, I think, when we were at Court. I know my sister Keta did. I am not as stupid as she thinks I am. I know what’s in her mind. Those who suspected, I know, hated me for it.

To hell with them.

Yes, he was my brother, but there was no other like him in the world. He was handsome, he was brave, he was ever courteous, he was magnificent. He was cool, he was brilliant, he was…he was ice and steel, sharp and deadly and beautiful.

How could I not love him?

Besides, he was eight years older than me, and I hardly felt like he was my brother at all. He was…he was too much, to be contained by such a little thing. For “brother. “

What does “brother“ mean, anyway? Blood-bound but loathing? Comrades, bound by only affection?

It means both of those things, so it means the opposite of itself. “Brother“ is, therefore, meaningless.

But he…ah, he.

Love was—is—almost enough.

He is my love, and I would have held him however he would have me, if only he had asked. I tortured for him, you know. Endlessly. So many grim, bloody bodies in grim, bloody dungeons. All for him.

…well, not entirely all, I’ll be fair. I did love it for itself—as I said, I was a wild thing—but I loved it more because it made me close to him. If he wouldn’t have me in his bed, I could please him some other way.

I would have done anything for him, you see. Absolutely…anything.

I do believe he never knew it, and that made it…if I could just prove to him, then he would love me. Love…

He never loved anyone else, at least. Of that I am sure. And maybe he did love me, a little, but that stupid, meaningless little brother-word kept him away.

Sometimes, I tell myself that, and it makes it better.

Sometimes, I lay the blame at my door. I didn’t love him hard enough. Because he was perfect, you know. Cold and deadly and lovely to behold, not a drop of wildness in him. I was his mirror, in a way. As if the gods had crafted me specially for him, only he never knew it.

I wonder, sometimes. I wonder if he didn’t love me because he didn’t like the mirror.

But I love him, still and always. I love the shreds of mementos I keep from him. I love the wisps of memories whispered by the wind, the faint thread of his voice, his cold glory, cold despair, everything about him so beautiful and cold.

When I hold my breath, when I close my eyes, I can almost see him, see us, as we were in the heyday of our times, in the waning days of our nation and our court.

And now…

Now I wither away in a windswept fortress, and he lies in a casket, moldering.

Pain and exile, I suppose, have tempered me. Once past the first flush of grief, and once my sister Keta pulled me over my own wreckage when I broke my few mementos of a better world, I came out the other end a little…well, a little colder. I worry that, when his ghost seeks mine, he won’t recognize me. He won’t love me anymore.

But if I saw him, I think, he would quicken that old wildness in me, the way he once kept it in-bounds. He was my other half, you see. My mirror, as much as I was his.

Maybe tonight, one last time, I’ll drag my light and my festering bones around the fortress, chasing his ghost on the wind. Maybe tonight, I’ll find him. And—who knows—maybe he’ll love me; as I was, as I am, as the other side to his glory.

Every light casts a shadow, and every shadow needs its light.

I’m old now, and wise, after a fashion, and no longer wild. I know what I am. I love him still, more than breath, more than youth, more than vitality and being free of pain.

Kellom, my love, I’m waiting. Won’t you come?

Comments

[serpentine]

This was very chilling.

[shadowsong26]

Thank you.

Tana...tends to be, yeah. Chilling or slightly ridiculous or both.

[bookblather]

Oh, wow, all of that passion in her-- it's like she's a hurricane, a little off-kilter, and nothing but destruction follows. She even destroys herself. Awesome job.

[shadowsong26]

Thank you.

Yeah, that's a pretty good way to describe her. Keta does the best she can to look after Tana, but...yeah.