elionwyr | Entries tagged with fairy tale

I don't know what I'm doing here.

I'm here because of a man, and a courtship that's hiccuped across the pages of my calendar. We've spent hours upon hours on the phone and in pixels, and exactly ten seconds alone in person. And there's no damned way I'm good enough for him. I've driven across three states to this inexpensive hotel room; I've fussed at my hair, pulled on a dress, and texted him to say, "Ok, this is as good as it gets. I'm ready."

I'm not. I'm so not. If someone were right now to offer me a transformative fix, I'd say 'yes' before the finished sentence had left her faery lips. But there is just me, caught in the mirror, hiding none of my doubt and terror.

Too late to run. He's at the door.

I ask him for a hug. He obliges. I stand shivering in his arms, surrounded by his strength, finally able to breathe. We leave in search of dinner and tea, talking about my trip, about his job, about our lives. I am hypnotized by his hands as they cut graceful lines through the air over his meal.

He catches me staring.

"I'm - I'm sorry. You're just so pretty," I stammer. Dammit. Why does anyone let me talk?

He smiles, changes the subject.

And later, back at my room, he takes my hands in his own. "Have I told you I'm really happy that you're here?"

"Well...not recently."

"I'm really happy you're here," he murmurs. And he kisses me.

There are kisses that are awkward, that mean nothing, that are forgettable.

There are kisses that change your world.

We kiss, and it's inconceivable that we have never kissed before.

We kiss, and it's as if we have been kissing each other for forever with a 40 year-long pause to breathe.

We kiss, and need no glass slipper to know that we are a perfect seamless fit.

At the end of every seven years,
We pay a tithe to Hell

I'd read the stories. I knew to resist sweets and sex.

Faeries can read, too, and they don't like how their tales have been told. Immortal and amoral, with an eternity to consider seduction, he found a way around the warnings to lay claim to my heart.

We became friends.

Maybe you have been spared the experience - the dazzling focus, the promise of importance. When a narcissist is courting you..oh, nothing could be more gradually addictive. And with his fingers in my hair, his laughter in my ears, it was no difficulty to leave my Lost Boys for the fantasies of pirates.

But faerie food does not feed you. Isolation does not nurture you. Living in a world created to feed another's ego, watching the yearly sacrifice...seven years is more than enough time to shake off the enchantment.

"I'm sure you saw this coming." Well, yes. And no - tragically, no. I stumbled back to the city, reconstructed an unenchanted life.

What does narcissism have to do with me?

Not a damned thing, anymore.

What was love in his gaze is now madness.

He would make me my mother. And no one dares raise their voice in protest.

In the silence of my rooms, I pray to silent gods. Rescue me.

The only answer is the growing pile of royal gifts.

When there are no more tears to cry, when my voice is hoarse from pleading, when I realize no one is listening, I place my hand upon the door.

Passive asking causes no action.

I will answer my own prayer by the moving of my feet.

(For those new to this, "twiddle" is my word for these fragments of stories. Most of the fairy tales are more thorough than this; click on the tag to read those.)

"Masks"

His mouth on my hand, his breath on my skin – I shiver, and try to hide it, and masks slide across his face before he asks the same question he asks every night.

Mystery, mystery. He walks through my dreams as I walk through this house, a cautious exploration of intersecting worlds and undefined intentions.

There are spaces beasts possess in the world and in our minds. I feel his claws in places I thought were mine alone. He moves through my almost-sleep and, shaken, I bare my throat to him as he passes by.

One day, I find him hunting. He kisses me, flicks my knees apart; then stalks off, glancing back a promise. I trace the memory of passion, my lips still bearing the weight and heat of him; I watch him prowl the forest and, not-quite-prey, I stay behind.

We repeat this dance for ages.

And oh, you are the monster because this world tells us that you are. But when I press fingers to my flesh, I feel the fur hiding underneath.

How long before he discovers I am the more dangerous of the beasts?

"Rana"

She did not see me today.

Crouched in the shadows of the steps of her home, I lost my nerve once again. I did not call out her name. And I licked back the tears as she strode away on legs of tall white pine.

I have not confessed my love to anyone. The others know not that I travel here not for hunting, but for her. Oh, for her. For the touch of her hand that would tear at my skin, for the touch of her lips that would pull away covered with remnants of my home, my kingdom, my secret waterways, for the passing acknowledgement that even one such as I am worthy of her notice.

If she would only notice me.

Before daylight can burn me, I will return to my pond, and dream of the princess, and dream of release.

This snippet of fiction is for

artfulruin and her story cards frog, son, gift.
(I *think* it's over 100 words..)

Fealty

My finger traces idle patterns on the surface of the pond. Greenish-brown tendrils of slimy somethings cling to my nail, break away behind me, leaving glimpses of water that is far from wholesome.

I am waiting for him.

His eyes break through the algae, demanding I meet his gaze. Panicked insects stop their chorus, needlessly. They are not his prey.

Webbed feet grab the ground beside me. He pulls himself from the pond, settling next to me in a puddle of slime and incandescence. His head nearly comes to my shoulder; he reeks of decay and stagnant water.

"Princess."

Father tells me I should never allow myself to be common. And so I do not run screaming, nor does my face reveal my thoughts. "The Pact."

The monster blinks, stretches. The claws of his foot hook onto the fabric protecting my stomach from his touch.

I do not wait for his question.

"Seven and a half months. He will be yours."

"And we will be yours."

He licks his lips.

This isn't what I should be writing, either...and I feel like I should post all sorts of self-defense and explanation and feminist rantings about it....and it's definitely a first draft sort of thing, but...it won't leave me alone until I get it out, and at least it's more than 100 words, so...

Foam

I have no voice in your world.

I gave it up, willingly, as I did the safety of my world, as I gave up all things. Desperate for the chance to touch your life, I became what I thought would please you.

You scarcely noticed.

Only now, at the end, do I start to understand what separates us. For it's more than limbs and looks. Your world is unconsciously abrasive. Land is hard and sharp. Air fights to not be inhaled. Sunlight steals and burns. It takes a strength I don't possess to do more than walk across the surface.

Oh, my beloved, having touched you, I see everything more clearly.

You will continue. It's the reward for surviving the harshness of your life. You will continue, striving for things I don't fully understand. Your work and your soul stretches beyond the here and now, while the fantasy of me and mine rises and falls and is lost upon the shore.

The struggle of your world makes you forever.

The dreaming of mine makes me foam.

"Water"

I want it.

I want what she holds in her smooth exotic self. I strut, I display, I flick my beauty at her, and she remains unimpressed.

I will offer her a gift, this shiny little stone - clink - she accepts it, but it's not enough.

She is far from sated.

Beloved, I am singing my need to you. I will die without you. I falter at your side, I thirst for you and, frantic, I fill you with all I can gather.

clink
clink

Something in her is stirring, a liquid acquiescence. She begins to reveal her dark secret self - she pours herself forth, and I plunge quickly inside, consuming the essence of what she contains.

She is drained; I am saved; I caress her with wings; I leave Heaven to replenish what I have stolen away.
~~~
Or:
She is drained; I am saved; I caress her with wings as I leave her to
replenish herself.

Current Mood: unsure - opinions requested

Red
( Meet Paul/Red. )

"Cursed"

My finger still hurts.
Was that to be part of the Curse, I wonder? - To be left in this half-sleep, unable to move, still aware of emotion and stimulus?
Could she have been that cruel?

Perhaps if it was only my discomfort I could feel, perhaps that would be a condition I could grasp. But her hatred ran deeper than any sanity.
I have felt the hope, the fear and agony and death of those who tried to enter the palace. Brave men. Foolish boys. Fortune-hunters daring to find passage into my prison.
Her thorns know their job well.
In my mind, I picture their sides slick and permeated with blood - nothing green about them, nothing wholesome or natural. They must live off the flesh that decorates them. I
can hear their victims' bones moving in the wind, singing lost dreams to me.

One can only scream for so long.

I fear becoming like her. The darker feelings that inspired her whisper into my mind. I want to hate. I start to plan out revenges, only to recoil in horror at what I am considering.
I was born to be more than a creature of anger.
My parents' dreams ended the day the Sleep fell upon us. Sometimes I can still catch a hint of the scent of their deaths, when the breezes drift the wrong way through the room.
Fortunately, my eyes remain sealed shut - I am spared at least that sight. But for them, and for my Self, I will refuse to collapse into the madness that tries to seduce me.
She is strong.
I must be stronger.

I can feel something different. Something is changing outside - not the predictable moving of the seasons (I've lost track of how many times those shifts have passed around me), but...something subtle.
It smells like Spring.
But it sounds like Autumn.
I hear things falling - tiny crystals shattering on cobblestones, rotting fruit staining the ground, footsteps - could it be footsteps? - making their way across floors long held hostage by her Curse.
I wish I could see.
And the air feels warmer, as if the sun is finally making his way to the walls of my home.
And...

"Hello?"
It's a man's voice, a new voice, a sound with a life and a pulse and a will all its own.
"Beauty?"
Where does the name come from? I was never known as such.
"Princess, I'm here to break the spell."
I can't answer you. I don't understand you.
And now I can feel his lips on my mouth, softly brushing against me, then pulling away. There is a feeling of expectation radiating from him. But I can't feel any changes within me.
He's growling to himself, and kissing me again - more energy, more force. His hands are touching my gown, pressing at my breasts. He wants a response, and I want to move.
He's scaring me.
He is moving across my body, exploring me, claiming me. And I can only assume this is the final part of the Curse, the part that's been hidden from me all this time. The final cruelty. Because his weight is on me, he's moving inside me, he's crying out against me,
and still I am frozen, feeling all the humiliation and none of the pleasure, catching his climax, becoming his release.
And he is rising from me with no feeling of joy.
Dimly I hear him making promises to me - apologies and offers flow from his tongue as his semen flows from my body. But I know, stranger, that I won't hold you to anything you say.
I am cursed. I am sleeping. Nothing's changed.