[Alayne and Necthan] Loitering about, part 2.

[Alayne Lombard]

^{Continued from here.}

I couldn't help but smile back, and squeeze back, too. I felt young and girlish, and pure, too. I felt, well, my age.

“Playwright?” I asked, and blinked at him, once or twice. “Necthan, you, a playwright?” I grinned, then, of course he was a playwright. I laughed, and abruptly kissed his lips. “You sneak,” I teased. “You had those lines all written in advance, didn't you?”

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

I just laughed, knowing that she was surprised. "Indeed I am. But know every one of those words was strung together, a unique star from the sky placed there just for you and for you alone. I hope you liked it my darling."

I opened the door for her and let her inside. The room was filled with various plants and lit by candles. a blue sheet hangs over the room, as if to being some of the outdoors inside, to create those wilds that I loved so much.

[Alayne Lombard]

I smiled a little, lips quirking a touch. My darling, he said, like those bourgeois husbands did to their wives, on Elua's square, as they went home from shopping. I chuckled, and slipped inside.

“Oh,” I murmured as I stared up at the blue sky, the intented room, the meadow, perhaps. “-- Necthan --”

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

When we were both within the house I walked towards the cupboard and took out to glasses, in case she would like a drink. I then turned my head, studying the manner in which she looked up at the ceiling and I smiled and wondered if she had any sense at all of what it truly meant. I doubted it. I doubted it truly and it was then that an idea struck me, one that made my brows raise and a grin come over my features the moment it ticklated in my mind.

“Yes?” I inquired, my honeyed voice giving a pleasing tone to the simple word.

[Alayne Lombard]

All I could say, eyes still up on the ceiling, was the simple thought that crossed my mind. “It's beautiful.” And looking at him, eyes fond, I added, “and so very you.”

I wandered over, touched one of the plant's leaves timidly. “I've never seen a place like this before,” but then again, I'd never met a man like him either. “--- what made you think of putting a sky up?”

I had a preference for the real sky, for real meadows... but I couldn't really remember ever being to one, and this was as close as it got.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

She called it beautiful and I replied. “It’s nice, yes. Yet … yet it is an imitation of something much more wonderful, as a painting is but an imitation of a face. We might call a painting lovely even though what it shows is not. This is only nice because we know what it means is so much more … like a warm embrace. They’re nice because they mean something so much more.” I then walked to her and placed an arm about her waist. “Now as for why. I missed the wild. But Alayne, I have come upon inspiration. Right now, you and I are going on an expedition to find our meadow!

[Alayne Lombard]

I listened as Necthan spoke – it was good that he liked to speak so much: it made up for my awkward silences, or for how little I felt I had to say, so many times over. I smiled a little, though, and leaned into his half-embrace.

It means so much more.

“Our own meadow, Necthan?” I asked, chuckling derisively, “-- doesn't that mean we have to go outside the city walls?”

It seemed both exciting, and suddenly terrifying – like a birdling's first flight.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

“It would mean that yes. Is that alright?” In the end it didn’t matter all that much is it was alright or not. It was something that needed to happen for us and I would make it happen. I was already gathering some fruits and cheeses and a bottle of Uisghe to take with us as a sort of picnic, or rather a royal banquet. I grasped my wide brimmed hat as well as a shield from the high sun so that I could fix all my attention on the near sun, the fairer sun.

[Alayne Lombard]

He'd spoken his idea, asked a question, and left me, to be a whirlwind of activity. “I --- I guess, I said I was going to the temple, and ---” but it was my day off, and.... “I guess so long as I return to the bathhouse on time....”

And there I stared at his hat, and he looked so adorable, so young, so silly, too, that I couldn't help but laugh, and so I did, finding him irresistible.

“Oh, Necthan...”

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

“We can go there on the way, Alayne...” I looked at her watching as she said my name. Just those two syllables was all that it took and I rushed towards her and kissed her passionately, wanting to do so much more right then. We needed to get to the meadow though. I pulled away and smiled.

“Are you ready?”

[Alayne Lombard]

I was about to explain that I'd just gone, in fact, because I was confused about us, because I hoped Naamah herself would have answers, and just as I opened my mouth, mid-chuckle, to tell him that, he kissed me.

Truth be, all words left me then, as they always did when he did that, and I kissed back with matching passion, until he pulled away, leaving me breathless.

I almost said, then, three words I knew of only in nursery rhymes. Instead, though, I said, flushed and light-headed.... “Aye.”

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

I could tell that she was stunned and I felt a little embarrassed and proud too for being able to affect such an effect. I took her hand and spun her about, opening the door with the other. “Shall we be off then, to claim your kingdom, my lady?”

[Alayne Lombard]

I chuckled a little, shook my head. “My kingdom,” I said. “I'm the queen of sewers and vagrants, don't you know? Aye, if I'm the queen of anything, that's what it is.” I reached to touch his hat, then, chuckling, I put it on my head.

“And I guess I need a crown, don't I?”

And a King, too, I didn't add, but didn't I – well. That was perhaps going too fast.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

“Not in my eyes,” I told her, taking the hat and placing it back upon my head. “A crown yes, but one of daisies, remember?” I winked and spun her about once more and led her outside. “It’s going to be a jauntful trip don’t you think?”

[Alayne Lombard]

“I don't know,” I replied, feeling a bit – oddly timid. I nibbled at my lip, frozen in place by the sudden influx of emotion which the whole day had sent my way, and I paused, looking at him again.

“-- Necthan?”

I hesitated, my heart was in my throat – I felt as if I might throw up, but then, he was so – I didn't konw what he was.

I just needed to know, for things to be clear, just as I'd needed to know, and for things to be clear, that morning when I'd visited Hal and he'd kissed my lips in his emotion.

“-- I – I think I love you,” I said, ineffectually, and the moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were true.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

She said my name I turned my face to her, clinging to every word every slight change in expression and I didn’t look into her mind. I simply waited. She loved me … she said so. I saw in her mind that she meant it and I took a step back, not with my feat but with my brain. “My Alayne … It’s been only twice … how, how can one be so certain?” I asked myself that question as well. I had called her my love … but did I mean it? I was drawn to her, infatuated by her, but did I love her, the way a man loves his wife?

[Alayne Lombard]

I'd always thought, somehow, that if one day someone said he'd love me, I'd die of joy.

If this was death by joy, it certainly did not have the looks of it. What it was, was the look of... distance.

I looked at him once, blinked.

“I don't know,” I said again. “I don't even know what love is. I said I thought...”

I remembered the lines of his poem by heart, and took a breath.

“Necthan and his fair Alayne my arse,” I said at last. “What was I to you, a toy? is that why you brought me here? Play with the whore? Make it a game of wit? Whores aren't just cunts, I'll have you know, and if there's one in the room...”

I bit back the end of the sentence, bit back on the insult, because I was hurt, and I'd thought he took me as I was. I'd asked for nothing, but my feelings to be known. Even those were inadequate, huh? Very well.

Seething with anger, I balled my fist, and for the first time felt the urge to hit, or slap, but I'd told Hal I didn't do such things, and even now, I didn't have it in me.

I turned, then, ready to leave. Ready to hate, too.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

I was still as the northern ice and the air felt just as cold as she turned suddenly, as though some spirit had possessed her and mocked the words that I wrote for her. “I wish that you could see into my mind as I can into yours. But look instead, Alayne,” Oh that name … “Look to when we were most intimate with one another and think, did that seem to you a game? Even now I want to take you to our meadow and your coronation, and you would strike me?” I would not in haste tell her that I loved her, but I thought, in the center of my soul, that I could, when we knew one another like only one person can, then I could tell her with full confidence I loved her.

[Alayne Lombard]

“I don' t know,” I replied, “I don't know. Maybe it was just mindblowing fucking,” and I felt the need to repeat it.

“Fucking and fornicating and that was it. And maybe you'd been without someone to play with your prick for a bit too long, too. You say you want to take me to my coronation. Coronation of what? And then what? I'll go back to the bathhouse, and now I'll know about the air outside, and I'll be unhappier for having tasted it? That's bloody cruel of you. It costs me all blasted thousand hells to say it, because you don't even know, you don't even know the damnedest thing about me, save that I can spread my legs. And you get into my head, you keep on getting into my head,” and suddenly the thought was unbearable.

“Get out of my head!” I screamed, “You don't have a right to it just because you can, and it's my mind and my secrets and my feelings and I know a little bit what they are, but I don't have the slightest idea what's going on in that head of yours, and don't you think that's an unfair advantage? And then what? You'll make me love you and do crazy things, and you'll laugh and find it funny, perhaps, because the little whore is such a good puppet. Look at that, stick your hand up my skirt and you can play me all you like, huh? And then you tell me that it's only been the twice, but then you tell me to look into that time that you jumped in my window so I'll know it's not a game. You're not making sense, and you're messing with my head again, and I don't like it.”

I was shaking with anger and hurt, and with confusion, too, and tears were starting to fill my eyes. I didn't bloody fucking well know, that's why I'd gone to Naamah's fucking temple, and low and behold he'd shown up and I'd taken it to be a sign.

Stupid stupid stupid whore.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

I rarely took a woman. I rarely made love for any reason other than something deep, something emotionally stirred inside me, anger, or compassion, or the deep overwhelming sense of beauty. That’s what she instilled in me. Her charm, her name. She was poetry, beautiful and sad and filled with such emotions. It hurt deeply, in a way I’d never been hurt before when she said my plan to take her to the meadow was a trap to make her miserable. “No, so that your life would be brighter for having that moment. Do you think that I don’t want to leave this city sometimes and go back to the mountains and forests. I do! But I’m not sad because I’m here. I look at the memory. I help people see their own beauty. I would never want to change you, Alayne never.”

The sound of her screams echoed and echoed in my ears and build into a crescendo and I stepped towards her, towering over her like a tree in the midst of a storm, defying her winds. “And if I hadn’t I’d be just any other john! You’re grateful I can see what’s inside what you’re too frightened to say! You think it’s all about sex?!” I grabbed her by the arm, dark eyes flashing with a building intensity. “I’m telling you the truth, Alayne. I can’t stand whores, but I’m enchanted by you! Don’t ask me how you did it! But I’m not here to play with you. I just want to know you!”

[Alayne Lombard]

And he went on and on about beauty and memories and what memories did I have, that weren't the day to day? I wanted more than just a blasted afternoon in the sun. I was tired, so tired. Since Yves had left for war, since Hal had gone too, I'd been feeling lonely, even playing ball with Elodie. I'd felt, oh, I'd felt like a ghost haunting the sewers. All I needed to do to complete that picture was wail, but instead I trudged on silently, day by day.

“Get out of my head,” I hissed, looking up at him. “If you want to know me, get out of my head, Necthan, or so help me Kushiel almighty, I'll find a way that you can't get in, ever. How can I surprise you, how can I show you who I am, if you're constantly looking in? You can't stand whores, but I am a whore, through and through, since I was born. And if you want to know me, why didn't you just say so?”

I was retorting right back, but part of me quivered to be close to him, to be grabbed the way he was grabbing me. Someone had once mused that I might be a Kusheline mutt – if I was, he was absolutely stirring it then, just with his dominance.

Even if it wasn't about sex. No, not at all. It was about him, because even angry he was beautiful, and more so, perhaps. And even angry at him, I felt drawn, and if it wasn't love, I didn't know what it was.

Didn't stop that thing, whatever it was, from being there, though, pulsing in my veins, through my anger and my hurt, through the bruise I knew he was giving me, through my eyes set back stubbornly in his. He told me he was magic.

For some reason, I wasn't afraid. Too angry, mayhap.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

She hissed as though she were a snake, waiting to strike with the venom of her cold, untempered words. There was something raw about her that so completely different to me, utterly foreign. “Don’t you comprehend?” I growled, grabbing her other arm and moving her towards the open door-frame. “You’re not a whore to me. I don’t want to change you, because you’re already a queen of beauty?” My lips quivered. “I won’t search your mind again, ever if that is what you wish. I will place the reins upon my powers for you. I will tell my lungs not to breath so that I can know you. But don’t you ever dare accuse me of playing with you. I can be hard, cruel, spiteful. I could damage a person with the speed of a thought. But I would never do that to you!”

[Alayne Lombard]

He was pinning me, pushing me against the wall, my wrists in his grip, and had I tried to go, to run, to hit back, I could not have. I was effectively in his power, and yet he claimed that he would never damage me.

And yet, in a way, he was.

“Let me go!” I growled back at him, showing teeth. “If you say you don't want to hurt me, then why are you pinning me here, and why are you still calling me queen?” And why, I didn't ask, did you make me love you, or whatever this was, by the power of your mind, when you surely knew it could well destroy me?

“I am a whore and ever will be. If you want to know me, start by knowing that and by accepting it, and don't go calling me titles that are far beyond my reach. I'm nothing, Necthan. Just a girl from the gutter, a lick of a chick sold for coin. That is what I am, and if you want to know me, then you have to know that too.”

I felt almost as if he were cheapening my fate, with his words, and then he spoke to me of breathing, and said – oh, that he would stop looking, but how would I know? And for a moment, I lost my wind, and just looked up at him, eyes wide and searching, uncertain. And that – that, I wasn't sure how to say, and so I just stared at him, demanding proof.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

I let her go the moment she asked me to and I blinked, so absolutely surprised, flabbergasted, wrung-tied, that I even took a step back though the anger in me continued to boil. “You loved it before, just as I loved being called your devil. That’s all in our world! We are oneanother’s escape! I understand you sleep for your meat as much as I understand that rejected the world of my father so that I could write stories and … and give you a daisy crown. Why all of a sudden are you choosing to reject me?”

[Alayne Lombard]

Oh the nerve of him! He let me go, and there was now space between us where there was none before – and I hated myself for finding it all so very cold suddenly.

“Oh, so now I'm rejecting you. I just layed my heart bare, and you still were looking in, and you know how I feel for you, so how dare you punt that on me? How dare you put it on me, when I just gave you all that I had and was, and maybe I'd have given you more? You don't love me, you don't want to love me, and you lie, because you don't want to know me either. What you want is for me to be this dream of yours, that I'm not, as if you could take me and change me to something I'm not.”

I paused, took a long, long breath.

“You know what I see, when I see you? I see a beautiful man with a mind that'll never not be perfect. And I see him squandering that away into an escape. You want to write stories? Write my story. But the real one. Write about the poverty on Night's Doorstep. Write about the war and the men who die. You said you had friends who went. My only two friends might well be dead as we speak, and I don't even know. But don't tell me that I reject you, because oh, Necthan, that is a lie, and that is the most awful thing you've done. If you don't want me, then just bloody fucking say it and I'll be gone, but don't say I don't want you because I do, I bloody well do, and it's killing me inside with every ---”

I couldn't go on, and I found myself leaning against the doorframe, pressing my hand to my chest as my eyes filled with tears. And then I choked on them, and I couldn't speak anymore.

Elua, the bastard didn't even have to look into my mind – I'd just emptied it all out for him. I hated that no matter how hard I tried, it was still there – I wanted him.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

“By all powers! Alayne!” Never had her name been so rough, yet still poetic in that incredible way. “You are pushing me away because I happen to know that love is not a flower to blossom overnight. Infatuation does, but it is but the sapling of true Love, that great tree under which all the souls of men seek to find shade! I know that I can love you, for I have the same infatuation that you have. We can, we will, we must love eachother!

“And I will write of the war and the poverty and the poor struggles of the common man, for those who sit in boxes in the theatre need to hear them. They need to know that there is more to live than their petty trysts and acts of selfishness and greed, thinking that they are that on which all the heavens’ revolve.

“And one final thing. I want you. If you want it in simple terms there. I want all that you are because you are one of the few people that can manipulate me, that can alter my mind.”

[Alayne Lombard]

Since when had giving someone a word of affection been the source of so much yelling? I had no idea. For all I knew, this was a first in the history of Terre d'Ange. Or not. Guess I'd have to look it up. Walk to a temple, or something, and ask. Sodding precept. Shouldn't come with 'must'. Bottom line was, he didn't love me, and he didn't think I could love him.

Bottom line was, I was crazy. Fine. Fine, fine, fine.

Necthan spoke and spoke, and I could tell he was painfully earnest, in a way that was raw and exposed. Like me sometimes, I thought darkly. I wondered if he said he'd write about the poor because I'd just thrown my own dirt at him – if he was just saying that to please me. But then he didn't love me, so no. Or maybe. Because he thought maybe he would.

Oh, soddin' love. I didn't think I wanted any of it, now that things were getting complicated.

“I don't want to manipulate you, or to change you,” I said finally. “I love you the way you are. Or I infatuate you, whatever that word is. You know what, call it what you like, I don't care, I know what I feel.” I crinkled my nose, and raised my chin at him.

“If you want me, like you say, and you'll write about the poor, like you say, will you also write about whores? You said you hated them.”

But he wanted me! I tried not to look too pleased.

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

“I may …” I said with a sigh, finding my heart slowing again, my breath deepening. I stared at her for a moment and then leaned in to kiss her. It was a soft kiss but it lingered a bit. It was as though all that emotion needed to be offset with the simplest way I knew to give her my feelings. In the end words, as wonderful and fascinating and malleabley brilliant they were, could not invoke the depth of the simple action of a kiss. “Take my lips for what they are worth, my Alayne.”

[Alayne Lombard]

I was about to say something, I had no idea what, when Necthan closed the distance and kissed me, and it was so tender and soft, so unlike the raw passion that had pervaded us in the past, that I was left aghast, unsure what to do or how to respond to it, for a short moment.

And then he kissed me, and I kissed back, tentative and unsure, as if I'd never been kissed, I who had kissed too many men to count. My hands went to his shoulder, resting there lightly, as if I were afraid to touch him, which I suddenly was. It wasn't like our kiss in the window either, it was... I couldn't have said.

And I had no idea what it meant, save that it made me want to cry, again.

“-- Necthan,” I started to say, ineffectually. Take my lips for what they are worth – what did that even mean? I was confused beyond reason. For all the certainty of how I felt, I had no idea what was going on with him, and part of me feared, even more, that it was still a game.

The lady doth protest too much, a john had pointed out when I'd denied him in play.

Ah, but so was the gent, in this case. He protested so much and about so many things, that he'd woven a complicated web in which I felt I was a fly. He could damage with a bare thought, he said. Oh, sweet Eisheth, oh Naamah.

What did I just get myself into?

[Necthan Seith-Nun (R)]

She started to kiss me back and I started to melt into it, my hands resting on her waist. Her voice said my name and I pulled back with the faintest smile. “Alanye … shall we go to the meadow now? What is it you wish to do?” I was frightened for I knew not what she’d say. I refused to look inside her mind. She deserved better than that. People paid me to do such things. I would not have her be treated as a client. She, no matter how much she would protest, was my queen and I would obey her wishes.