seaglass_bird (seaglass_bird) wrote in exvoto, @ 2012-11-11 21:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | rana, sena |
take
( Before this conversation, there was this one.) It felt wrong, somehow, for Ghost to be in port. Her familiar textures rubbed under Sena's fingertips as she walked along the ship's side in the moonlight, all muted bittersweet homesickness. She had not been able to stand beside the ship in a long, long time. Usually it was swaying under her feet to the rhythm of the ancestors and so many swimming fishes. For a moment, she worried that if she stepped foot on it, Ghost would sweep her back out to sea. Leave her life as nothing but a daydream from the crow's nest. She wrapped her fingers around the rope that held it to the dock and tugged. The roughness under her hands was too familiar to be anything but home. Slowly, quietly, Sena climbed aboard. The shadows hid her well as she darted across the deck in bare feet, tip toeing to the quarters of the woman she feared more than anything. Shaking hands slowly pushed the door open, centimeters at a time. If Rana really was sick, the Sena had to see for herself that the High Tidecaller would be ok. It was remarkable how small she looked. Grey, thin. Brittle. Her face was tired and her breasts were bare, but black shark eyes rolled to the threshold. "...little sea star," her voice creaked. "Have you come to make your ancestors weep?" Sena's heart twisted in her chest. Never had she seen her mistress laid so low, so close to the corpses she had given back to the sea. She crept in and shut the door behind her as if the sound of it closing might break the fragile creature in the tangle of blankets. "I came to check on you," she answered with brave words and a feeble throat. "To see that you're being taken care of." "My bones too will break the waves," smiled Rana, her weakness softening her edges,"but not today." She crumbled the blankets beside her. "Come, tell me of how your heart drinks dust, your head fills with rocks. Sit. Tell me." It was like being a child again as Sena tiptoed across the room to sit beside her mistress, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her shoulders were drawn in and taut, hands making a net of fingers on her shins. Even in Rana's weakness, Sena feared her. "I'm not doing badly," the apprentice said, and ached to smooth the High Tidecaller's hair, ease her suffering with a kiss on the brow and a hug. But Rana was not Dalit, and her tenderness was held at bay. "I'm not... suffering. Not like you are, Master, with your sickness." The Tidecaller slumped her shoulders, profanely human. Sena was sixteen, Rana was older by merely four years, but the souls whispering in her ears and the bloodiness of her upbringing often aged her past any recognizable humanity. "How do you stand it? The world beyond the waves makes me ill. What is there for you?" The question puzzled Sena, and the teen tilted her head at Rana with a pursing of her lips. The girl was often too literal, too grounded to understand Rana's many nuances. "I'm... not far from the ocean," Sena tried to explain, her palms cradling her chin as she thought. "But--I mean, I guess that mostly it's because..." She trailed off, not wanting to go into the fact that someone cared for her now. Instead she gingerly lifted the blanket around Rana's shoulders in an attempt to shelter the tidecaller from suffering. "I guess I just know it's not forever. The sea won't go anywhere, the tides still make their ways. I'll be back again. I mean--maybe that's stupid but--" her cheeks colored in the darkness. "The ocean will be there when you let me come back. I think that's enough for now, anyway. And in the meantime I'm learning so many things, I don't have time to think about it." She smiled a rare, sincere smile. "I'm happy." At the small comfort, Rana flinched and stared at Sena like a spooked animal, all fanaticism and delirium. "Are you so sure I or the ancestors will want you back, once you've been spoiled?" She took Sena's jaw between her thumb and fingers. "But soon I will change. The tide will change. A fallen man will come to me and I have decided what to say to him. Perhaps you should forget this life, little piglet." Sena started at the touch on her face, her smile vanishing. "You don't change," the girl whispered. "You never change. You just... flow. Like the tides." Courage swelled up as she touched Rana's wrist where the older woman held her chin. Her fingers shook, but they lighted with hesitant questions, looking for affection in her master's skin. "The sea is never anything but the sea. I mean, it seems to change... today it's calm, tomorrow it storms... today it's kind, tomorrow it's cruel. You're like that. You might seem different, but it's just currents and weather. Underneath you're always made of the same water." Her small hand closed around the high tidecaller's wrist in search of anchor. "The tides are the tides and Rana is Rana. I don't think anyone can change that anymore than they can change the sea. And..." the words came hard, Dalit's face clawing at her mind. "Even if you don't want me anymore, even if I'm spoiled by him, I can't leave you forever. Sometimes I really want to--I mean I really really want to--but the waves go through me." She took in a trembling breath that belayed her newfound backbone. "You go through me." The chamber itself seemed to tense and go taught, air growing blood thick with the violence of the High Tidecaller's hands, wrestling Sena's feeble digits away and guiding the girl's arms down to her sides. "Then let me break you," she breathed, hot and close and ravenous. When their lips touched, it was with the force of crashing waves on a cliff face. The girl was frozen in place, terror rushing through her. It was her first kiss, and the intimacy shocked her more than any blow. She couldn't pull away, couldn't move. What are you doing? came in choked whimpers, syllables lost in her throat. Rana had never shied from the touch of men, of the Carovere who ruled above his son and the seas. He was an old man to her, but her adolescent heart had loved him, loved the fire of their bodies together and the passionate worship he gave her. Darius Carovere had been her first, and already his skin grew sallow. Soon she would butcher him, devour him, throw his bones and offal to the gulls. She had been taught that kisses should be merciless, insistent, worship and demand on the lips. And this is what she gave the girl, her pale apprentice, so innocent and clean. When she pulled away, her eyes were the shark's eyes. Hungry and hollow and already so deep inside. Sena was stunned, swaying and open-mouthed. Her sweet blue eyes, dilated in shock, stared at the woman predator before her. "Rana... what... you can't..." She knew nothing of lust, nothing of passion or flame. The closest she had come to it was uncomfortable brushes with half-naked sailors that had set her cheeks on fire and left her hiding out of sight. Rana had always been a maternal figure to her, however unforgiving and razor-edged. The taste of her lips stabbed through the young girl's heart and shattered her new found grip on reality--she was lost in the tide, bloody in the water, drowning. "...don't..." she choked. Rana was inscrutable, leaving the apprentice to drown, waiting for the air to clear. "...get out of my sight." Her words were cutting. Sena staggered to her feet and backed away in fear and confusion. "W...why? Why are you doing this?" She pressed her back into the wooden door, fingers splayed out to brace herself. Her voice shook as it gained volume and speed. "Why do you do this? Why do you always do this?" every word tumbled from her mouth in a constant stream of consciousness. "You bring me just close enough to make me think maybe you'll finally accept me and then you push me away because you always do something to me--something--to make me question myself and question you and question everything and you always take everything away from me and you never give me anything back and--" She stopped just long enough to suck in a breath. "You've always been everything I wanted to be, everything I hoped for and you--" her face was red, tears forming just at the edges of her eyes. Some kind of madness had taken hold of her; never had she spoken so boldy, so freely. Her sweet voice rose into a wounded shout. "You take everything good away from me! Why can't you love me like he does?! That's all I ever wanted from you!" The door opened with a fumble of violently shaking hands. The girl choked on a sob of anger and frustration. "I hate you!" The door slammed as she burst from the room, bare feet pounding across the deck and far away from the only mother she'd ever known, from words she did not mean. |