Re: log: flower delivery - ella g/mason j
She took the cigarette with a smile that mingled sweetness and and old filthiness clothed in freckles. She was a product of a wild time, though it might be considered tame now. But in her time, the world was petals unfurling. Ankles, knees, wrists and elbows, and all of it daring as sleeping nude on a summer day. Proprieties were left behind, and then hunger and war swept them out to sea, and it was if they'd never been. She took the cigarette, and she sucked it deep and without reservation. Ella, for all of her sweetness, was a gluttonous thing. A product of her age, and she always tried to take more than needed. Tuck it away in stockings, and hope no one puts you in bracelets.
But none of that meant the woman at the piano wasn't wiser for having "lived." The taste of the cigarette, she knew what it meant. It was temptation standing near to the keys she played. It would be easy to judge her, because temptation was a thing chosen to fall into, but judging is for those never near the flame, and for those never feeling hunger, and for those not scared of dying.
Living forever, it made one of afraid of not living forever.
"He doesn't ever listen, not in my experience," she replied, tapping her cigarette out onto the floor, and then not looking up from her keys when he spoke of the Lord. "Maybe there's too many voices, and he gets all balled up by the din."
He hummed, and she knew he knew the words. Wiser, perhaps, but Ella was still trusting, just the same as she'd been then. And she was not trusting at all, and that was in just the same way as she'd been then. But he liked music, and she didn't ask why, why not, and who was she to ask those things? Not that she believed in deference. Ella didn't take wooden nickles, and she wasn't one for worship, but what was it to her why he did what he did?...
Why He did what He did.
Fearless more than a little, she barely edged over when he pulled up the wooden stool. She played without concern for his fingers; he would put them where they needed to go. After a moment, she lifted her fingers entirely from the keys. She sang. Her voice was crystal. It echoed off wood, throaty and sensual, and ill-made for these hallowed spaces.