Jennifer Warda (thornyedges) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-09-01 18:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | scheherezade, sleeping beauty |
Who: Joss Makepeace and Jennifer Warda
What: An encounter of sorts. (Completed log)
Where: Verisimilitude.
When: Sometime after this conversation.
Warnings: Joss' abilities running amok, Jennifer being dominated by strange women, Anne Sexton.
The impulse had etched into Jennifer's mind since she'd met a certain peculiar woman on the forums several nights before. It was an accidental collision of forces that was as much of a surprise as it was a quickening bolt of lightning; simply an exchange of words, but then, when were words ever just? It was enough to warrant her interest in seeking the woman out, if only to continue the conversation. It was still early, before the crowds of Verisimilitude had swollen to their evening capacity, as the detective wandered through what was considered the Game Room.
A quieter nook of the manor, the atmosphere was as dim as any coffee lounge Jennifer had been before. Ambient music, conversation cut to a whisper against the shuffle of bodies and drink, lights drawn intimately low. A good place, she thought, for artists, poets, and romantics of any sort. Indulgent dreamers. Something Jennifer herself most definitely was not. None in the room made much of her appearance however; dressed in a casual red shirt, a dark, flattering skirt and boots, she walked toward the bar with a casual grace. She ordered coffee, black, and twirled the mug in contemplation of her next action. It wasn't difficult to guess where this Joss Makepeace was hiding. At a far table hugged against the wall, the surface lined with papers and stacks of books and ledgers sat a woman, her attention completely apart from that of the commotion around her. The description seemed to fit. Enough, at least, to place a wager. Taking her drink in hand, Jennifer wandered through the clutter of tables, her natural grace making the task seem effortless.
Joss's head was bowed low over her paper, the way a believer might look at prayer and was utterly lost to the movements and commotion of a room more dedicated to humanity than humanity was to it. The lights might be low, but one bright lamp sat at her elbow, quite brilliant across the white page; she was a regular, they made allowances. Many passed her table in their shuffling desire to reach the comfortable couches scattered about the place, the low-lit nooks where conversation could become entirely other forms of communication -- Joss's interest was only jarred from her page when a careless foot caught her chair, when the pencil slid against the page without intent. Then the head would catch up in irritation, startled from a reverie that was painted in another world -- and for a moment perhaps, she would watch the byplay, her cheek against her hand, quite dreamily -- before the need to write it down pervaded and the pencil was picked up and she was once again lost.
Words were not her world -- but they were close enough to it to feel comfortable, the way warm bathwater closed over and around one, felt safe. In words, in their black and white precision, lined up against a page or screen with martial precision (good little soldiers) Joss could dance and weave between them, never lost. At the precise minute however, that pencil swayed between her fingertips -- a reluctant baton that resisted conducting. People were resolutely shut out from this private communion -- at this stage, the page quite filled with crossings-out and failed sentences, they could quite easily be nothing more than spirits, come to taunt and tease and lead away until she couldn't find her way back.
The dancer's grace was lost on a woman who didn't look, the clear-minded pursuit went unacknowledged by one unaccustomed to it. Instead, it was only when shadow fell across her page (a leather-bound journal with its spine cracked wide -- habit) that Joss glanced up, a blank look at someone moving quite within her space, her table. The pencil dropped.
"Can I help you?" voice silk-sweet, soft and low, one unused to speech despite having such command of words. "There are tables. This one is mine." Apologetic, but quite resolute.
Jennifer watched as the pencil dropped into the rest of the table's clutter. She resisted the urge to smirk at so much chaos, books and journals and hastily scrawled notes, crossed out and discarded under the harsh light of the table lamp. The greeting didn't phase her in the slightest. Raising her eyebrows in a distanced sort of interest, Jennifer brought the mug to her lips and took in a better look at the woman's face. Pale, dark hair, plain--maybe, but appearances could be deceptive. Her gaze stayed level as she responded, "I wonder if you'd make an exception for the devil? I hear she likes to keep company with mortals, every now and again." Her head tilted back slightly, part confidence and part curiosity.
It was her nature it seemed, to challenge things, to try and pull back the curtain of mystery. She didn't feel this encounter would be much different. "Unless I've mistaken you for someone else, of course."
The voice wasn't one Joss had dreamed of; the voices of stories smudged into the background and this one was confident and strong and it cut through the buzz of coffeehouse noise -- clattering and talking and laughing and a swirl of blurry music that wasn't musical enough to count, bold like a knife. It meant reality, and with a little effort, Joss waded back from the world that clung to her hands, imploring, just one moment more -- the vague look to her, a thinness about her edges as though she might be rubbed out at any moment, receded a little. She blinked, to look again and her gaze settled on the cup cradled in the other's hands -- it looked warm and it smelled...
"Coffee?" she asked, pushing back hair from her face with her fingertips absently -- unaware of the pencil smudges; Joss's scrawl was dark and purposeful as it stalked across the pages. One required a sketching pencil, for that. "The dev-- Jennifer!" That smile, the one that curled itself in the corner of a cheek and promised things, bloomed with genuine pleasure and lit the thin face. "No mistake, you're quite right, do sit down," a scramble to clear a chair -- any chair from the detritus of writing. Paper crumpled itself against her hands as Joss swept it without ceremony into a hardly tidy pile and tossed it onto a separate chair. "I do tend to ...spread," she said, distracted, observing the mess as though seeing it for the first time.
Jennifer watched the woman's hands, moving fast and nervous and smudging her face just slightly with the motion. Pencil, charcoal maybe. Once recognition spread across her face, she was pleased to meet the writer's welcome, unguarded smile of recognition. The initial distant look was becoming a familiar sight these days, but this woman's gestures weren't mechanical at all; her manners were open and surprisingly to Jennifer--warm. Politely taking the offer, she sat herself in the now open chair beside Joss, finding space on the table for her coffee as well. "I wonder what it would be like," she said, nodding to the clutter, "this writer's business. I've always been a proponent to structure and order." Jennifer sat as she normally would, posture straight and legs crossed, one hand reaching toward the mug and the other brought up to her chin. A mark of interest. "It's good to meet in person." Not as amiable as Joss' reaction, perhaps, but for Jennifer it was a start.
Wonder -- of writing? It hadn't ever been a consideration, a business so much as a way of putting things into order, creating a structure out of chaos that ran her down and around and played games when she most wished to concentrate ring a ring of roses -- stop that! "It is structured," and Joss's voice was low and quiet and she addressed the pencil, the open pages of the journal rather than Jennifer herself -- as if daring to complain, object was risking something that oughtn't be risked at all. The coffee mug sat, solid and hot amid a cresting sea of scribbled paper - comfortable oasis of reality amid so many sloughed off brides between. The steam rose; Joss tapped fingernails against the binding of the journal-book. Her eyes flickered back up, hesitant and wary. The book slid onto her lap, unseen -- the way a child might hide a stuffed animal beneath the table at a frightening dinner.
"Yes. Of course. To meet -- introductions. Jocelyn Makepeace, so nice to meet you." With a sweet smile that didn't start from the cheek and the hand not holding her journal extended with demure politeness. Joss knew introductions.
Jennifer watched as the journal slid from view; something private, perhaps? The response was interesting, as if she'd rather argue against her belongings than the person beside her. She thought back to their brief conversation on the forum. Not everyone was as free with confrontation; her friends, her old friends, always had to remind her of this. Ease of communication, the skill of intuition, it was never her strongest of suits. Keeping the thought in mind, she extended the hand that was near to her coffee and shook Joss' own. It was a strong, forward gesture, relenting only enough to not seem imposing on a woman she didn't yet know.
"Maybe you'll enlighten me on your efforts, then, Joss," she responded, the slight curve of her mouth hinted of a smile. "Being a detective does make me prone to curiosity." Releasing the woman's hand, she glanced over at her cup of coffee. It was a gesture more of normalcy and habit, much like owning a bed. Exhaustion had less to do with lack of sleep these past several years and more to do with an overabundance of living. "Looks like we both have similar thoughts on dedication, however." She was genuinely curious about her, about this. Enough to seek this woman out and enough certainly to indulge in the topic of writing.
Except the question slipped sideways, a glancing blow. Joss didn't talk about why she wrote. Countless interviewers had asked and fallen at that hurdle, gone without that answer. 'Why do you write, Miss Makepeace?' they asked in soft, coaxing voices as one might persuade a skittish animal to come close, to take the food and permit the leash to slip about the neck. 'Why do you write?' they asked quickly, brusquely, slipping it into conversation like a card-trick; she gave the same smile, the same shake of the head, the same rueful, apologetic little look. Jennifer received it now.
"Perhaps," she said vaguely -- a blue man clad in gold had walked past, put his hand onto Jennifer's shoulder, smiled until the teeth at the very back of his mouth showed sharp like knives and glittered -- the fingers on the journal rattled a warning. The blue man hissed at her, angry and then blew away in the cigarette smoke from another table. Joss very determinedly looked at the coffee mug. "Dedication is easy enough when you need to do what you do." That same little shrug, as if motive and reason could be dismissed the way a duck shivered water from its feathers. "You could tell me more about you?" she offered, as if it were a sudden thought, an occurring idea and smiled again, her eyes sliding from where the man had been, from the coffee cup to meet Jennifer's more steadily. They were quite a clear brown, for all her dreaminess.
"Why don't you?"
At such a vague answer, Jennifer began to scratch unconsciously at the scar on her wrist. She didn't expect the feint at such a general question. Was her work so intimate then, that strangers couldn't be allowed to discern it? She didn't understand this woman. It gave her the impetus to try, another bad habit. For a moment, there was something in her eyes, a distraction just past her shoulder that made Joss turn away again. Her eyes, her hands, they refused to keep still. "More about me? I'm not sure you could know more, at this rate. It's not often I discuss certain topics, and I never do with strangers," she replied, an honest statement. There was a power to this girl's words, something deep that clawed at Jennifer's defenses, finding the weakened joints of her armor and shifting her way inside. It wasn't a familiar dynamic.
She leaned forward, one hand touching the top of the coffee mug, feeling the heat spread across her fingers. "Why don't I...? What? Write?"
"Write. Talk about yourself, either." Joss's smile was back to being open and sunny once again, the light turned away from her and back onto Jennifer -- comfortable that way. Her eyes tracked the scratching, like mice running around Jennifer's wrist and biting -- her vision blurred, stop it "What did you do?" the question came, gentle and calm and entirely devoid of guile -- if Joss knew such a question was wrong, wouldn't fit an acquaintance of so short a time, didn't fit, there was nothing to note, no way of telling. Joss leaned forward, her cheek against her hand, elbow resting comfortably against a pile of paper. Dark hair swayed forward and brushed her cheek; she seemed entirely content to listen. Joss didn't speak - much.
"What topics?" There was that innocence again.
"I don't see the advantages of it," Jennifer replied, gripping the mug in her hands once again. The strength of the aroma was reassuring. "I can carry my own burdens without involving others." She took a sip, quick and hot and burning a path down her throat. At the mention of the scar, Jennifer's expression shifted. Had she brought attention to it somehow? The scar was pale and raised up in the shape of a thorn, small enough for Jennifer to ignore it in lieu of other wounds, but enough for anyone with a decent eye to notice. She inhaled. "Defensive wound, glass," she explained, her description making her body sound like a crime scene. Jennifer shrugged. "I have enough of them." She put the mug aside and watched Joss again, still for the moment it seemed, and focused on her. Maybe not plain at all. Disarming.
"Myself. My past, these--disadvantages to crossing over. How I feel about any of it."
Joss was studying her with the intensity of trying to commit something to rote, that chin resting in the notch of her palm and her eyes didn't move. Perhaps it was because over one shoulder she could see the byplay between a serpent and charmer -- serpent coiled about the shoulders of a man who didn't even notice a red snake hissing against his ear, but perhaps it was simply the way she was, in conversation that caught at the imagination's edges.
"Why not?" An interested glance at the wrist -- a thorn? Why a thorn? It didn't look like glass; glass cut and jagged and laughed when it snapped at you, Joss had written glass before. Drawn away for only a moment, she watched the way Jennifer's face moved and changed with the way she spoke, the way she looked and breathed -- and then fell into composure and quiet again. Fascinating. "What do you feel about it?" It was as though the remark about strangers had been cast aside carelessly -- Joss didn't care about it enough to keep it, so why would anyone else?
"I've never considered it an option." Jennifer was responsible for herself. For her own actions. Remember your duties to your family, her father would say. She looked over to the papers on the table again, aware of Joss' intent gaze. Maybe this was some grand mistake, placing one's head willingly upon the chopping block for some mysterious woman to test the true of her blade. She considered her other meetings with women--what did Joss say before? Something about sex and violence and ecstasy--contact for the sake of contact, but never the danger of touching things she needed to be left alone, buried. She didn't need an Orpheus to bring her back from the dead.
"Nothing. Too much," she said from the side of her mouth, like a curse twisting against her tongue. Jennifer looked over again but she wasn't making eye contact. "Why do you find it so interesting?"
"Isn't it?" And that was that, a kitten batting the toy back, an expectant look as if the play by rights ought to continue. The journal slid back to its position, fell open at the precise page it had been closed. It was a knack, and Joss possessed it. She did it enough, after all. The pencil was sought and found with her free hand, unseeing -- it stood to attention a moment, and then skimmed across the page, a sketch of words that pulled themselves together into a shape. All the while, Joss watching calmly. The tumult raging above Jennifer's head was not Joss's storm to bear.
"It isn't," Jennifer insisted, one of her hands flexing and unflexing from the tension. She felt slighted. Opened up and disc--no, of course not. No one was ever granted that amount of power over her, and certainly not this woman sitting across from her, writing into her notebook as if the world around her meant nothing at all. She leaned forward, enough to be heard across the commotion around them, and said from memory:
"I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind."
"A woman like that," she finished, "is not a woman, quite. You're a dangerous creature, Ms. Makepeace."
Joss's chin dipped in her hand, her hair fell forward like a curtain drawing across -- and the hand scribbled on. When she looked up, she was laughing, all bright amusement and contrition, "I don't mean to be. At all," she said earnestly, and it was meant -- the same peculiar intensity Joss gave to everything and everyone. "I don't think I am. What sort of--" It was on the tip of her tongue, to ask -- there were shades of danger, of course. The ones that a hero could fight even cornered, valiant sword going snick-silver-snick in the dark and conquer and then there was the danger that swept in smoothly and blotted out the light, until you could see no longer. She hadn't meant to be written dangerously, but perhaps she was. The laughter died from Joss's eyes and lips, she laid the pencil down so delicately in the fold of the book -- like a coffin.
"That poem is about witches. I'm not." At least, she didn't think so. Not now, not before -- "But I am a woman. What do you mean to say?" The chin found its notch again, the elbow on the edge of the table; Joss's composure restored itself as if it had never been gone. "But you quote a lot of poetry, why?"
"I'm saying that you're clever and mysterious," Jennifer countered, "and probably very dangerous, whether you intend to be or not." Shaking her head to dispel the vague tinge of aggravation at being read so easily, she took another sip of her coffee before responding to the other question. It was a difficult answer.
Poetry wasn't the sort of thing she shared with most people either. It was personal, relevant, words honed like knives, quick and clever. Deadly in their accuracy but subtle enough to hide inside Jennifer's thoughts, only making themselves known when she couldn't articulate just how she was feeling. Emily was always better with words, of course, but she liked to keep them as a reminder of things important. Irreplaceable.
"It isn't something I'm prone to often, but that seems to be an ongoing theme." Her mouth moved into a subtle smile. "Words have their uses."
Joss had been shaking her head very definitely at any idea at all of danger -- danger was sharp and secret and smiled in the dark as it spooled out stories, sliding fingers around the neck, drew you in. Not Joss, never Joss -- 'mysterious' she'd been called before, words in print, a black and white photograph in which she didn't look mysterious at all. Was it mystery when you had nothing to show, to tell? There were no cards in hand to splay across the table, to play -- but when Jennifer mentioned words, the thin trail of thought was forgotten and Joss enveloped in a new one and she brightened.
"They do!" An affectionate pat to the journal, the way one might absently pet a loved animal. "But I haven't written poetry, so I don't know about that. How do you know so much?"
Jennifer felt unbalanced by so much movement. A hint of something here, a tiny fragment of clarity before she slipped her way downstream once more, on to something else; a glimpse, only to lose sight of her again. But where did she go? Was it possible for Jennifer to follow, so far down? She tapped her fingers against the mug.
"Lately it feels as if I don't know much at all. So much is happening in this city, so many new people. Some want to help, others don't, but we're all stretching out, blanketing our influence across this city. It worries me," she confessed, her voice someone distant. Her eyes lifted to Joss. "There are some distractions, like books and poetry. Do you consider yourself a good storyteller?"
Storyteller. Stories told rather than written, the way they wanted, clamoring like birds, like children tugging on skirts to be unconstrained, to fly. The veil fluttered and something pressed itself enticingly against Joss, a flirt of boldness and the warm and earthy smell of excitement. Her throat was full of honey and gold, a wealth of what she hadn't said -- wouldn't say -- like a thread teasing itself around her wrists like manacles. It pulled -- the woman seated at the table with her hands full of paper seemed to smudge against the background, fade a little, her edges soften against the background of the coffeehouse. No, Joss was not a good storyteller -- she refused to be summoned to the stories, to tell them as they wanted to be told, to allow them to wind around another, snake-like and squeeze. The blue man was back, his shoulders heavy with a lacy and ornate capelet of gold and silver; a finger to his lips the other hand above Jennifer's shoulder, shh. Joss's mouth was dry as deserts. She licked her lips, hesitant and fearful.
"I think I might," a flicker-glance to the man beside Jennifer, the meaningful look he gave back, a finger against Jennifer's neck, "Yes. I have to, so very sorry, but--" A pause, Joss took a very deliberate breath. Closed her eyes.
"I have to go." The papers strewn were left -- Verisimilitude was used to the disarray by now, surely. Holding only a leather-bound book in her hand, Joss fled.
"What? Wait--" Jennifer had no idea what was going on at all, here and there and suddenly the woman was fleeing entirely. Her papers, just...discarded. Jennifer stood, left alone and watching as Joss disappeared through the crowds. She looked around, lost as to what possibly could've provoked such a response. Just men and women with their drinks and laughter, giving in to the gentle caress of mirth. There wasn't anything left for her to do but scowl down at Joss' pile of papers and sigh. The encounter had proved only in making her more confused, completely unsure of just who, or what, this creature was. Picking up her half-empty mug of coffee, Jennifer turned to leave as well.
"I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind."