WHO: Pandora & William Shakespeare WHEN: Wednesday afternoon WHERE: The Met WHAT: Pandora watching Pandora. WARNINGS:Taking liberties with the locations of famous artworks tba
When Pandora was feeling unlike herself she often found herself drawn to the images of old that people had done of her. Today was no exception and for the last hour she'd been sitting in a room of the Met and gazing at the painting on the wall across from her.
The box itself sat silently in her bag on the bench beside her and Pandora wondered if it knew what she was watching. That moment then had doomed her. But, no, it had been earlier than that. It had been her own first breath that had doomed her to a life of deception and loneliness, to never have as much from the world as she wanted.
His whole world was out of sorts, one tangled, draining mess. The Bard felt some life get sucked from his very soul, as he did every time the world used him. This time it wasn't his lack of creativity or writing that had frustrated him. This time, those gussied up historians were influencing the entertainment. Lies! All of it!
It made him angry because he knew how the general public worked when it came to entertainment. Especially, the poor, easily used and brainwashed idiots of today. He'd seen it in his classroom. Students, adults in their prime that hardly picked up a book anymore. They knew their knowledge based on film and film alone. Hamlet was Mel Gibson, The Iliad was Brad Pitt, pirates Johnny Depp and other gorgeous British actors. All fine to a point, but not story tellers.
If film decided to declare him, him the creator of thousands of words and phrases, just an illiterate with a pen name, then he was over! Survival these hundreds of years just to be snubbed by historians again! This time with a heavier fist!
He couldn't think, couldn't move! The very audacity made him weak and sick to his stomach. After a lite lunch William reluctantly drug himself to the museum in hopes to see the fresh-faced Ariadne for a bright smile. Instead he found someone else, someone who demanded as much attention as himself.
Pandora.
(Reply to this)(Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-10-06 04:45 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora knew that it was William without even turning to look at him. Instead her eyes remained locked on that painting as he came closer and when he was near enough she asked, "is she more beautiful than me?" Her tone was little more than exhaustion and desperation.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-10-06 10:17 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select He ignored her at first, as if he expected to walk past without her taking notice. Then she spoke! Oh gods she spoke and he felt his heart clench in his chest. He could not ignore her! He was foolish to think he could. He needed someone right now so that he could feel life fill this void he felt. This was worse than a broken heart or a lost love. This was William ceasing to exist and feeling the world tug and pull him in all different directions.
"She is a beauty unlike that of this world." The Pandora within the painting was only the image the artist created, what he had fallen in love with. Just as the Pandora of William's past, his Sylvia, was whom he had created beyond what he saw. It was where they clashed and fought each other with their vein personalities.
He turned his head to face her now though his body stood straight, "You are more than any image man could create." He assured her of her beauty, though it different than the raven haired woman he'd become obsessed with before.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-10-07 03:06 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora stood then, his assurances warming her already. William needed her and she needed that. That she was desired and beautiful was all-important.
"My William," she said, reaching out a hand to stroke his cheek tenderly.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-10-08 11:45 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Her assurance was beaming off her face, but William was still questioning himself. What was she going to give him in return?
As soon as he thought it, his answer was given. His eyes slid closed softly, finding he couldn't even look at the image in front of them any longer. Not for the subject matter but because he as an artist felt trapped.
His hand reached up and cupped hers, keeping it planted on his cheek, mouth open slightly as if it speak, but he did not know what to say. For once, his words were taken from him purposefully.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-10-08 11:54 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora leaned in then to kiss him, a kiss so chaste her lips barely brushed his at all. Her William, her writer, the man who wrote her sonnets that flattered her vanity even as they cursed her existence.
"Don't leave me," she whispered against his lips, her eyes closed. There was a desperation in Pandora's voice that she hid so well in daily life, but right not she couldn't bare to be alone.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-10-09 12:01 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Oh William was selfish. He wanted that respect and glory as much as she wanted her beauty. He wanted to be seen. That was what drove them unto each other's paths in the first place.
How could he leave anyone who ever made a plea so delicate? Even if he knew the consequences. Pandora was all wrong for him, and he hadn't initially come for her. He'd come for the sake of another beautiful and very taken woman. He was attracted to that he could not really have.
His eyes opened, staring again at this painting showcased in front of them, feeling the brush of her lips to his.
"What would you have of me? What am I to you, Sylvia?" he spoke in his own name given to her.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-10-09 12:06 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora drew back enough so that she could see his face, and a small smile drifted onto her lips. "A brilliant man," Pandora told him. "A man who once rescued a young unhappy woman from her own suffering. My love," she whispered, her hand once again on his cheek. "Don't leave me in my own suffering again. I can't bear the sight of myself."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-10-09 12:11 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "And what if I haven't the strength to rescue you again?" he asked with the skip of his heartbeat and a whisper on his lips. There was a glisten in his eyes when she reveled his brilliance. "I no longer write in the ways that made you so immortal in my heart. The world has denied me." His voice seemed crushed.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-10-09 12:17 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "I've not denied you," Pandora whispered. "Your Sylvia remains. Just for now, can't that be enough?"
Around the two of them the patrons of the museum moved, casting nothing more than a glance towards the two beautiful young lovers in their midst and having no idea of what went on between them.
"My William," Pandora said, brushing her thumb below his eye to wipe away the tear that tried to escape. "Let me be your inspiration once more. I'll be your Dark Lady. I'll give you kindness and beauty if that's what you need, and when you want cruelty I will give that too. I'll give everything to you, Will, only don't turn away from me."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-10-09 12:30 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select There was hope. A devastating hope that each of his muses gave him. His real Muses, and the ladies he kept close. He felt his heart burst with such confliction, that swell of tears hung in his throat.
His hands grasped her face, forehead to forehead as he shook his head up an down.
"I won't," he whispered.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-10-09 12:51 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora let out her breath and smiled against him, glad to have this at least. "Take me home now, Will," she said to him, lust in her voice. "Let me remind you how I can inspire."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-10-12 04:41 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select William could hardly think, her words not poetic, but urgent in their tone. He would do as she asked, taking her by the arm and leading her out of the museum.
"Yes, my lady."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-10-14 02:27 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select This was the control she wanted (and needed), this power over someone else. Pandora entangled her fingers with his and from there she took him to her apartment, the one that Epimetheus had made her leave to be safe. It smelled more like home to her though and her own art lined the walls. There they stripped the clothes from each other carelessly, Pandora just needing this human connection. Yes, she had her husband and in some ways she loved him, but he didn't set her on fire. William could do that. Between the two of them there were sparks of passion, and passion was better than love in Pandora's mind.
When morning cracked through the curtains the two of them were tangled together in the sheets and Pandora's body ached. She blinked against the sunlight and reached for her bedside clock to find out the time. 9m. Quietly Pandora swore and crawled out of the bed (with a little bit of effort because of those sheets) and padded out to find her bag and phone to text Epimetheus.
Got distracted at the gallery. Crashed at my old place. Be home later today.
She ran a hand through her messy hair and smiled and the various wonderful aches in her muscles. She felt blissfully exhausted. Putting her phone back into the bag, the box watched her judgmentally. "Oh, shut up you," she whispered at it, closing the bag so she couldn't see it anymore.
Then she walked back down to the bedroom and smiled at William in the bed as she saw him begin to snore. She stood at the end of the bed and walked her fingers a little way up his calf, the cold of the room dancing across her own naked skin.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-01 11:37 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select His face was cushioned by the soft pillows, smothered in her scent. The same perfume, the same wild beauty he'd awoken to many times before and became somewhat drunk over. Obsessed. He wasn't sure if it was her, the experience or just the atmosphere that had ideas dancing around in his mind.
Many a night he awoke to an empty pen and paper, his mind a force of nature on it's own--building it's own wall around his ideas to where their full beauty could not be expressed. Damn the world and taking him over! This recent understanding, the film only further clouded his mind, making him the illiterate being they took him for. It was absurd! One night with Pandora and he was taken back to a place when he was much older, slightly overweight, balding and not the spry young man that could entice a woman. He'd fixated on her and never looked back then, but she was poisonous!
Her venom was just as powerful this night. When he felt the light skim through the curtains he kept his eyes closed, exaggerating that snore a little more when she returned. Her fingers ghosted his skin, goosebumps pelting against the touched area and he quirked a small smile.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-02 05:55 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora spotted that little smile and she grinned, crawling up onto the bed beside him and capturing his lips for just a moment. "Good morning," she murmured, relaxed on the bed beside him.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-03 02:47 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select That grin grew wider at her voluptuous, teasing kiss. He rolled over, arm strapping behind his head, looking over at those long, blond curls that bounced down her shoulders, a much lighter look than the one he'd gotten used too in Elizabethan England.
"Is it morning already?" he asked in a sleepy-headed voice.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-03 03:34 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Alas," she told William, "but that light through yonder window is definitely breaking." She shifted on the bed so she could curl into the space against his body, her cheek resting against his shoulder and her arm draped across his waist. "It's just past nine. You don't have to be anywhere?"
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-03 04:10 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Then it breaks much too soon, I am not yet awake," a yawn following his words, cuddling in against the warmth she offered with her soft body. His fingers twisted and played through her hair softly, massaging against her scalp with the adoration of the lover he'd always been.
He waited before answering her, that amused expression held for as long as possible!
"No, my dear, I have no where I should be."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-03 04:13 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Good," Pandora said, her tone both happy and sleepy. "Me neither."
She yawned too then and then lifted her head enough to smile at him. "I'll make us breakfast-something in a bit," she told him before putting her head back down. "But for now, this is nicer."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-03 04:19 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select With half-lidded eyes he held her close, nose nestled against her hair which was but puffed in various directions. It smelled divine!
It wasn't often they spent times such as this, in a morning embrace. Times before there was hardly a crack of light before they'd rounded into a fitful argument, passionate rage, and then sonnets of love written with within but a short time. It was more discreet then, and William realized she was just as tempting, if not more than ever.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-03 04:22 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select They lay there together, Pandora half-dozing, and eventually she said, "Shh, listen," and held up a finger so that he would. "Do you know what this is? No husband coming knocking at my bedroom door." She grinned then and leaned up to kiss him.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-03 04:35 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Was it her unattainable nature that had attracted him? That she scorned him before taking him to her bed? The rush of suspicion, being caught, was it always so exciting---yet now they lay as if there was nothing but time.
His fingers continued to comb through her hair, lips just a slight pucker against her own at that forward kiss. He said not a word to her about her husband, he only wanted to feel as if it were just them, no one else.
"When you look upon me, what is it that you see?" he asked her, as vain as she ever was, his voice but a whisper against those golden curls. "Before, at first, I was not anything that you wanted."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-03 04:44 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora thought about that. "When I first met you, I was newly married. I desired only to be a good wife because - in truth - there's nothing I've ever been worse at." She circled a finger on his chest slowly as she spoke. "Then you came along, an old man so clearly infatuated from the start. It was your art that made me break my vows, but it could have been anything. I can't keep marriage vows." She sat up to look at him properly, touching his face. "Immortality has made you more beautiful, but you were always that to me."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-03 05:11 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "I was but a man, just a man looking for inspiration." It was a more dead time in his life when he'd first met Pandora. When his Muses were not at his side, when it seemed his creativity was eaten alive by new and aspiring writers, when William Shakespeare questioned the very importance of his own name. Then she entered like a black widow, putting a veil over his eyes and shielding him from the rest of the world, and he was enticed by her.
Her fingers were soft, their tips only slightly cold. "Immortality has made a liar out of me."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-03 06:15 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Immortality makes liars and monsters of us all," Pandora said quietly and with a sad smile. Although Pandora, as she saw it, was built that way.
(Reply to this)(Parent)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-03 10:22 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select The look he gave was nearly heartbroken, with upturned brows, getting the answer he wasn't ready to accept right now. "No more beautiful then are we? Just fragments of who we once were." His own fingers ghosted against the face he'd known so differently then.
(Reply to this)(Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-03 10:33 pm UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select That look cut through her and she felt so old compared to him, so truly ancient. And she felt cruel, even only imparting what was truth. "I'm sorry," she told him and she truly was, because she knew what it was to become only a shadow. "Human memory forms us now, whatever we were then. The first life is always the sweetest."
Looking down at him from where she sat, Pandora leaned in closer, her hand on his cheek. "Be thankful that you lived a full and human life." Creatures such as her had never had that, but Pandora remembered it all. She remembered vast histories and floods and marriages and bickering and love-making and childbirth, but she knew, if she thought about it logically, that none of it could have actually happened.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-04 12:18 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "To have lived and yet all my gifts are but taken away, is it really a life now?" He'd forgotten what it was to have children, to be a husband (a role he himself had never held properly), to be a playright, an actor, a man of great talent and now to only be a man with no special powers. What could he do but correct the bad English of another, frustrate himself into an oblivion just to do what he once loved. The world was a double-edged sword to him now. His praise and yet his undoing.
He understood her in that moment though, as he looked into those tired, old eyes of hers.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-04 12:24 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select Pandora watched him quietly, trying to reach what went on behind his eyes.
"It hurts," Pandora said to him. "I know." Her smile was small, wry but sympathetic. "You understand now? Why an ancient woman walking around Elizabethan London would both long for an artist who write pretty sonnets about her at the same time as finding that very idea terrifying? They say my curse is curiosity, but my true curse is that I desire to be immortal in the eyes of all but at the same time to be just a simple woman."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-04 12:33 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Now they wish to prove me fake," that hurt worse than anything, because it made him flicker into a dull light each time. With every believer, there was always one non-believer and that burned. "It breaks me!" he was near tears, those small droplets just a veil over his eyes.
"Then I did you injustice," he'd immortalized her in an entirely new way.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-04 12:37 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select "Hey," Pandora chided him gently, "don't get yourself all worked up." She leaned in to kiss him. "We're here right now, we do what we do, we are what we are. I may be a monster," Pandora smirked at him, sliding her hand down his stomach and then beneath the sheets. "But I'm a very attractive one."
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-04 01:10 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select He nodded softly at her touch.
"You are the devil's mistress," he said under his breath as her hands snaked against his skin. His lips grasped hers, "and yes, a beauty." He felt every bit as young as she had made him those years ago, when she'd touched his older skin with fever.
"What is it you want?" he asked her in melodic voice.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]pandoros 2011-11-04 01:40 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select No, she'd never been the Devil's mistress, never that. But then, hadn't the Christians based their first woman on her, the vessel that brought evil into the world with her curiosity? So maybe William was right, and that title should have belonged to her as well.
"Right now?" she queried him with a devious smile. "Only you." Her words were a warm whisper against his lips.
(Reply to this)(Parent) (Thread)
[info]theworlds_stage 2011-11-04 03:13 am UTC (link) DeleteFreezeScreenTrack This Select His lips pouted against hers, a small eager hum as he threaded his fingers with hers, causing her to slip down against him. "Just me," he whispered through half-lidded eyes.