she bit my lip, and drank my warmth Who: Matt [Chernobog] & Alex [Marzanna]. What: A dream scene where darkness and winter meet again. Where: Ye olde slav times made new. When: Here not there.
White blanketed the landscape around her. Spindly trees wound upward, intersected by knobby black marks as though the pale bark was the cold seeping into the true appearance of the trunk. Leafless branches reached upward into a blank sky.
She stepped forward, on the frozen edge of a lake; the ice creaked like an old ship. Snow was lightly falling, sprinkling her already bleached hair and too-white skin. A hand reached out, one delicate, spiral-shaped flake landing on a finger. Marzanna brought it to her lips, her white tongue gently plucking it from her skin.
If he was here, he would not be hard to find. A few more steps, and surely the ice would break. She had been through this ritual so many times, and yet something felt...off. Wrong. This was not where she was supposed to be. A deity of the dead knows when she's supposed to be dead.
She took another step forward, and another; though her pace was carefully measured (despite the fact that her joints and muscles barely heeded her instructions), the ice made no sign that it would rip itself apart to reunite her with her love. She sighed, and reached up again, more flakes settling on her skin. For all their cold, she could not feel them.
"What has happened," she wondered aloud. Her eyes closed for a moment, turning inward, more snowflakes dotting her white lashes like tiny diamonds.
“We’ve been lost,” a voice replied, soft and floating on the air as a brush of something light and cool moved over Marzanna’s face and brushed at the snowflakes on her eyelashes. “You’ve been lost and I’ve searched for you so much.”
Marzanna started, tears welling behind her eyes that froze before they were able to fall. For a moment, she felt afraid to open them, as though the much-desired person who might be on the other side of them would be a mere figment of her imagination.
But she did, and he wasn't. She took a clumsy step forward, her cold, bony hands reaching for what passed as his face.
"My love," she murmured, pulling back to wipe away the frozen water around her eyes. "Where were you? It's been so long, and I'm always so cold..."
“Lost it seems,” Chernobog replied seriously as his wisping fingers traveled over her cheek and down her neck to alight her shoulder. His glowing eyes moved over every inch of her as if trying to memorize her. “I remember fading from the world, becoming less and less, and then vanishing until I’ve awoken recently. But it isn’t truly being awake, no, I believe from what I’ve gathered that I am entrapped and perhaps you are as well.”
His gaze moved up to her face and he smiled. “But I’ve found you once again, when I had been so frightened I would not.”
Marzanna's ice-laden hands reached forward to cup his face, palms resting against what would be his neck were he human. The sight of his dark face was comforting in ways she could not express.
"It seems we always do," she murmured, a thumb straining along his jawline. Then her brow furrowed as her thoughts turned toward his other statement. "Awaken? And we're trapped? But how, and where? By whom?"
“I do not know who has trapped us, but it appears we share lives with mortals,” Chernobog admitted, his lip curling into a sneer of distaste. “It is their lives to live and we are only attached to them, forced to watch, but at times we may intervene… Come darling, let’s step away from the ice, let’s go to the trees and the shadows there and we can talk.” He moved around her and offered her his hand, his sneer turning into a smile that he only shared for so few.
She did not hesitate to accept, allowing herself to be led from the place where she'd died so many times; still died, at the hands of these self-same mortals that her king now described. The thought of being trapped inside of one made her feel nauseous, considering their normal dispensation toward her at the coming of spring.
"How long have you known of this? How long have you been trapped, my love?" Her questions waited long enough to reach the edge of the lake, where she immediately turned back to him; her hand remained wrapped tightly in his shadowy one.
Chernobog cocked his head and his eyes roamed over the landscape. “I’m not sure…” he said with a sigh. “Time is odd in this realm. Our lives are so long that the lives of mortals pass by in a blink, no? And yet, I am trapped viewing day-to-day activities of one sole mortal. The oddity of it all is that he does not seem to know I am there. Sure, I was able to influence his form once. He lost all solidity and became more like me, but I have yet to truly take control.”
He sighed, his free hand tracing along her cheek and arm. It felt so very good to see her again that it calmed some of his anger at the situation, but not all. “I’ve seen this man through a summer and now we’re approaching winter. It seems fitting that you should find me and I you when it’s your time to reign but I wonder whose body you are trapped in… What do you recall, if anything? Do you see through the eyes of a mortal? It appears like dreams, this window to their world.”
Marzanna pressed her frozen lips together, a dark line marring her face.
"I do remember a pale woman, and instances here and there. A white room, directing things... a place I cannot describe," she replied, as she thought back to the instances she thought were strange dreams that had been planted in her mind. To know that they were in fact the reality while she was the dream was more than startling. Her drifting eyes moved back to Chernobog's face.
"How did you take control?"
Chernobog gazed at his wife for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “I do not know,” he admitted, softly, not willing to admit his failure and lack of understanding, but knowing that Marzanna would not display his failure to anyone. “I’ve pushed, I’ve tried, but still… nothing. Then suddenly something overcame the man and I was able to gain hold, but only a little. I could see more clearly and he knew he had changed, he was panicked, frightened, and invisible to his friend…”
His eyes seemed to sparkle and he looked to the heavens and the low light coming from the skies. “His friend seems so familiar as well and I’m not quite sure...he reminds me of my brother. And you…” He looked back to Marzanna, the excitement rising in him as he clutched both of her hands. “I feel you now more than ever, your presence is there and yet cannot quite be reached. A pale woman who the mortal knows…”
Her hand detached from his, both instead rising to set palms against his chest.
"That is far better than where we have been, my love. And perhaps together we can work out the puzzle of these mortals, and what it means to be a part of them." Her face tilted up, brows moving as best they could through the frost on her face. "Have you felt anyone else, aside from your brother? Any of our other family?"
“Just you, I think,” Chernobog replied thoughtfully. “But only recently. You have to try and get thoughts into your mortal’s mind, try and get her to find the mortal I’m in. Matthew, that’s his name. Perhaps if the two meet and we both are witness, it will ignite an opening for us to gain control, and then we can be together and not in this dreamed up forest.”
His face softened at this and he mimicked her movements to touch her face. “I wish we could break free now and take our place in the real world again. These mortals, they underestimate us.”
The frozen goddess smiled, as much as she was able to; the rictus of her face did not make for easy expressions.
"They do," she murmured in reply. "And we will be reunited soon, in a space that's more than this simple dreamscape. But for now... This is enough." She looked down, seeing her feet in the snow, the way it gathered around her prone form.
"Would you walk with me?" She looked back up to Chernobog's face, taking a step back. "I would see how far this dream goes."
“Certainly, my love,” Chernobog replied with a smile as he offered her his arm. “Let us walk to the edges of this world.”