Portia Lisette Marais (still_life) wrote in theunboundic, @ 2019-02-05 11:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! time: april 17 - 23, ! time: backstory, hazel ermine, portia marais |
More and more I feel less and less
Who: Portia and Hazel
When: BACKDATED: Friday, April 22, Late Night
Where: Canwyn’s Tooth
What: Portia accidentally visits Hazel in the night
The thunder seemed to fill the air with electricity, and Portia felt restless when she went to bed around 10pm on Friday night. It took her some time to fall asleep. She tossed and turned a little, the muggy air making her feel warm and clammy and a bit sticky. It wasn’t hot enough to be unbearable, but it was frustrating and her skin felt over-sensitive with it. The warm air and the storm were probably why she couldn’t seem to still her thoughts, and her mind ran through a great many things before she finally began to doze off.
When she finally fell asleep, she swiftly felt the spinning sensation of her gift, familiar and dizzying nonetheless, moving her at the speed of thought through Belmont Manor, through the grounds and the lane, and through the town. When her awareness settled, Portia was just inside the bakery she had visited on Monday.
Thanks to Portia’s subconscious, her lips were as vibrantly red as she remembered the striking baker’s lips being. In fact, with her dark flowing hair, her bright widened eyes, and the faintly glowing look of her body, her astral projection was an ethereal vision of a woman out of place in the world. Out of place here. Portia should not be in this bakery, and yet her ghostly fingers breezed right through some of the cakes on display as Portia wandered through the dim shop and towards the kitchen.
“Raspberry pink,” she murmured idly as she reached some pink cupcakes, fingers dipping immaterially into the icing, not moving it at all. Had the baker made the same ones again, or was this some new flavour that would be sweet and rich and all manner of complex and delicious in Portia’s mouth? Her fingers reached up to touch her own lips as she somewhat dreamily added, “And rose red.”
There was a warm glow beneath the door leading into the back room, the only sign that there was anyone left at the bakery at this hour. By all reasonable accounts, she should have been home and sleeping. The store would be open in just a few hours, the small, comfortable space crowded with regular customers for the breakfast rush. But she wasn’t sleepy, was almost never sleepy, and her hand fumbled unseeingly for her self-appointed remedy for that - a tall glass of brown liquid and ice cubes - while the other traced a smudge of lavender frosting from the edge of a cake platter with the end of her fingernail.
She rubbed the purple stuff between her fingers in slow, circular motions and contemplated the partially-iced confection, taking a long pull of her drink before she set it aside and took up her frosting bag again. It wasn’t so uncommon that she found herself here after hours like this. In fact, she would likely argue that this was the time she spent doing some of her best work, those uninterrupted hours where she had the place to herself and was left alone with herself and her thoughts and her creations. Of course, for the time to be constructive it also required her to also be in a proper mindset, which was to say a mostly-sober one. She was managing thus far, the liquor warm and syrupy as it burned familiar fire down her throat as she piped clean (and mostly straight) lines of bright violet over the layers of golden cake.
She paused, her head coming up to stare at the door separating the back room from the front. She could have sworn she’d heard something, a sound like a voice. Mac, maybe, come to check on her? She rose slowly, her investigation unhurried as she tilted another mouthful of booze into her mouth and nudged her way into the front room, trading out the icing bag for her trusted rolling pin on her way out. One could never be too careful.
She lingered there in the doorway, eyes scanning the space and falling almost immediately on the intruder. She was rather difficult to miss, all things considered, what with her striking beauty and the fact that she was actually glowing. Tilting her head, she watched the woman with rapt attention, wondering for a brief moment if she’d dozed off in the cake (again). She wouldn’t put it past herself to have dreamt up a shimmering manifestation of the uptight Clove woman from earlier that week. But the liquor that pooled realistic fire between her ribs quickly dashed that suspicion, and her lips twitched in an incredulous smirk. She anchored her shoulder against the doorframe and clinked the ice in her glass, a polite announcement of her presence.
“Portia Marais?” she called. “We’re well past closed, lovely.”
The voice in the quiet turned Portia towards the sound. Actually, the moment before Portia heard the voice, she heard that gentle clinking of ice in the glass tinkling ever so faintly in the background, but it wasn’t until she heard her name that she turned and saw the speaker.
Hazel, leaning against the door, a drink in her hand, a smirk on her face. Confident, unapologetic, teasing, and beautiful. Portia moved towards her, her astral projection walking silently through the space, barefoot and wearing a long, gauzy nightgown. Portia’s astral projections didn’t quite look the same as her physical form. It was a projection of her mind’s view of herself, and so it depended how she saw and thought of herself at any given moment, and could range from almost invisible to more real than reality, more saturated, more intense. Depending, of course, on Portia. The way she looked could change mid-projection sometimes, too, especially when she was sleeping. She had less control over herself when she accidentally projected while asleep. It was a dream state, even if she was wandering through the real world with as she did it, and thus faced real life consequences. When she was asleep, her subconscious was more in control than her conscious mind, but of course, that was not the case for others she might encounter.
That was partly why Portia had worked so hard to try to learn to control her accidental wandering. She had learned to have a little more control over what she did in that dream state than the average dreamer, but for someone as tightly controlled as Portia was in real life, it was not enough for her. The anxiety of that didn’t reach her now, in this moment, but it would as soon as she woke up.
For now, her subconscious carried her closer to the woman, around the counter that Portia would not have dared cross in real life, and into Hazel’s territory.
“I didn’t mean to come here,” Portia murmured, dragging her fingers over the countertop as she slowly moved towards Hazel.
“No?” She watched the other woman advance but did not move from her languid position, her dark eyes noting the slight indescrepencies in Portia’s appearance with interest. Paired with the otherworldly luminescence of her form, Hazel was even more fascinated by the Clove woman than she’d been upon meeting her. Now, for such a small town Glynn was no stranger to strange goings-on. Quite a few of the people here had Gifts, many of them with unusual side effects, but she could honestly say she’d never seen anything quite like this.
“And here I was, hoping you were looking for me.” She grinned and hefted the rolling pin in her palm, tapping it lightly against the outside of her thigh. “Make a wrong turn somewhere?”
Portia stopped a few feet from Hazel, looking at her curiously. She wanted Portia to be looking for her? Portia didn’t quite understand what that meant. Aurellians were very different from Clovennians. Portia wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to how odd it felt to talk to someone who didn’t really even know the social rules Portia lived her life by.
“Why?” Portia asked. Why was Hazel hoping Portia was looking for her, she meant, but even this dreamy version of Portia knew better than to ask that. “Do I look like I’m lost?”
It was a strange thing to ask, perhaps, but it was strange to be here in Aurelle, and Portia sometimes felt like so much was different here that maybe she was different too.
She tilted her head, eyes narrowed in thoughtful appraisal of the dreamy woman standing in her bakery. The intrusion probably should have been more alarming, but Hazel didn’t feel particularly threatened by Portia, despite her Clovennian heritage. Besides, once you’ve seen someone literally dance on air or carry on a conversation with a milk cow, the threshold for shock and awe tended to increase. She would take this as she took most things, with a grain of salt and a sense of humor. “You look…” She rubbed her lips together, searching for the word she wanted to say. “...a little of out place.” A generalized sweep of her rolling pin indicated all of Portia, from the top of her glowing head to the soles of her feet, and she chuckled. “You stand out a little bit. More than usual, anyway.”
She rocked the cold edge of her glass against her bottom lip. “You know, usually when a lady comes calling at this hour it’s not an accident. Do you know how you got here?”
A little out of place. Portia supposed that was a kind way to put it. She stood up a little straighter, looking a little more formal, her mental projection of herself coming to look a little more like how she normally does, a little more buttoned up, a little less dreamy. The shift in appearance was faint, but probably triggered by her mind organizing itself to answer Hazel’s questions.
“I am out of place. Because I’m not actually here. I haven’t done this in a while, been wandering instead of sleeping. I must have been thinking of you and your…” Lips. Say baked goods, she mentally instructed herself, whispering it aloud. “Baked goods. And lips. Aesthetically, you’re striking, but that isn’t the sort of compliment one makes to a stranger, even with the excuse of an artist’s eye.”
Portia blinked bashfully. She hadn’t meant to say that. It was always a little strange, her own experience of this… dreamwalking she did, as it were. It was surreal enough that it didn’t quite feel like it was actually happening, but real enough that she felt emotions. She hadn’t done it in a while, so she was out of practice at controlling herself. She thought she’d had it more or less in hand, since it had been a month or two since it had happened, but Portia idly wondered what it was that was making it happen again now. Was it random? Or was it that her curiosity had been captured by Aurelle? By Glynn? By its residents? By, evidently, Hazel the baker?
It was a problem that though it didn’t happen very often, it tended to last a little while when it did Unless something woke her, Portia knew she would be here for a few more minutes at least. She knew what was happening, but she was always much more honest than she meant to be. Much more honest than she would be were she deliberately choosing her words. Had she really just admitted to thinking about Hazel?
“It doesn’t mean anything. Just a wandering mind, like an unintentional tangent in a dream.”
Hazel’s eyebrows jumped, and a small laugh fogged against the ice cubes in her drink. The confession was unprecedented, surely, but the blunt matter-of-factness of it struck her as funny. “Ah, yes, your artist’s eye,” she drawled, examining the projection with renewed interest. “So let me get this straight… you’re technically asleep right now? And dreaming,” and here her lips spread wide into a cheeky, mischievous grin, and her gaze alighted upon the uncharacteristically bright smear of color on the other woman’s mouth, “about me?”
Even Portia’s assurance that it meant nothing would do little to deter her, and she pushed off the side of the door to close some of the distance between them. “I’ve never seen a Gift like this,” she admitted.
Even a projection of Portia could blush, and she turned pink as Hazel laughed, and then smiled her way through such a mischievous question. Portia knew what Hazel must think, and Portia felt the embarrassment of this moment already. How could she explain this away? How could she make Hazel understand what it meant -- or rather, believe her when she said what it didn’t mean -- when they didn’t even know each other? What sort of assumptions might Hazel make of her, and who might she share them with?
Portia’s head was spinning as Hazel approached, because she knew she couldn’t conceal her thoughts or emotions very well like this. She suddenly felt very naked knowing Hazel could see her embarrassment and her fear. Because as much as Hazel was striking, and as much as Portia did see her beauty, she feared judgment, she feared ending up as the focus of gossip again. She really feared that one Aurellian who couldn’t possibly understand Portia’s life now suddenly had information that could damage Portia, whether it was true or not. All because a local had been friendly and bold enough to stand out in Portia’s mind, and now…
“I’m not dreaming of you. I am just dreaming, and you are just you. I thought of you and my mind brought me here,” Portia explained, her eyes fixed intently on Hazel. If she had full control of herself, she would have just smiled placidly and brushed it away, she would have come up with an explanation that was at least good enough for anyone Hazel might speak to, she would have acted like it didn’t matter. But like this, when everything was too honest and nothing quite came out how she wanted it to, Portia could only will herself to wake up before she made it worse.
And despite that thought, Portia looked into Hazel’s eyes and breathed, “You don’t understand. You can’t say anything.”
Even that made it worse. Admitting vulnerability or need to someone else, or asking them a favour, always made things worse because it gave them power.
The discomfort radiating from her was all but palpable, and Hazel’s smile faded by fractions to recognize the emotion that played in those great eyes, eyes that were at once Portia’s and not. She was afraid. “Alright, beauty,” she soothed, “You don’t have to worry about that. Who would I tell? And besides, people would more likely believe that I was dreaming if I went and told them you came sleepwalking into my shop in the middle of the night.” She flashed another grin, a more comforting, less feral version of the one she’d worn before, and winked to show she was teasing again. “I will, however, continue to operate under the assumption that you were dreaming of me because it pleases me to do so. Lucky I was here though, hm?”
She snorted at the mental image of Calvin stumbling downstairs to find a glowing Clove in her nightclothes glowing by the display case. His reaction, she’d no doubt, would have been priceless.
“So if you’re not really here, can you… feel things? Will you remember being here when you wake up?”
Who would she tell, Hazel asked. What an inane question. It didn’t matter who she told, because if she mentioned this to anyone, assumptions would inevitably be made. Words travelled even more easily than Portia’s astral projected form, and though Portia knew she was of little consequence to the locals here, gossip could spread quickly through this small town whether or not anyone cared who she was. She knew all too well how easy it was to become a headline, and in Portia’s experience, the masses delighted in the discomfort of others, revelled in drama and tragedy, greedily took from others to build themselves up. Everything was competitive. There had always been a certain vicious glee in the voices of Portia’s peers as they spoke about Beau getting caught with some man, some servant, his deviance buoyed by the impropriety of crossing that class divide.
And here Portia was, thinking about a working-class Aurellian woman who had flirted with her, standing in her bakery at night, glowing faintly and obviously flustered. Hazel would not need to say much, and if a whisper of this got back to Blair, or Alex, or Beau... Even a joking suggestion that perhaps there was some deeper reason that this woman had stood out enough to make Portia think of her days later could cause problems. Portia didn’t even want anyone to know that she still couldn’t fully control her ability to astral project. The former could further damage her still-recovering reputation, and the latter was just humiliating.
She had come to Aurelle in part to get away from the competitive social setting of Clovenne, to have a break from the constant pressure. And yet, even in this pretty little town with locals like Hazel who seemed not to care for control, if her gentle alright, beauty, you don’t have to worry about that was any indication, Portia had brought that pressure with her. What would happen, she wondered, if she just let it go? Not that she even had a clue about how to do that.
The dreaming mind was a flighty thing, and her swirling worries didn’t mean the same thing now that they might while Portia was awake. Attention shifted differently, focused differently, and when Hazel snorted, Portia’s fear and embarrassment and deep wish to regain control faded into the background and fell away in the face of Hazel’s amusement and open curiosity. It was obvious that Hazel was not afraid or embarrassed, after all.
“Not physically, exactly,” Portia answered, and because she thought about doing it, she really did reach out and graze her hand along Hazel’s arm. It caused Portia a slight tingling sensation in her fingertips, and surely Hazel felt it too. Faint though it was, it was the only physical sensation there was in this form, though of course, there was much more to sensation than touch. “But the mind is a powerful thing. I feel in other ways. And I’ll remember. I will undoubtedly be mortified in the morning. I am supposed to be better than this.”
It was honestly rather difficult to embarrass Hazel after all of these years… pride was not something she wore heavily upon her sleeve, though she was learning that it was something the Cloves seemed to care a great deal about. Social appearances and whatnot. She supposed that perhaps she could afford to care a little bit more about that, but then what fun would that be? Especially if it meant ending up as buttoned up and closed off as the woman who stood before her. It was sad, truly, to hold all the beauty and luminescence of a luna moth and be ashamed of it.
She tilted her chin down to watch Portia’s fingertips alight against her arm, the sensation akin to the small charge of ozone one might feel before a particularly heavy thunderstorm, glancing back up to meet the other woman’s gaze with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “Other ways?” she echoed, clearly curious, and since she’d been the first to initiate the contact Hazel saw nothing wrong with reaching up to gently brush the back of her fingers against Portia’s wrist, an experimental touch to see if she was truly corporeal or not.
A small chuckle tumbled into the space between them, and she shrugged. It didn’t sound unlike waking up from a particularly drunken night, when she put it like that. “Better than ‘this’?” She heavily suspected that Portia was referring not to the wandering aspect of her power, but to the fact that she’d ended up wandering into an Aurellian establishment while thinking of an Aurellian woman. She braved herself against the implied insult and, like she did with most other things, let it slide off her shoulders as she took another fortifying sip of her drink. “Well, no need to feel embarrassed on my account, Luna. I’m happy you came, in any case. And like I said, your uh, secret is safe with me.”
Too late, as often was the case while unconsciously projecting, Portia wished she had controlled an impulse. It was better to hold back and stay proper than it was to indulge impulse and be too bold. And yet, she had reached out and touched Hazel, sort of. And she didn’t move away when Hazel reached out to touch her wrist right back.
“Yes, other ways. I feel emotions,” Portia clarified, eyes on Hazel’s fingers hovering so close to Portia’s wrist. But then Hazel laughed, and asked another question. Of course she wanted to know what this in better than this meant.
Portia frowned, her glowing form seeming to diminish, darken, and shrink as she thought about it, the red of her lips fading from her mind’s eye and thus from her astral projection, the colours dimming as her fear of her own flaws pulled her mind back closer to wakefulness. She could feel reality beginning to encroach the harder she thought about Hazel’s question. It was not an insult against Hazel or her bakery for being Aurellian, or at least not exactly. Of course, the status gap between them was unacceptable, but really, that comment had been about Portia. She was not supposed to project accidentally because it meant that she was not in control. She was not supposed to notice any woman, Aurellian or not, enough to think of her when she fell asleep. At least when it was Blair, it made more sense. Blair was her closest friend.
But this was harder for Portia to explain away, even to herself. This woman was just a stranger she’d met once. A stranger who had flirted with her, who was flirting now, even, by calling her Luna, by saying she was happy to see her, by being… kind without seeming to have a motive for her kindness. Was this how all Aurellians were? Confusing and warm for no reason at all? Portia had been told to expect savages.
“I am supposed to be perfect. Anything less is beneath me,” Portia answered, parroting her mother. Portia could hear her in her mind. You must always be perfect. Anything less is beneath you, and they will judge you for it. The impossible standard Portia had been trying to live up to her whole life
Portia took a step back. She felt the pull in her chest, like a string tied around the deepest part of her was starting to tug. She would wake soon, and regret this whole moment. But irrational as it was, whatever part of her had brought her here didn’t want it to end. There was a sense of freedom in Hazel that Portia had never seen. She could not imagine just… saying or doing whatever came to mind, the way it seemed from the outside that Hazel did. It was as enthralling as her red lips. More, even.
“I’m going to go soon,” she warned.
Hazel watched in wordless fascination as Portia seemed to flicker in and out of existence, her body dimming in increments until it seemed as though she might vanish altogether. She could not guess what was going on in the other woman’s mind, what could make her pretty face crumple in so much consternation, but to her credit she did not interrupt, afraid that if she did the other woman really would fade entirely. When she finally spoke, Hazel’s head tilted, a confused, uncertain smile once again gliding into place upon her lips.
“You seem pretty perfect from where I’m standing,” she confessed with a shrug, and immediately regretted it when Portia stepped so immediately away from her as a result. She went to advance on her, to close the distance between them if only because she had so many questions for the other woman, but the warning that she uttered stopped her before she could motivate to action.
“Alright,” she said slowly, still not entirely sure she understood, but not wanting to put Portia any more on edge. She paused, swirled the ice around in her glass, and then, after moment of consideration, added, “And don’t be too hard on yourself when you come to, huh? I could use a bit of company tonight, and I’m glad I had some. I hope you come back, Luna.”
Luna. There was that nickname again, and in this moment, it felt almost like a secret, or like it didn’t quite belong to Portia. It felt like it was the name of someone else, someone who was named after the moon, someone who had every right to visit those who were awake at night. Portia wondered what a person named Luna might be like, what kind of life she’d have, how free she would be. After all, the moon could not be anything but the moon, no matter what forces acted upon it, no matter what the world wanted it to be. The moon was only ever the moon, so surely someone named Luna would be free and true to her nature and mysterious, too.
The thought was enough to still her, though Portia knew well the feeling of the strength of her projection beginning to fade. Whether conscious or not, once that pull started, it was hard to stop, like trying to stop water from trickling out of her cupped hands. It was only a matter of time.
“Those are sweet things to say. I don’t understand why you’re so kind,” Portia mused, genuinely confused by this woman, who was full of complimentary teasing, who seemed to be interested without judgment, who promised to keep Portia’s secret. It felt honest, and yet it wasn’t as though Portia could trust that. But the way Hazel was acting was intriguing, and so very different from home. In Clovenne, people were nice if it served them, certainly, but it was more opportunistic -- most relationships felt more like a source of social capital than a source of connection. “Why? What do you want?”
She hoped there would be time for Hazel to answer before Portia tumbled back into herself and opened her eyes on her guest room at Belmont Manor.
Hazel’s chuckle was warm, permeating the darkened interior of her shop as surely as the smell of freshly baked bread would in just a few hours’ time. Any sympathy that churned to the surface in her umber eyes was quickly masked by a mischievous gleam. She did not think that Portia, for all of her flittish insecurity, would take well to being pitied. She knew that she certainly wouldn’t.
“I could think of a few things, if you’re really asking.” Her brows jumped suggestively, but she softened the edges of her shark’s grin (and its implication) when she added, “But not everyone comes with a price, Portia Marais. Maybe I’m just a lovely kind of person. Or maybe I’m drunk.” She tilted her glass at her pointedly. “Or maybe the secrecy thrills me.” She couldn’t help tacking on that last, and she seemed quite pleased with her own wit, if her small giggle was any indication. She turned serious once more and tilted her head, giving Portia a helpless shrug that seemed to say It just is what it is.
The warmth of that laugh was strong enough for even Portia to feel, and the colour of her astral projected image seemed to tint itself pink, like the colour of a blush lit up by firelight, and she couldn’t quite help the small smile she gave in return. She would certainly not have smiled if she knew that Hazel thought her flittish or insecure or worse, pitiable. Portia was a proud woman, and she had put that pride before a great many other things in her life as she had done her best to rise to every expectation, to be all that she was supposed to be and more. But then…
I could think of a few things, if you’re really asking.
Portia flushed a little further as Hazel raised her eyebrows at her like that, and her next words somehow both drew Portia in and, at the same time, stopped her short. Not everyone comes with a price, Portia Marais.
Of course everyone came with a price. That was a naive perspective, Portia thought. Every action had cost, every misstep had consequences, and every piece of information had power. For Hazel to claim otherwise showed just what different worlds they came from. Someone like Hazel couldn’t possibly understand someone like Portia, could she.
The tug at Portia’s navel, her spine, the pull back to her body was getting stronger, and Portia blamed that for the way her response tumbled, too rushed and uncensored, from her lips as she knew this would end any moment.
“It’s easy to smile like that and claim you have no cost, when the cost would be mine for believing you are lovely and drunk and honest, for hoping that you are thrilled enough to keep my secret. Yet, I haven’t the power to do anything else…”
And like a rubber band snapping, Portia was pulled from Hazel’s company, through the bakery, through the town, through the country, through the manor, all in the space of a breath. She awoke in her bed with a shuddering gasp that turned into a groan of self-loathing and panic.
What had she done? Curse her lack of control, curse her humiliating dream-induced honesty, curse Hazel herself for being awake to witness it, curse it all.