Lee (dreaminglee) wrote in wi_haven, @ 2009-03-29 23:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | lee, mari, theories of a past life |
Theories of a Past Life: Pt One
The days always seemed soggy anymore, probably because it had been raining for a week now without stopping. Wasn't God supposed to eventually turn off the faucet? It was so easy to think that way, but the truth was more likely God had put together the weather patterns, set them on autopilot and then let them do what they were meant to do. Which meant the faucet would turn itself off at some point in the future. Hopefully before waders were necessary to get to the buildings. Aaliyah hated waders. They were absolutely the least fashionable item that any woman could own. However, slogging through ankle deep water in heels didn't appeal to her either. What a perfect way to ruin a set of heels. Hers were currently drying over the air vent next to the window because she had done exactly that. Bare feet crossed under the table in front of her, she leaned back in her chair, still dripping trench hanging off the chair in curtain-like drapes. Underneath the trench she wore black and white, that was simply a matter of convenience; so far she had found absolutely no way to mess up wearing black and white together. Coupled with the understated rubies on black wire at her throat, she seemed as if she were only trying a little to make herself stand out from the mindless automatons of her job.
Her job, the Cyprus Building, one of those soulless glass and steel buildings that dominate the downtown of any affluent city full of automatons doing the mindless and endless rote work that by some magic managed to make certain businesses continue to be businesses. Aaliyah Faulkner, now wasn't that a name which simply screamed destined for something better than cubicle number 129 on floor 15 of the Cyprus Building working for a company whose name she had already forgotten within a week of starting there. All she saw was her cubicle, so what difference did it make to her who owned the cubicle? The answer was, it did not make any difference at all. Closing her book, one of those imminently forgettable books that some authors churn out by the dozens over their career, she got up. The book went into a bag that was really a very small purse on the inside of her jacket. Picking her shoes off the vent, she slipped them back on, one at a time, aware for the first time that there are others in the building with her. Others who find her display of familiarity, removing her shoes, absolutely repugnant. She favors them with a wane smile and picks up the umbrella she had discarded to the floor. It was one of those newspaper umbrellas given out to new subscribers by little men outside of Wal-Mart. Aaliyah used the paper to line her bird's cage with. She kept a tame raven in her apartment. It made her feel less crazy to sit with the bird and commune with it. Or maybe it removed her from having to behave like a remotely normal person. Back out into the rain. It was only a couple of blocks down to make it back to the building where her soul was slowly being leeched out by the keyboard.
Halfway through block two, the wind or maybe it was a hole in the sidewalk made her stumble up against a glass door and she looked in. For just a moment, the woman with creamed coffee colored skin and eyes like good leather looked in and was transfixed by what was beyond it. A face she had seen before. Of course she had seen it before it was a face she had kissed before. Or at least dreamed she'd kissed before. All thoughts of the Cyprus Building and her job among the rows and rows of cubicles were gone, fled before the strength of a tide of absolute surety. She KNEW that face. A man was sitting in a little old movie theater booth to one side of the inside of the door.
"You'll have to buy a ticket to see the exhibit, ma'am." He had one of those officious voices, but not the strident kind, rather the kind which made you want to acquiesce to his request simply because he had made it. As though he couldn't possibly be steering you wrong. Too many people had the other kind of officious voice, the inflated I am not strong so I will make myself big voice. Aaliyah found herself smiling even as she found the money in her little bag to buy a ticket into the exhibit. "Thank you. Have a good time."
The sound of water dripping on marble countered the sound of her heels on the same marble as she moved up the stairs toward what she was certain she knew. The lights of the Museum were somewhat dim, but the banner had been what drew her eye. Once she was beyond it, hands reached up to almost stroke the glass in front of a cat half-mask. It covered the eyes and gave a person ears, but ended abruptly at the edge of the nose. The exhibit information stated it was made of beaten gold. "And I have seen eyes stare out from you," Aaliyah hadn't even realized she had spoken aloud until the sound of her voice came back to her as a bare whisper as if in a vault.
This had not been Eleni's idea to begin with and even as her friends dragged her out in the rather dismal weather, she was doing her best to form excuses for leaving early or sidetracking them. Nothing had worked so far, not that it surprised her, her friends were history buffs and while in most cases she was perfectly happy to go along with their interests, their interest in 'Egyptology' was a little too much for her. It had been their fault that she was bothered by Egypt to begin with, they had been the ones to hold that mini-film festival of every mummy attack movie they could get their hands on. It may have been silly, but she had not reacted well to those films, and they knew it, and they made no secret about their enjoyment of driving her up a wall with it. Their favorite thing to do was wait until she was looking at the mummies then start making these terrible moaning and groaning sounds, though they tended to remind her of a bad porno than those stupid movies they had subjected her to. And now, of course, they were dragging her to another exhibit, if only to make her uncomfortable. Ahmed was at least kind enough to pay her way, but then he had given her the sickest little smile while doing so, for a moment it reminded her of her mother's words when she left her home to study abroad, 'don't trust Americans'. Ahmed had been in the country since he was six years old, that was the most American that any of her friends could be considered, but it was enough for her to begin to agree with her mother.
Shoving her hands into her long multicolored outer coat, she tried to understand what the appeal was, she didn't like the bugs that seemed in every design. She didn't care for the violent images either, though for the moment it was more entertaining to look at than listen to the droning on and on of her friends about history she never remembered learning in school. They tended to do that, she loved them, sure, but if she had met any other students during her few semesters there, she would have called them up and begged for a rescue. "I'm surprised they let you in without checking your bag." came the voice of Simbul over her shoulder, which caused her to look away from the carved throne. It was rather rich of her to comment on that considering that Simbul herself was Pakistani, and her along with the rest of her friends could look like a terrorist if they tried at all.
Eleni smiled at the younger girl, "I'm Greek, blowing up things is your thing, we just like to fuck little boys." that caused the others to laugh lightly and Simbul to wrap her arm around her girlfriend's waist. "Don't try and cuddle up to me, you terrorist, how do I know you're not smuggling something dangerous in your bra?"
Ahmed spoke up, that same annoying smile on his lips, "She doesn't have enough of anything in there to smuggle anything, you'd see it right away!" that only caused more laughter, which in turn caused someone wearing a polo-shirt and a lanyard with with a badge around their neck to ask them to quiet down or leave. Eleni shot the others a serious, disapproving look, but once the man had left she gave into laughter along with the others.
"All you guys do is get me into trouble," she said, moving away from Simbul, "Go on, have your look around, I'll stay here and wait for you to finish." one of the of the others looked as if he was about to say something, but she quickly cut him off, "Yes, I'm not going into the next room because of the mummies. Yes, I'm a coward, but now you all have to buy me something nice from the giftshop in return for making me say that." Simbul leaned over and kissed her cheek, then quietly led the others away.
She walked around the room once, and once she found a bench she sat down, thinking herself safe from the tormenting of her friends for the moment. But of course, she wasn't and not a moment after she sat down a hand wrapped in cloth suddenly appeared on her shoulder, causing her to scream and jump up. Ahmed looked as if he was about to burst from his amusement, even as her breathing calmed and her green eyes narrowed. "Get going." she growled in Greek and pushed him back towards the direction where the rest of their friends had gone. After an annoyed sigh she began walking around the room, appearing to be looking at the antiquities while she was truly keeping an eye out for her friends.
The marble of the hall was done in a warm color, not quite brown, but certainly not gold which given so much of it should have been displeasing. However, the person in charge of lighting had done an excellent job of insuring the hall seemed to mimic the walk of a tomb. Aaliyah, transfixed by the mask, hardly noticed the movements of others around her. There weren't that many others in the museum. It was a wet and dreary day in the middle of the work week. Who had the kind of time to be wandering around in a museum other than kids on school field trips and people with more money than they could comfortably count at one time? She certainly didn't really have the time to be looking at a Mask for the Temple of Bastet, the Goddess of the Home, and thinking that the last time she had seen the mask worn it was by a woman whose skin had seemed as beautiful as the marble of the walls and floor. One more time she brought her hand to the glass, stroking fingers over where lips would be if it were truly worn. It was maddening. Or perhaps she was already mad and there was nothing that anyone could do about this, but she felt the tickles of an obsession. A shadow, the man with the badge returning from scolding those in another room, broke the spell and Aaliyah looked around. The particular hall of the gallery she was in was still empty. The man passing through had gone on to somewhere else leaving behind nothing of him except for the slight ring of footsteps.
"And the moon stood guard over her steps," the words came out without asking permission of her brain, mouth to air in seconds. And just as quickly, the words were gone, forgotten. Of course by then she was walking along with a distracted curiosity for the exhibits that lined the walls and the room she would be entering next. There were farm implements, religious tools, sculptures, pieces of what she could only guess were walls.
"Why are you in here on a work day," Egypt was a passing fancy of hers...something that she occasionally checked out books on, but not something she spent a great deal of time dealing with. It was just that, a passing fancy. Now, it felt like more, with those walls bearing down on her, things dimly lit to seem almost menacing with the shadows they threw. "You've got to get back to the office." Better question, why did she find it necessary to speak her thoughts aloud as though it would somehow make them more poignant and her more likely to follow them right back out the front door. For whatever reason, it was working. The feeling of pressure building up in her spirit. A funny feeling indeed. It brought to mind her mother and father saying: sometimes you just got to let something loose. Her brother usually took it to mean letting loose his gas on the rest of the room. Aaliyah had generally taken it more to mean that sometimes the spirit needed to be let loose. What exactly her spirit was currently trying to be let loose from was the question. She continued to scan the exhibits and finally moved into an open room.
She turned slightly and flipped her long braided hair over her shoulder. It was slightly wet from contact with her jacket, but it didn't really matter. If it decided to misbehave, she could tame it again easily. There was another person in this room. Female from what she could see. Slender bodied, pretty, hair that seemed to ask for touch. Things Aaliyah noticed, but only in that same not quite all together there way she had been walking through the museum with since she came in. It wasn't until she turned and their eyes met she felt something almost snap. They were the eyes she swore she knew from the mask...the ones which should have been staring out at her. Reflexively, she found something else to look at, knowing to stare would be horrible.
She had not truly noticed the other woman at first, her mind had been too taken up by concern that her friends were going to continue to torment her, but when she did, Eleni fell absolutely still for a moment that seemed to last forever. The face was familiar, too familiar for her taste as it was a face she had painted and drawn countless times since her talent for art had been discovered. She had even only recently finished an assignment in one of her studio art classes, it was that face she had drawn, bound up in chains with tears rolling down her cheeks. It scared her more than any prank that her friends could ever pull, and yet she could not take her eyes away from the woman, even after she did the polite thing and looked away. She found she could not breathe and she quickly forced herself to look away from the woman to save herself from fainting, running a hand over her wild black curls she placed the other over her heart which threatened to beat out of her chest with this nameless feeling that seized her. And yet, she could not keep her eyes from drifting back to that face, even as her feet remained rooted to the spot.
It had started when she was a little girl, when it was time to color at school she drew a princess, with that face in her mind as she did not have the ability for such detail at that age, while others were drawing their families or their favorite animals. As she grew older and her talent blossomed, it was the same face in different forms and settings, but in everything that meant something to her, she drew that face. In her final years of school before university, she had painted a mural of the old goddesses and each one had that same face. She could not explain why she had done it, but it was good enough to get her a scholarship and eventually a grant to study in the US. But in college, as she discovered that she was far more attracted to women than she was to men, the face became more abstract and the feelings that the face inspired began to demonstrate themselves in other ways, and this last time she had drawn the face it was looking like a long lost lover. She had begged the professor to grade it quickly and return it to her so she would not have to be without it.
It felt like some cosmic joke that she was seeing that face now on a real live woman, and yet, she felt the urge to run to her and never let the woman out of her sight. She knew how mad it was, that she would be carted away like some nut-job in a straight jacket, not to mention probably brought up on charges of harassment. Though she could not ignore that urge, and while it was so strong she was thankful that her feet refused to move from that spot.
She wanted to say something, to ask the woman who she was and how it was that they knew each other, after all, she seemed just as transfixed by her as she was. But her lips refused to move in a way that she wanted. "It has been such a long time, lost in the dark and alone. No one told me it would be like that, no one told me there would be nothing." she wasn't sure what she meant by this or what inspired her to say it. But it had been beyond her control and her eyes focused on the other woman's as if begging her to explain what she was feeling and saying.
Her voice, her voice, her voice. If one could see the words themselves, those words would be beautiful. They would be of gold and ivory, marble and ruby, the words that proceeded from the mouth she savored the need to touch. A rush, as if the world would fade away, fall away, threatened to drag Aaliyah from her feet. While she had not known her lover's face all her life, she had known her touch. It was the want of that touch which brought constantly nameless weeping when the moon was full. When she found herself staring up at the hanging disc and wondering when she would be so lucky as to find out why she longed for someone to hold. No matter the blandishments or skill, kisses held no sweetness on those nights. In fact, she found herself more and more turning away those who would touch her. Abjuring them for what, she did not know, but care she did. And now she heard a voice that caressed her ears and set her pulse to sing in a rhythm only passion could truly know.
Just as with the mask, she reached up as if to stroke her lips, the fount of words which made her very fingertips tremble. This is what you've waited for. The body you have longed to hold, caress, kiss, taste. Those unruly curls had once been tamed. Banded in gold. Eyes rimmed in darkness like those staring down from the wall. Linen thin as paper plastered to the body in heat until it was stripped away in favor of skin for the pools. To linger there in cool water, fingers along her neck, her chin, those lips. Kisses for those lips. Then she remembered to breathe. And to speak. "Be not lost. There is light. I will bring you light." Again, so many words she knew not the meaning of. What darkness? What light? What madness was this? Only recently, the thought had passed of something being maddening. In answering, Aaliyah knew that madness had already long since come to roost in her brain. Like her raven upon her shoulder, madness perched in her brain and it whispered a name in its cawing tongue that she could not hear but knew. It was her name. Not the name of now, but the name of then. The name of the when they now stood among the relics of.
Aaliyah drew another breath, a mewling gasp of a breath, air drawn over the tongue only to satisfy the starvation of the body and keep one from passing out. Then there were the footsteps. Did it matter who broke away to look first? There would be eyes upon them. They could not be seen together again. They could not be seen. Her umbrella was forgotten in her hand, even as she turned on heel to run away. She would leave behind the beauty with her unruly raven curls, leave her behind in hopes that tragedy could be avoided if only the eyes did not seen. But in a place where all was watched, how could one truly avoid being seen? Her long braids, each moving with a life of its own, flared out behind her along with the blackness of her still rain laden coat. The umbrella, remembered then forgotten only to be remembered again, tapped wildly on the marble as she headed for the entry way. Down the stairs, her pace had not slowed, nor would it. Not till the glass door, the portal to the past, had admitted her back out into the rain of the present day. Yet even her breath with running seemed more controlled than her breathing in the presence of that woman whose eyes she knew, hair she touched, and body she'd kissed all without knowing her at all.
Her heart felt as if it was about to break when she saw the woman turn and run from her. She had been frightened, perhaps by the same thing that scared her so much, and perhaps had her feet been under her own control she would have run after the woman. Images and sensations swirled around her in a way they never had before, like flashbacks in an old movie, she was seeing that woman and herself together in an age she did not know. Pain began to run through her as well, her mind drifting back to her last drawing and then back to those images where the drawing had become reality and she watched that beautiful woman weep and call out to her as she felt herself being pulled away by strong arms she could not fight against. And then it changed, the woman was gone, her lover was no where to be found, there was nothing but darkness and the rage that filled her though she knew well that she did not exist. She had been lied to, someone had told her that it would be a perfect place waiting for her where she and her love would be reunited and they would be together for eternity, but she had been alone in a vast sea of black nothingness.
And she was being left alone again, the woman was running from her when deep down she knew she should have been running towards her. They were finally together again and yet she was running away, but she could not be angry, she understood it, she had even understood the need for it in that life that seemed bathed in gold. She should have run away then, she knew that, she had realized that back in the endless darkness, but she would not trade those few short moments of complete heaven to save herself from that hell. She would find her, every cell in her body cried out that she find her once again, she would not rest and she would not allow them to be parted so completely ever again.
But the spell was broken for a moment, her friends had returned and Simbul was fastening a necklace around her throat. Glancing down at it, ignoring their chatter as she did so, those feelings began to well up again. It was a statue of Bastet in silver that hung on the chain now barely touching the tops of her breasts, the symbol itself was something she had seen many times in that life she had once lived and forgotten and now was returning to her. She knew what she had to do. Her feet worked once more and she dashed out of the hall and out until she was confronted by the outside air and the rain against her skin.
She was gone. That woman, her woman, her love. She did not see her as others passed her on the sidewalk and her friends evenutally caught up with her, asking her what was wrong and telling her to come in out of the rain. She did not hear them, and in that moment a name came to her lips, a name that she had not heard in this new life, yet it meant everything to her in the last. She wanted to scream it out, but she found that she could not, that fear taking over once more and causing her to remain silent.
Aaliyah was not beyond reach of her voice, had Eleni screamed she would have heard. Heard and felt pain. But a single thing had been left behind. Something that might very well be Fate seeking either their reunion or their destruction, one could hardly tell so soon in the endeavor. What had Aaliyah dropped in her haste that the rain had plastered to the gray of the sidewalk.
A business card for the coffee shop she used down the street. It screamed in bright purple letters, Put some Java Jive in your day, and listed the address and telephone number. In her haste, the card had escaped from her pocket. Now it sat, soaked through and unhappy on the concrete waiting for another to pick it up before it ended up with the other debris in the gutter.
Terrified, the running woman made it to the lobby of the Cyprus building and despite the stares of those around her, she kept right on, bypassing the elevators to take the stairs. By the time she reached her desk, she collapsed into her chair. "I am your light," she added to what she had told the mystery woman, murmuring it to the decorations of her cubicle and praying by some providence that today was going to become more normal from here on. Whether or not that would come true was up to the same Fate who had dragged them into the museum together and forced them to face one another again after hundreds of years. It really didn't seem like Fate was in too merciful a mood.