![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bonnefoisThis is the only time I will ever use second person view. (No personal offense to those who enjoy it, I always found it to be confusing, but this is the one time I thought it could be plausible.)
Title: an almost winter’s evening
Day/Theme: August 13th / Believe me, moonlight is the stuff whereof, My lady's limbs are made. I offer proof.
Series: XXXholic
Character/Pairing: Yuuko, random nameless customer
Rating: at least in the PG-13 region
When you reach this street it is dark, a full moon high in a sky spattered lightly with stars. The fall air has made it cool enough to require a coat, and leaves crunch under your shoes, brown, no longer beautiful. With only mere weeks til winter, the season makes its presence well known.
You’ve passed this street so many times before, so much that you’ve memorized the view. The mirrored office buildings, the small shops, the empty lot whose ownership no one can seem to place. Home seems so far away now, cell phone turned off for the day and feet aching for rest. To your left you notice an oddity, something you’ve never noticed before.
Reflected by the streetlights, a Victorian era house, gates half drawn and just enough for you to slip through. A gift shop, probably, you think. Strange that you’ve never seen it before. No one else would choose to live in this side of town.
Curiosity wins over the quick battle, and you walk closer. The gate creaks and finally opens, almost with a huff – if it would speak it would probably berate you for coming this late in a sharp, shrill voice. The path is cobblestone, the gardens aren’t overgrown, but have a sense of wildness to them nonetheless.
The door opens before you knock, bells tinkling as the door opens.
“Mistress! Mistress!” Two young children, dressed in costumes pass before your view, they settle at the other side of the room, watching you and laughing. (the thought “changeling children” comes to your mind.)
A woman reclines on a long dark chaise with tapestry like patterns. You do not recognize her, but you know her none the same. She is to you a word or a name you can’t recall, memories half-hidden, things that you subconsciously kept from yourself.
Her skin is all white and silver in the candlelight her smile is half drawn, veiled, her body taking on an ethereal glow. The robe covering her ample and curvy body is drawn loose, but she makes no pretense to fasten it more or to rise and greet you.
“Welcome” she says, and under her gaze you are pinned to a wall, caught in a butterflies net, hangman’s noose, signed dated and categorized, and she knows – she knows before you ask the words that will escape like gnats, falling from your mouth. She knows the outcome, your destiny and what you will ask. She knows the number of hesitant steps you took up the drive.
She knows.
“It isn’t good to be out this late, especially on a full moon” she says.
It makes you look behind yourself, suddenly feeling a creeping chill in the room as if you were not alone in this room, as if the sturdy walls of your world were now transparent for all manners of nightmares to gaze upon you.
Smoke plumes curl sinuously, sinfully around, the smell is intoxicating, flowers and opium and spiced rum, all exotic and titillating. You lick your lips and swallow, trying prolong the moment before the words leave your lips and fall along the air.
“What is your wish?” she says, catty and with a playful smirk. You amuse her, this is amusing, her line of work she sees people like you every day, you’re just some faceless name in the crowd, some next-in-line tragic martyr. You know this without knowing, it is spoon fed from some deep intuition from your very core.
“Wish?” you say, almost a thought out loud. The sound of your own voice is surprising.
“If you did not have a wish, then you would not be here” She says and surveys you with a calm eye. Will you take the bait? Anything could be yours. Immortality, love, power, wealth. “You can wish for anything – for a fair price” she says, bemused. Yet nothing was free – surely there would be some price involved, some fine print.
The skin on the back of your neck prickles. Her beauty is surreal, otherworldly. Your skin isn’t nearly thin enough, she can see right through you.
Your mind whirls, it’s sickening and anxiety has a hand tight across your chest.
“I wish...” you say, testing the thin ice. She smiles.
“– to be home and safe.” you say. Relief floods through you.
“A wise choice...” she replies.
The room fills with the scent, leaving you drowsy and you close your eyes – only for a second, you murmur wordlessly.
You wake at 2AM, asleep and fully clothed, propped in an awkward angle on a favorite chair. – slightly worn, but all that much more comfortable.
The fragrance still softly lingers with you, around you. Cut flowers, spice, brandy, opium, so sensuous.
Odd how no one has ever renovated that old lot, though few complain, you think.
What an odd dream, indeed.
Title: an almost winter’s evening
Day/Theme: August 13th / Believe me, moonlight is the stuff whereof, My lady's limbs are made. I offer proof.
Series: XXXholic
Character/Pairing: Yuuko, random nameless customer
Rating: at least in the PG-13 region
When you reach this street it is dark, a full moon high in a sky spattered lightly with stars. The fall air has made it cool enough to require a coat, and leaves crunch under your shoes, brown, no longer beautiful. With only mere weeks til winter, the season makes its presence well known.
You’ve passed this street so many times before, so much that you’ve memorized the view. The mirrored office buildings, the small shops, the empty lot whose ownership no one can seem to place. Home seems so far away now, cell phone turned off for the day and feet aching for rest. To your left you notice an oddity, something you’ve never noticed before.
Reflected by the streetlights, a Victorian era house, gates half drawn and just enough for you to slip through. A gift shop, probably, you think. Strange that you’ve never seen it before. No one else would choose to live in this side of town.
Curiosity wins over the quick battle, and you walk closer. The gate creaks and finally opens, almost with a huff – if it would speak it would probably berate you for coming this late in a sharp, shrill voice. The path is cobblestone, the gardens aren’t overgrown, but have a sense of wildness to them nonetheless.
The door opens before you knock, bells tinkling as the door opens.
“Mistress! Mistress!” Two young children, dressed in costumes pass before your view, they settle at the other side of the room, watching you and laughing. (the thought “changeling children” comes to your mind.)
A woman reclines on a long dark chaise with tapestry like patterns. You do not recognize her, but you know her none the same. She is to you a word or a name you can’t recall, memories half-hidden, things that you subconsciously kept from yourself.
Her skin is all white and silver in the candlelight her smile is half drawn, veiled, her body taking on an ethereal glow. The robe covering her ample and curvy body is drawn loose, but she makes no pretense to fasten it more or to rise and greet you.
“Welcome” she says, and under her gaze you are pinned to a wall, caught in a butterflies net, hangman’s noose, signed dated and categorized, and she knows – she knows before you ask the words that will escape like gnats, falling from your mouth. She knows the outcome, your destiny and what you will ask. She knows the number of hesitant steps you took up the drive.
She knows.
“It isn’t good to be out this late, especially on a full moon” she says.
It makes you look behind yourself, suddenly feeling a creeping chill in the room as if you were not alone in this room, as if the sturdy walls of your world were now transparent for all manners of nightmares to gaze upon you.
Smoke plumes curl sinuously, sinfully around, the smell is intoxicating, flowers and opium and spiced rum, all exotic and titillating. You lick your lips and swallow, trying prolong the moment before the words leave your lips and fall along the air.
“What is your wish?” she says, catty and with a playful smirk. You amuse her, this is amusing, her line of work she sees people like you every day, you’re just some faceless name in the crowd, some next-in-line tragic martyr. You know this without knowing, it is spoon fed from some deep intuition from your very core.
“Wish?” you say, almost a thought out loud. The sound of your own voice is surprising.
“If you did not have a wish, then you would not be here” She says and surveys you with a calm eye. Will you take the bait? Anything could be yours. Immortality, love, power, wealth. “You can wish for anything – for a fair price” she says, bemused. Yet nothing was free – surely there would be some price involved, some fine print.
The skin on the back of your neck prickles. Her beauty is surreal, otherworldly. Your skin isn’t nearly thin enough, she can see right through you.
Your mind whirls, it’s sickening and anxiety has a hand tight across your chest.
“I wish...” you say, testing the thin ice. She smiles.
“– to be home and safe.” you say. Relief floods through you.
“A wise choice...” she replies.
The room fills with the scent, leaving you drowsy and you close your eyes – only for a second, you murmur wordlessly.
You wake at 2AM, asleep and fully clothed, propped in an awkward angle on a favorite chair. – slightly worn, but all that much more comfortable.
The fragrance still softly lingers with you, around you. Cut flowers, spice, brandy, opium, so sensuous.
Odd how no one has ever renovated that old lot, though few complain, you think.
What an odd dream, indeed.
