I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes

I remember giggling a great deal the night before, I remember the taste of the rum and the sweetness of the pineapple and the falling off occasional chairs. I remember slightly slurring my speech as I talked to people around and about, I remember ending up in the tree in Lumindor talking to a monk long into the morning.

I remember a space of unconsciousness, and then the next morning, I woke up curled into a ball on the couch in my tree. My body felt leaden, my mind was wrapped in cotton fluff. Taste of the strange monk's bitter brew was still in my mouth, but it was so hard to think...more had gone on, I was sure. I was fighting my lack of recall.

Suddenly I gasped,sitting bolt upright, hands clenching on empty air. I'd told him. He'd asked and I'd told him. Drunk enough for honesty, the night before, drunk enough for truth to leave my lips, without my usual gloss of gentle misdirection.

He'd asked how I felt about him. Face raised to the darkened moon, weaving on my feet, I'd answered. I'd said I loved him. I'd said I loved him.

The one thing I told myself I was never going to do, I'd done. Because at one point he'd not wished it. Yet he'd asked, and I'd answered. Truly--at least for me--in vino veritas.

I touched my door open and staggered out onto my balcony. I breathed deeply of chill Lumindoran morning air. I set my thoughts to thinking inward, and waited.

Panic, anger, fear, worry...I looked at the trees surrounding mine and thought. I found myself surprised that these emotions weren't there. No panic. No fear. No hurt. No pain.

What was there...clearly there...was...peace. Which was vaguely unnerving in itself, really. I'm profoundly ill-used to feeling at peace. My shifter self knows chaos, not contentment. My faceted soul understands angst, not accord. Was I hung over, or intoxicated still?

I took a step from my balcony, out into air, dropping nearly weightlessly to the ground, kneeling on the cold grass. I stood, inhaling. No, I thought. I still need to talk to him, but...I think it will be okay. I think...we...will be okay.

A smile touched my lips as I moved into the brightening morning light. Today, I thought...it might be a very good day.

can you hear it, a cry to be free

should have known
should have known should have known
it's like the universe bearing down on me
telling me no
I risk contacting the demon
and I'm in limbo again

I hate this place
I tell myself it will resolve
it's just a side effect
learn how to move between
the age of magic
and the age of reason
with stopovers in the age of steam
as I said to the demon's daughter
there are bound to be glitches along the way

but I hate this place
more because I did reach out
I did choose to speak
we did talk about everything
we've long stopped talking about
and it reawakened everything

there is no moon in this place
only grey
still and featureless and unending
and perhaps I don't deserve one
my heart still torn
between pale and pallor
between healing and consumption
while the pallid shadow
of what the demon is
callis me to converse

floating in this place
this hated place
nonexistence
wanting to find a surface
to scratch through
but there is no surface
wanting to scream out loud
so someone will come to my aid
but no sound carries
through the grey

this hated place
this limbo
am I here because I considered
even for a moment
if the demon was right?
if we had given up too easily?
I did think on it
I did consider it
and my answer was
we were damaged before he left me
we were tottering before the fall
we were hurting each other
and how was that good
for either one of us?

I hate this place
this limbo place
I hate being here
when I could be walking my world
I hate being trapped in the featureless
I rail against the injustice

but perhaps tonight's expulsion
is retaliation
for thinking of going backwards
even for a moment

flowers on the razor wire, I know you're here (part II)

((RP MODE))

Once the wandering lad awoke, he apologized, and I told him it was no matter. He said it was, that he came in to talk, and then I discovered why. I curled my legs on the green sofa I'd been sitting upon, he curled up in the middle of my gold pentagram rug, and began to ask me things. At first, it was wandering talk, talk of his life, talk of mine...talk of my first memory, which was of fire, and fear, and he told me I would be drawn to these things lifelong, that they would, eventually, spell my doom.

I didn't entirely disagree.

Our conversation turned less subtle, began narrowing in on a certain goal, and we talked of things, of perceptions, that humans plainly do not have.

I called him to account on this, and he told me he was a succubus. I derided him, saying, I knew of an incubus, and of their chosen prey, and that succubi, being female, chose the opposite in turn. His eyes lit up, and we were off and discussing my incubus.

Without thinking it through clearly, I told him much. Of love, and loss, and confusion...of my attraction for the incubus from the first...I said he had hair the color of spring roses, and the lad only nodded, saying most incubi--at least those he'd known--had red hair.

But later the conversation turned. More came out about his past, about his life, about a wife he'd loved and lost. On his wedding day, he said. He said...the incubus was responsible for ruining his lady wife. I told him he'd like as not been, depending, though there were other demons who may have done the deed....and then I described the incubus in question. And he went pale with fury.

He said, before he turned the conversation, he wished to slay him, and I fear I've played into his hands in this. If aught harm befalls the incubus...I will have a hand in his downfall, and I fear that. I do.

And then the morning spun out, pale blue light becoming gold, pale gold light becoming sun-soaked blue, mist burning off from the hills behind my tree. He asked me to join him on the bed. And bit by bit, what sounded like a very dangerous idea, with what he'd said of his nature...began to seem like something I could have, and walk away safely from after.

This may have been a mistake.

We spoke of his nature. I do not know his race, other than human-seeming, but he spoke of his eternal hunger for female flesh. Somewhat akin to that incubus, and I told him so. He regretted it in himself, this desire to consume, and yet his thoughts turned to me. He asked...for contact. I thought about it. I acceded, and joined him on the bed.

Just contact, he said. I came clothed and shod, curling behind him, and he sighed, beginning to relax. It was...very nearly innocent, for a span of time, and then...he turned, in my arms. He held me fast, and began to strip the clothes from me, biting me, drawing blood here and there. He held me bruisingly, I could feel the pads of his fingers sinking into my flesh, and I began to pant from the pain of it.

His mouth moved over me, across my skin, licking, sipping at me from small nips, drinking me in. I couldn't think, my thoughts growing hazy, as if I was sinking into honeyed darkness, his mouth sparking sensations of utmost intensity. And then the game changed again.

He rose behind me, voice growing deep. He said, "Resist me," and bit at my shoulder, teeth sinking deep. And I began to struggle in truth, sprouting curving dagger-claws, raking down his flesh, snarling, hissing, as the cat within rose to the surface, fighting to escape.

There was none. He pressed within me, hands seemingly everywhere at once, and I cried out in as much pain as desire. His mouth moved over my skin, mobile, heated, seeking, biting bits of me away from spine and sides. I writhed in his grasp, desire rising even as I fought to free myself from his clenching grasp. I wondered anew at his nature...and knew he had never been the innocent he claimed.

It was battle, as much as lovemaking. It was the desire to escape, and the desire to give in. I fought him, I fought to hold him. Such conflict. So many wounds...

...but at the end, he pulled away. Unfulfilled, he pulled from me. He said he had to leave. While I was still marshalling my thoughts, curling around him, reckoning the damage he'd inflicted....he pushed himself from my bed and left.

Half of me wants intensely to seek him out again.

The other half? Wants to run from the kingdom and never hear his name spoken another time.

He scares me.

flowers on the razor wire, I know you're here (part I)

((RP MODE))

"Resist me," he said, his voice low, pulling my hair harshly back. His teeth sank into me, spilling my blood, and not for the first time. And not for the first time, the panicked thought thrilled through me--I am in over my head.

The evening started innocuously enough--met the young lad again, who'd been so naively wandering the wilds the day before. He'd had adventures then aplenty--been chased from the village by screaming youths throwing stones, for (or so he said) asking too many questions, then came wandering blithely down the darkened paths, falling handy prey to the rapacious thing with all the tentacles that lurked in the shallow forest pool outside my door.

One of the guardians from the keep rescued him; I admit, I was taunting him for falling prey to the thing. Granted, I've been grabbed myself once, but that was early on, and I was smug, knowing its ways. It never reaches far from the pool; being content to wait for the unwary.

I am wary now.

"Help," his young voice cried. I remember this well. "I am an innocent!"

"Not for long," I said, watching the beast plunge into him, making him weep. But then the guardian came along, handily wounding the beast, making it withdraw, freeing the boy.

I admit, I was bored enough to test his stamina, but oddly, he would have none of it that night. He wished to return to the village, for all they treated him harshly there. I bargained with the guardian to return him safely, but the lad wandered away, pleading no further debt on his behalf. The guardian and I shrugged, and went about our ways.

This evening, though, I'd spent much of it with the half-demon, in snappish mood because his demonic side, red of claw and long of fang, had taken over again. I know this about my shifting flesh--it can throw off most wounds, with little directed thought, but the wounds demons give in their full power are lasting, even though I change and change. And I was snappish because I missed my half-demon, my body missed him, and I was less than gracious when he transformed.

He bade me wait in the space he meditates, where he strives for control over the demonic within. He promised me when he changed back of a morning, he would satisfy my need for him. I said he would be tired, after a long night awake. He agreed, but said he'd do it anyway, because such vows, such needs, on both sides, prove out love.

He knows less of love than I do. He knows it is a human value, that neither he as a demon, nor I as the shifting fey creature the Queen's brought into court, have experienced much of it before. There are things about me he does not know, that only the Queen and her chosen Consort know...but I let him think this. It's pleasing some part of me, on occasion, to play inconstant and unaffected.

At the end of the vigil, he bade me summon the Queen to him, our Queen of Air and Darkness whom we both serve. Apparently, some while back, he gave his soul into her keeping, and now, he gets little shreds of it back, on rare occasion, along with the power of her blood. She gave him such this evening, and bade him to go and rest, and he said he had a vow to keep before he sought his bed.

Which was my cue to bring him to seek mine.

He has a frightening capacity, that one, for seeking out that line between pleasure beyond imagining, and pain that tears and shreds. We never left that line, that morning, and I shed tears from agony as well as bliss. It was my choice to make, as much as his, but the stripling lad wandered close to the base of my tree, I discovered later, and heard us at play.

After we finished, as I lay trembling in his arms, he slept. I held him for some time, until my breathing was easier, and then I was summoned away for some hours. I did not return to Lumindor until morning was well advanced.

And there I discovered the footloose lad, wandering next to the Drow enclosure. He said he'd come to seek me out, for some converse, and certain intimacies. Again, I was intrigued, and played what I thought was an obvious hand--and again, he turned me aside, through naivete or deliberation, stating he sought mental, perhaps emotional, intimacy, not physical.

I shrugged, inviting him back to the tree, knowing at this point the half-demon would have awoken and wandered away. He was nearly in tears at the thought of such comfort, and I let the lad sleep some few hours, watching him, breathing carefully. I had not yet taken the time to bathe in the mineral springs, restore some of the function I'd lost when the half-demon had taken me, and I had not yet changed my form.

And there, once he awoke, the conversation took a darker turn....(to be continued)

when I woke up this morning, you were on my mind

And he tells me, as I lay there, reclining on his ornately carved couch...he tells me were I not involved with...so very many others...and he'd met me before he was so involved...he might have proposed.

And now my brain is overanalyzing the question. The question that, to be fair, was never precisely asked.

I've told myself, over and over, were I ever to accept anyone's proposal, it would be the neko lad. If for reasons of endurance, if nothing else, and that being his--putting up with me for so long. But, lying in the lap of this gentleman, feeling his hands stroking my hair, it did make me wonder.

Compatibility, yes. Love, affection, friendship, perfectly fine. Sense of humor, wit, charm, these things are valued. For me, liking how someone argues is very nearly essential--because I'm enough of a volatile personality, I will argue, and if I don't like how my partner retorts, there's no chance, no hope.

Past all these, for all that I'm a frighteningly visual person, comes liking the physical appearance. It's true that the eyes of love paint the person more perfectly, but more than that, intelligence, wit, sense of humor--these things are more important to me than what they look like. What they look like is changeable--I know what I look like is changeable--so how can I expect to fall in love with pretty eyes and quirking lips?

Though good hips. Good gods. Good hips are very nearly essential. Is that shallow?

But anyway...the point is...is it worthy of me to accept someone's proposal simply because they've been there? If I don't want to accept, I mean. Seems sort of...door-prize-ish. "You've been here the longest, you get to take me home."

Leaving aside the fact it would be to my home. Were it the neko lad, anyway.

Maybe it's just me, you know. Maybe I'm not meant to marry here. I do have so very many conditions I'm placing on such a state. I mean, said marriage partner must be willing to accept what I do for a living, which many cannot; accept other loves being in my life, which many cannot; accept that at times, I come with full fur and prominent canines, or twitching whiskers and perking ears, or eight legs, or drained-bloodless pale skin and glowing eyes....and very many can't accept that...plus, I've already picked out my wedding dress.

Just in case.

And it's black.

Which seems to be the final nail in the bridal coffin, frankly.

It made me think, is all. Now? I'm tired of thinking.



Now if the Consort to the Queen would just stop poking me...

the wild night is calling

Last night, the lovely Victorian fellow asked if I wished to see Caledon Tanglewood. I told him, being fresh out of the wilds of Lumindor, that I wasn't dressed in an appropriate fashion, and he laughed, saying, it's Tanglewood, it's a forest, what's appropriate?

So I showed up in purple fur draped in a scarcity of ornate elven armor, and it must be said, I doubt he minded.

But he asked where we should begin the exploration of the great woods, and my wandering eye caught a manically spinning set of silks, and...my neko nature, for the first time, nearly took over. I wanted to leap and bound over to the silks and POUNCE upon them, batting at them until they were completely conquered. My brain was screaming CAT TOY CAT TOY CAT TOY and it was all I could do not to start clawing and twitching.

Rarely have I had so intense a reaction. Either Lumindor's getting to me, or...the pookah who turned out to own the spinning silks enchanted them against kittens. Very surprising.

At some point, the conversation turned to how fast said pookah could run, and he invited us to view the inside of his home, a hollowed-out trunk of a giant birch. I felt gargantuan in his abode, and immediately sought a smaller form myself. Nothing like the pookah's foot-tall white rabbit...but the closest I could come.



My fae clocks in at exactly three feet tall, from her low-booted feet to brilliant scarlet hair. I still towered over the small Tanglewoodland mammal, but I felt more at ease.

Tanglewood, I think, needs additional viewings. The homes seen there are sweeping arborial structures, elegant and precise, rounded platforms and struts affixed to gargantuan trees. The air is quiet, without being still; fireflies and insects flutter on colorful wings.

The pookah I mentioned...a certain EllisDee Welindor, if I recall correctly. Very amusing fellow and a collage artist of some surpassing skill, and something of a wordsmith. We wandered around his hollow while I was endeavoring not to pounce on his silks, and spoke for some small time about tricksters, the woods, shapeshifting and art.

He gave me one of his pieces, and an accompanying poem. I'm completely whelmed. Though my tree in Lumindor has no flat places for art--being a tree--I leaned it against a column, and I'm thinking of leaving it there.



I think it looks very nice in my tree. I must find a way to thank him for the gift.

and you will be my ain true love

Three ayem, and up again, circling in grey drenched with shadow. I could live without being up. The dream shouldn't have so much of an impact, as simple as it was.

It was just...standing on the windswept plain. Tall grasses moving, creating their own sussurance of whispered sound. And all around me, standing beside me, a loose circle of everyone I've loved here.

Everyone.

There were a lot of people there.

It must be admitted, I love a lot of people. There were those standing there who've known I loved them, who always knew. There were those standing there who to this day don't know. There were those who've touched me, held me, skin to skin, in the laughing dark, and those who've never even held me close, clothed or otherwise.

And the unspoken question moving sluggishly through the twilight air was..."Who is your one true love?"

And not having an answer woke me up, heart in my throat.

Thing is, I used to have one. I think that's part of the problem. While I always loved many, from the moment I was in this world longer than a few days, there was one who had as much of my attention as I could spare. There was one who got every evening I could give.

Past a certain point, it was a known fact--I'd be found with the vampire princeling. No one else had claim. My days were my own, and only occasionally spent with him, but my evenings were his. Whether we stayed in, whether we went out, my time was his.

He was the first to ask me to live with him, in this place. I'm learning that never goes well. But for a while, I was happily domestic, decorating the little Duchamp house we shared, draping it in sheer burgundy gauze, and strewing multicolored Kurdish rugs on the stone floors, finding a carved fireplace I liked. I asked a friend to help edit the animations in a cuddle bed I owned, so that--if nothing else--my vampire could hold me and I'd be in the proper places, instead of my insane lack of height throwing them off.



And then he died, and...I went a little mad over it, and...he returned, called back to this life by his clan, and...he cast me aside. Though it wasn't that simple. I bear my own responsibility for his leaving, because...when he returned, I was so angry with him, so...I had done everything I could to take back my life, to recreate myself without him, to be my own creature, no longer his...I honestly never expected his clan to reanimate him, return him to the world.

And I was angry that they did, not overjoyed. I was hurt that he returned, not blissful. That part was my fault. I bear part of the responsibility for driving him away.

Don't mistake me. I blame him plenty for casting me aside. But I am not blameless, either.

After that, I think...I haven't really trusted anyone who loves me. Oh, to a point, to a certain level, but...I'm waiting for it now, the leaving. And everyone bears the brunt of that mistrust.

The demon, now, the one who reminded me so much of the lost princeling. He never really had a chance, and I mourn over that. He became my client, and then my pet, and then--over my objections--my fiance, and would have become husband had he not disappeared from all contact points I had. I gave him a month, gone from my side, and then...I felt I had no choice but to sever the agreement. To tell him, in all ways that I could, that I would not be marrying him, because I could not marry someone who was as scarce as snow in summer.

Of course, three days after that decision, he returned, and apologized, and wanted everything back...but I'd once more come to that place of leaving, and...hurt or pride or willfulness, I could not go back on what I'd said to him.



Somewhen between the princeling and the demon in scarlet, comes the neko lad, who to this day has the bulk of my trust. But there have been problems even with him. When I accepted the demon's proposal, he was a close part of my life, and he...he went mad, for a bit, too. And I didn't know until much later that he'd lost his mind to that extent because he had wished to propose.

In fact, while I was still deciding on the demon's fate, still bound by my agreement to him, to marry...my neko proposed, for the first time.

It should be a joyous event when someone proposes to you. It should fill your soul with light, fill your heart with song, create no word other than yes...if it's the right proposal, from the right one...the one true love, let us say. When the neko lad proposed, my heart sunk into shadow, my soul stopped its song, and my bones were laced with strychnine objections.

Of course, part of that intense response was that I still felt bound by the demon's asking, and I could not accept the neko until I'd decided what to do about the demon. The neko, for his part, was mortified--somehow, he'd gotten the idea that I'd already turned the demon down...

...and to this day, it still surprises the hell out of me that he asked at all. And apparently, I'm the only one who was surprised--my best friends, my chosen God, staff of the club, even the princeling--no one else was surprised at all. They'd been waiting for him to ask me.

Wish they'd let me know...



At this point, I'm weary of being left. I'm soulsick with seeing it coming. The lady talent who never fully committed, because I wouldn't stop seeing men. The playboy who very nearly told me goodbye...and was turned down in his own right, by the one he wished to marry. The great black cat who wished to be boyfriend, not client, and when I told him no, he never returned again. The brokenhearted lad who loved me until his first love returned to him; then he married her.

And the incubus...It's so difficult to tell with him. I think he loved me, as much as he was able to. But he was my quicksand. I lost so much of my integrity, my will, my nature, in loving him in return...I felt emotions I never thought I was capable of feeling...went willingly to places I never thought I'd visit...and for all the joy he gave me, there was also confusion and pain. And even with all the ground lost, I was still in tears when he bade me go. It was made worse a day later when he wanted to take back his words of leaving.

I'd be lying to myself if I said I was no longer attracted to him. I've struggled with this, told myself I'm over, I'm beyond, I'm far from him, and moving forward with my life...and I've been lying. The fact that he was standing next to me, in the dream, staring down with those burning eyes at my shoulder, tells me something in me still holds him close.

No one ever said you couldn't lie to yourself. Just wish I'd seen it sooner.



But past a certain point, it's about the damage, not the delight. And for all that he discarded me for the wrong reasons, I have to bear my own responsibility there, too--because I grew acquisitive, I grew selfish, I wanted more than he wanted to give, and that is not me, that is not my nature. Yet again, I ended it as much as he did, stunted the growth of joy, strangled it stillborn until his walking away seemed the best thing for both of us.

In the dream, the pressure of all their variegated gazes on me, the question circling through the air, brings me to my knees, gasping. Who is my one true love? And I kneel and shake my head, and shake my head, and shake my head. I can't say one name. The dream wants me to. And I can't, I just...can't.

Spite or fear or willful denial or...even brighter, more egalitarian philosophies I hold dear...I can't say one name into the twilight air. Oh, the pressure of a name...but I can't.

It's what keeps me from fully committing to a marriage. It's what keeps me from fully committing to one single soul in the world. It's what holds me back, has always held me back. I cannot accede to this.

But with all their eyes on me, my only recourse is to bow my head and stay silent. Because anything I say in that moment, in the dream...would be the wrong answer.

Because no answer in that moment would be right.

the same old dream appears

I wake, heart clenched in my chest, into grey waiting. Late or early, eyes unseeing, it doesn't seem to matter. I've had that dream again. I resent my brain anew for having it. It drives me from sleep and into stark staring head-shaking denial, into controlled and exercised breathing, telling myself, it was a dream. It was just a dream.

and when October goes
the snow begins to fly
above the smoky roofs
I watch the planes go by

In it, I've returned to my life and my ways, and I'm standing in the place I call home, still, wondering who to inform first. And my strong neko lad--beloved, adored, the man I've named primary to all I am and all I do in this place--comes by. I hold him, and, as a matter of course, flip up his profile. It's more ingrained than habit at this point, it's become my second nature, pure driving instinct.

And in the dream, there's a name in his partner field. And it's not mine.

the children running home
beneath a twilight sky
oh, for the fun of them
when I was one of them...

Partner, I think. Partner. He's gotten married. While I was trapped in the grey spaces, pinned into ether by forces I could not control.

I cannot do other than ask; and I cannot do other than listen, when he says yes, he married. During the week I was gone.

Because that's the other part of the pain in this dream, that my life is spinning out without me, that things are changing, that I can't be a part of the world I love. I know how fast the world moves when I'm there. This week, I have not been able to be there.

and when October goes
the same old dream appears
and you are in my arms
to share the happy years

I feel...breathless. I feel my heart thudding, leaden, in my chest. I stare at him and ask--it must be asked--what that means, to him, for us.

He looks away.

He begins to explain, haltingly, that he was asked, and he would have told me, but for that I was gone...and he knew I'd return, but he had to be honest, about us, about what we meant to each other, and about what this other, this name in his profile, meant to him.

I understand all of it. It makes nothing easier, in this dream.

I turn my head away
to hide the helpless tears
oh, how I hate to see October go

And now I'm the one looking down, and I begin to slowly explain...I am who I am, I have never pretended to be other than I am, but...marriage. It is the reason I've refused him twice, when he's asked me previously to pair with him. Were he to share my view on marriage, it might be an entirely different thing, but...he does not, and I would not ask to change that, because...I've watched him alter so much for me. It would...injure something in me, I think, were he to try to alter to that extent. I'm fairly sure it would injure something in him.

Marriage? To me, even with my interpretations, it's vital, it's necessary, it must be preserved. With one exception, when someone I know, when someone I care for, has gotten married, I've stood aside. I've tried my best not to interfere, not to violate the marriage bond.

In some cases it's been a thing of great difficulty for me, and even now, I struggle with it. If you are paired with me, so goes my thinking...and you choose to marry someone else...I cannot then choose to remain with you. It is unfair to your choice, unfair to your marriage, profoundly unfair to your partner. I cannot be that person, for the most part. It...hurts too much, most of the time.

and when October goes
the same old dream appears
and you are in my arms
to share the happy years

And I ask again. What this means for us. Whether this means there is an us. And I listen as he explains, that he will always care for me, he will remain my guardian and defender, he will always be my friend...I don't have the heart, the air to carry the words, to say to him, stop. Stop. I have heard this before.

It's what I know he would say anyway.

I have to ask again, my own questions, answers known before I speak, but...in the dream, I have to. I have to have these things said.

"Primary," I whisper. I look up, my eyes brimming with tears I'm fighting not to shed. "So now, I should...change that? Because you...won't be, any more?"

"Ayy, grrl," he whispers, and draws me close again, and I fight my body to wakefulness, preferring grey nothing to continuation, to hearing him say goodbye.

It's what happened the first time I had this dream. I let it play out, so I know where it would go. It bothers me that my brain saw the need to have it twice.

I turn my head away
to hide the helpless tears
oh, how I hate to see October go...

And what does it mean to the larger sense of who I am, of what I do? Some of my otherloves, they hold similar views. Were I to get married, were I to accept the third proposal from my neko--that part of me is convinced is coming--I will lose them. As utterly, as completely, as this dream tells me I'd lose him, had he actually chosen another to wed.

And I am left on the far shore, gasping in the space between, needing to think all these issues through again, remake my choices, consider every angle. Is keeping him worth losing the others? Is accepting his wedding proposal the death knell for my chosen occupation? Could I conform to his idea of marriage, which is one man, one woman, pairbonded and allowing no others?

He says no, he says it would not be this way, but...he also says yes, that this is his concept of marriage, and...could I be that wife to his husband? Could I hold to the monogamist's view of fidelity? Or would I be doomed from the start?

I should be over it now, I know
it doesn't matter much how old I grow...

In a perfect society, all the forms of polyamory--polysexuality, polyfidelity, triad or quatrad monogamy, all the rest--would be accepted and understood. We do not have a perfect society.

But more, part of the problem is that I keep falling for, becoming involved with, monogamists. I proposed the questionnaire, and did write the card, even though I haven't handed it out. Something in me twitches at the thought--it seems so rude to ask. Yet...if I don't ask, I find myself here again, with someone else--torn in that gulf of perception between the concept of loving the other, and of loving many others. It doesn't seem to be something I can ask someone else to consider, until it looks as if I am growing serious. And if I'm growing serious, it becomes difficult, if not outright impossible, to pull away at that point, deny anything further.

As my brain says, it will be if he asks again. As my brain tells me, it will be if he marries another.

And worse, I'm left with the truly damning bit--when he asks again, and my brain tells me, over and again, it is a when, not an if--and I say no...will I lose him anyway? Three times said, three times denied, it has the air of charm about it, ritual, defined spellcraft made flesh and bone by word. Three times denied...would that be too much for him, then? Three times no, would that say to him I didn't want him, that I've been playing all along?

I don't play, in this sense. But part of me cannot, will not, say yes, as long as I'm sure our views on marriage differ, so extremely. Which means my brain is partially convinced I will lose him anyway, when this day comes.

I consider sleeping again, but it may be no use. I may be up and forced to drift in the grey spaces awake. I long to return to my place in the world, but the waiting has never been harder, with the dream behind my eyes.

I hate to see October go...


(lyrics are Barry Manilow's, from "When October Goes".)

sleight of hand and twist of fate

In my last moments before leaving, my hand still reaching out for the half-Tiefling, new in my wake...in the last moments of experience before vanishing into the limbo of in-between again, gone from my world and my ways...he speaks to me.

"Stop feeling this way," he says. Not the Tiefling. The other in my orbit. "Stop feeling this way." It rings within me as I sink into the grey spaces, gone for another few days of non-reality. The thing is, I think he means it. And all my gods stand as witnesses to this--I don't know how to stop. And I don't know what to think.

"Stop feeling this way." This way...this particular way...which way? The message was unclear. And I couldn't spare the time to explore it, not then. Stop feeling? Is that what he meant? Is that where I need to halt, not move forward, not feel anything else? Un-experience. Un-feel. Un-do any damage I've done...if I've done any...and how do I do this?

I float in grey limbo, waiting, always waiting. This whole long week, waiting in the chamber of ennui. Giving me far too much time to think.

"Stop feeling this way." Stop feeling? But as much as I'm a creature of logic, flawed as mine is at times, I'm a creature of emotion, passion, directed feeling. I can't not feel this way in this place. I can't not feel. All my choices have led me to the place where the risk of feeling outweighs the need for protection. I won't easily change...because I forced the change in the beginning of this, feeling it necessary. As much heartbreak as it's brought me, it's brought me greater joy, and right now, I need that. Joy and pain, laughter and sighs, anger and confusion, all the rich pageantry of emotion I've fought so hard to experience...I need that. I need it.

But what does he want of me? Does he want me not to care for him? I do. I think I started to care for him the first night we seriously talked, as I watched the building go up around us, plank by plank, beam by beam, nearly watched the nails go in...I can't not, at this point. Does he want me not to feel for him? I do. I think that also started to happen from that first night. Does he want me not to love him?

Love, ah, well...I've been doing my level best not to love him. Mayhap that's part of the problem. I see no difficulty in love that cannot, will not, be returned. Mayhap it's too much effort on my part not to love. Mayhap it's what gets me in the end, love and loss, heartbreak and separation, train wrecks and all.

And even with that, I feel--I feel--I take nothing from him, by what I feel, by how I care, by what I choose. My feelings are my own. I demand little. I would not dream of taking him from his life, his love, his choices. It's his life--I'm interfering only to the extent he allows. The minute he says no--the minute any of them say no--though it tears new holes in me, I'm away, I'm gone, I'm not a part of him, of them, longer.

Save in the shadows of my own heart, where all those who've left me, leave a little behind. Think...portraits, mayhap, if it helps to make sense of it. Strung out in uneven procession, hidden away in a gallery where the windows are draped in heavy dark cloth.

Some of those faces now are so hung with shadows I can no longer make out distinct features. Some are still brightly lit. Some are fading day by day, even the frames their portraits are in evaporating into shadowglow, their vibrancy dimming, their relevance escaping me.

I try not to visit often.

I am used to privation, deprivation, long soul's suffering, abandonment and pain. These are my guideposts in all the landscapes I walk. These are the signs I trust. I get nervous when things go well, when there aren't complications, when everything is smooth and joyous. I look for the thorn on the rose. I look for the acid in the sweet.

Mayhap we've reached one of my signposts, then. "Stop feeling this way." Stop feeling this way for him? Or stop feeling at all?

And all I can say is...I'll try. I think I'll fail. But I'll try still. Because he's asked me. I will always, ever, do everything I can to give the ones I care for what they want.

Even if what they want isn't me.

"Stop feeling this way"...I wish the request had translated better. Mayhap, the first thing I need to do, is verify what he meant at all, before I try to accede to those wishes.

It wouldn't be the first time impulsive action on my part sped the downfall of a relationship. And I misdoubt it will be the last.

And stop, stop feeling, stop caring, stop...everything? Brings us to detachment. Which has never been my strong suit. And if it's being asked of me now...it will be hard, so hard. Mayhap...too hard.

Mayhap I need to detach anyway.

"Stop feeling this way."

I'll try.

goodnight, sweetheart, well, it's time to go

((RP MODE))

"If you name me lover, then, what would you fear I would do with such a title?"

I admit, I was curious as to his answer.

He said, "Use it against me, as many others tend to do with that title."

Ah. So we would both come into this wary and cautious--he, because he has never loved before, and me, because I've loved before, and lost.

Demons, in fact. Three of them. And I think I've learned the lesson intended--don't fall in love with demons.

Does it matter that he's only half-demonic in nature? Does that make it better, or worse?

I don't know.

Does his arrival bode ill for me? Or mayhap, I learnt the lesson wrong, the first time out. Mayhap it was never, do not love demons. Maybe it was always, be careful with the ones you choose to love...

It's early yet, anyway. To love this particular demon. I'm still playing. Predominantly, I think, so is he.

But...it does make me wonder.

And worry, slightly.

black is the kiss, the touch of the serpent son

((RP MODE))

Oh, drat.

There's another demon on the horizon.

Half-Drow tiefling, currently missing an eye. Likes to be clawed. Likes quirky tales of past oddity.

Puts the half-centaur to shame.

Oh, I do not have the willingness for this...let alone the capacity.

If he falls in love with me, I'm eating his other eye. That's all there is to it.