I've been away awhile. I'm okay with that.
"Paindancer" is straddling the 40,000 word mark. Momentous, as once I cross that boundary it's officially a novel.
I really... really... really... like how the imagery of this scene - and the pacing - came out.
---------------------------------------------------------
I tried to sleep that night, I really did. Despite the amicable terms we’d parted on – as much as humanly possible, anyway – my conversation with Sialk had left me feeling provoked and anxious. I felt like I still needed to give her a few days, unless Mallory called me first. It was complicated. Everything was complicated all the fucking time. I was sick to death of complicated. I wanted to tear it apart and rebuild from the rubble.
Time to deconstruct… I couldn’t tell whether the thought was mine or not. It appealed to my sensibilities either way.
I yawned, glanced at the clock, and cracked my neck. I pulled a loose knit shrug over my head, left my hair loose and rummaged around for pants. I leafed through the clean laundry basket left at the foot of my bed and paused for a moment. The corduroy patchwork pants I’d worn to Salem’s when I stormed into his apartment and… well… yeah.
Running my hands over the fabric, I spread them over the bed. On some of the lighter patches you could still see a spray of tiny rust-colored droplets; blood from my back, whipping off his belt and onto my clothes. It hadn’t come out in the wash. I hadn’t noticed before. I touched the reddish inkblots and shivered all over.
Whatever I could or couldn’t have with Salem now, it wasn’t this. Flashbacks of that night crowded my mind.
His Beast. His passion. That exquisite cruelty he had kept leashed until I’d driven him to let loose the reins.
The coppery tang of my blood comingled with his as he backhanded me across the floor.
The way he fit inside me.
The slippery belt tightening around my throat.
My faerie-fire surging through him like the tide.
His face in those moments…
It hurt to love him and realize one of the best nights of my life was one of the worst of his. Human though he was, his Shadow Aspect wasn’t a challenge or a mystery ripe with incentive as mine was. His scared him. He didn’t want to go there again. Wouldn’t. He fought his darkness; I tried to reconcile light and dark.
I wished he trusted me, or even just himself, enough.
Complicated.
I pulled the pants on and grabbed my iPod before taking off into the midnight haze.
I queued up a playlist as I walked: The Silversun Pickups, Fuel, The Verve Pipe, Live, Snow Patrol, The Sisters of Mercy, Gossamer, The Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Eluveitie, Gaelic Storm, and so much more…
Time to burn it to the ground.
I cranked the volume to eleven, fit the earbuds to my ears and clipped the screen to my waistband.
Finavir. I hit play. The noise hit me like a punch to the gut. My lashes fluttered against my cheeks as I let the sound absorb into and around this mortal coil. My fingers rapped against my stomach.
My hands crackled over with static-fire. My core was seafoam against the moon. My toes grappled with the earth. My hair strained against the ragged edge of the wind.
And I danced; abstract and freeflow. I responded to the music like a lover, let my fingertips raise and amplify goosebumps in fractured curves across my skin. It was like throwing back one too many energy drinks; I couldn’t not move. The electric-threaded vibration assaulted my ears, ran through my body in a bubbling jet. I felt invisible wires affix to my wrists, my hips, my ankles, shoulders, neck, and along each delicate fingertip, each lacing back and toward a rhythmic subversion of self. I relaxed into it, let it pull me here and there, up and down, and back in upon myself. Every movement was a lush and dangerous surprise. I was a marionette spinning entropy across the forest floor.
I let it take my breath away.
And there was the light, always the light, a pale and emergent radiance. Only this time instead of photons racing tangents through dead space, the candle-blaze flickered from my gaze and caught on the midnight breeze.
A subtle silvering of the atmosphere at first, the more it caught and held my attention the brighter the definition grew.
For God only knows how long, it was all I thought about. I was sweating, dancing on a turnstile, making love without direction, as I painted the air with my eyes.
A glance here, a pulse of eyelashes there, a surrender of vision… Whether I created it or merely uncovered it I don’t know, but I saw. A dense and fibrous network extending as far as I could see in every direction, light dripped through the skein like dew collecting through a spiderweb at sunrise. Brighter here, echoing there, and all of it tethered back towards the undifferentiated brilliance of Finavir.
I tore through the fine latticework of strands as I passed, demolishing old pathways and recreating them anew in my wake. I felt it. Galvanized spirit-threads snapping against my skin in a sensory spray; I reached out and touched pockets of heliotrope crossfire. I was breaking the surface-tension and bathing in the overflow.
Where were my fireflies in this shining morass?
I felt their tremulous and impending warmth, and that was enough.
I was closing in concentric circles around Finavir’s trunk; Finavir who punched through realities like a monolith crucifies the sky. The scintillating reverb was roping me in.
I let it. I spun en pointe, rocked on my heels and back again.
Closer, closer, closer… My breath boiled in my lungs and lightning scalded my skin. Otherworld ley lines became a tangled snarl of razorblades, flaying and peeling my human visage from my body.
I slipped fully into my Shadow Self at the same moment I went crashing through Finavir and into The Savage Garden.
---------------------------------------------------------
“Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010/2011
"Paindancer" is straddling the 40,000 word mark. Momentous, as once I cross that boundary it's officially a novel.
I really... really... really... like how the imagery of this scene - and the pacing - came out.
---------------------------------------------------------
I tried to sleep that night, I really did. Despite the amicable terms we’d parted on – as much as humanly possible, anyway – my conversation with Sialk had left me feeling provoked and anxious. I felt like I still needed to give her a few days, unless Mallory called me first. It was complicated. Everything was complicated all the fucking time. I was sick to death of complicated. I wanted to tear it apart and rebuild from the rubble.
Time to deconstruct… I couldn’t tell whether the thought was mine or not. It appealed to my sensibilities either way.
I yawned, glanced at the clock, and cracked my neck. I pulled a loose knit shrug over my head, left my hair loose and rummaged around for pants. I leafed through the clean laundry basket left at the foot of my bed and paused for a moment. The corduroy patchwork pants I’d worn to Salem’s when I stormed into his apartment and… well… yeah.
Running my hands over the fabric, I spread them over the bed. On some of the lighter patches you could still see a spray of tiny rust-colored droplets; blood from my back, whipping off his belt and onto my clothes. It hadn’t come out in the wash. I hadn’t noticed before. I touched the reddish inkblots and shivered all over.
Whatever I could or couldn’t have with Salem now, it wasn’t this. Flashbacks of that night crowded my mind.
His Beast. His passion. That exquisite cruelty he had kept leashed until I’d driven him to let loose the reins.
The coppery tang of my blood comingled with his as he backhanded me across the floor.
The way he fit inside me.
The slippery belt tightening around my throat.
My faerie-fire surging through him like the tide.
His face in those moments…
It hurt to love him and realize one of the best nights of my life was one of the worst of his. Human though he was, his Shadow Aspect wasn’t a challenge or a mystery ripe with incentive as mine was. His scared him. He didn’t want to go there again. Wouldn’t. He fought his darkness; I tried to reconcile light and dark.
I wished he trusted me, or even just himself, enough.
Complicated.
I pulled the pants on and grabbed my iPod before taking off into the midnight haze.
I queued up a playlist as I walked: The Silversun Pickups, Fuel, The Verve Pipe, Live, Snow Patrol, The Sisters of Mercy, Gossamer, The Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Eluveitie, Gaelic Storm, and so much more…
Time to burn it to the ground.
I cranked the volume to eleven, fit the earbuds to my ears and clipped the screen to my waistband.
Finavir. I hit play. The noise hit me like a punch to the gut. My lashes fluttered against my cheeks as I let the sound absorb into and around this mortal coil. My fingers rapped against my stomach.
My hands crackled over with static-fire. My core was seafoam against the moon. My toes grappled with the earth. My hair strained against the ragged edge of the wind.
And I danced; abstract and freeflow. I responded to the music like a lover, let my fingertips raise and amplify goosebumps in fractured curves across my skin. It was like throwing back one too many energy drinks; I couldn’t not move. The electric-threaded vibration assaulted my ears, ran through my body in a bubbling jet. I felt invisible wires affix to my wrists, my hips, my ankles, shoulders, neck, and along each delicate fingertip, each lacing back and toward a rhythmic subversion of self. I relaxed into it, let it pull me here and there, up and down, and back in upon myself. Every movement was a lush and dangerous surprise. I was a marionette spinning entropy across the forest floor.
I let it take my breath away.
And there was the light, always the light, a pale and emergent radiance. Only this time instead of photons racing tangents through dead space, the candle-blaze flickered from my gaze and caught on the midnight breeze.
A subtle silvering of the atmosphere at first, the more it caught and held my attention the brighter the definition grew.
For God only knows how long, it was all I thought about. I was sweating, dancing on a turnstile, making love without direction, as I painted the air with my eyes.
A glance here, a pulse of eyelashes there, a surrender of vision… Whether I created it or merely uncovered it I don’t know, but I saw. A dense and fibrous network extending as far as I could see in every direction, light dripped through the skein like dew collecting through a spiderweb at sunrise. Brighter here, echoing there, and all of it tethered back towards the undifferentiated brilliance of Finavir.
I tore through the fine latticework of strands as I passed, demolishing old pathways and recreating them anew in my wake. I felt it. Galvanized spirit-threads snapping against my skin in a sensory spray; I reached out and touched pockets of heliotrope crossfire. I was breaking the surface-tension and bathing in the overflow.
Where were my fireflies in this shining morass?
I felt their tremulous and impending warmth, and that was enough.
I was closing in concentric circles around Finavir’s trunk; Finavir who punched through realities like a monolith crucifies the sky. The scintillating reverb was roping me in.
I let it. I spun en pointe, rocked on my heels and back again.
Closer, closer, closer… My breath boiled in my lungs and lightning scalded my skin. Otherworld ley lines became a tangled snarl of razorblades, flaying and peeling my human visage from my body.
I slipped fully into my Shadow Self at the same moment I went crashing through Finavir and into The Savage Garden.
---------------------------------------------------------
“Paindancer,” By Lineia Corell
Copyright © 2010/2011
