☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות
"O YOU MISUNDERSTAND, / a game is not a law, / this dance is not a whim, / this kill is not a rival. / I crackle through your pastures / I make no profit / like the sun / I burn and burn, this tongue / licks through your body also."
"O YOU MISUNDERSTAND, / a game is not a law, / this dance is not a whim, / this kill is not a rival. / I crackle through your pastures / I make no profit / like the sun / I burn and burn, this tongue / licks through your body also."
At least you can admit it.
“It is easier to admit it,” I say, with a tilt of my head, “than to allow it to be defined on someone else’s terms.” And, if I don’t do it myself, I know what will be made of me. I have seen the psychiatric subject, the patient on the table; and, no matter what I may be, no matter how incomplete I am, I will, at the very least, define myself. It isn’t a choice – it has never been a choice -, but it is some modicum of control.
Else, it is – the strangest daughter of the Ieshan house, have you seen her?
There is something quite wrong with that girl.
If there is, and I know that there is – at least it is mine.
His green-eyed stare is on me, more attentive than it has been for all the rest of our conversation; I have provoked his interest, somehow, and I listen silently as he begins to tell me how to smile. It is not so hard, he says, First, you have to practice in the mirror. You have to put on a skin and pretend to be someone else.
He doesn’t understand, I think, but he thinks that he does. I don’t say it. I simply listen as he impresses himself onto me, supposes that he understands. I think that the easiest way to explain the distinction is this: he looks at me, and he sees something of himself. I look at him, and I feel like I am looking at a sandwyrm, or a viper, or something more insignificant – a spider. Something outside-of-myself. Something with a mind put together in a fundamentally different way, so fundamental that it is as though we do not even speak the same language.
I cannot pretend to be anyone in the same way that I cannot pretend to be a snake. That would require some understanding that I know that I can never, ever attain.
It is why I am very honest, for someone who lies as a matter of survival.
He mentions his past lover, and I listen on, unsure if I am faintly interested or apathetic – I don’t think that it matters, in his fit of passion, and I do not bother to tell him that I could never be like him, and he could never be like me at all, because I could never understand what it means to be in love with someone. I understand what love looks like on someone else. I understand, but I know better than anyone that my understanding goes no deeper than pattern recognition; I have seen it so often that it has become recognizable.
But – asking me how it might feel is like asking me how I imagine the courtship of birds. I can see them preening each other, resting their feathered heads against their shoulders, but how could I know what they are feeling? If it is love, it is not love like any of mine, if I can be said to love at all-
(because I know, better than anyone, that everyone I proclaim to care for I care for because of what they do for me. Miriam. Ishak. All my other siblings, probably. If you were to ask me about my apathy regarding Adonai’s so-called illness, about my parents’ death – it is because they do nothing for me, they did nothing for me. I have been told that love, when it is proper, or good, is selfless. I can see that in Miriam’s face. Mine is profoundly self-interested, and I am not so sure that is love at all.)
I listen regardless, because he is Adonai’s newest lover – I think -, and it is best to know as much as I can about anyone who becomes involved in our house. And I do not miss the way that, when he describes his past lover, I can easily attribute his traits to my brother. Insistent on being better as a matter of compulsion. Slow to anger, as a matter of course. As gracious as a proper prince should be, at least in public. Quick to smile – once. Quick to laugh - once, I think, if I am remembering correctly.
I do not know how empathetic my brother is (I have never been good at gauging such things) – but what I do know is that he would surely think of himself as such.
The twist of his dark lips. The reason you state? It is why I was a good soldier. So he is a soldier. I tilt my head, slightly, a dark stripe of my forelock falling out of place where it has been braided back for most of the evening. I am Solterran enough to know soldiers. I am Solterran, and a Doctor, which is more than enough to have held soldiers down while they kick and thrash and scream, to hold my scalpel steady to save them from one gangrening wound or another. I am Solterran, and a Doctor, and this is enough to have discerned a difference between an apathy that is innate and one that is learned. But I do not tell him about the collars, or about soldiers, or about Solterra. I simply consider his question. If you were to be someone else, Ruth... who would it be?
I think, on instinct, of Miriam. Perhaps it is because she is the only good person that I know, and perhaps it is because I have always longed – in some way that is almost certainly misguided and arrogant – to be good, too. But I wouldn’t want to be my sister. I wouldn’t want to be the keeper of our siblings, to be perpetually suffering, all but martyred.
Martyrdom is vile, anyways. I don’t know why people think of it as such a romantic notion to begin with. There is always something voyeuristic about it; and something deeply narcissistic, too.
He is staring at me with a miserable look in his eyes. My gaze on his is not quite anything at all, and that, I think, is the difference between us.
“The only thing I would like,” I say, quietly, “is to be normal.” I cannot conceive of what that means, just as I cannot conceive, exactly, of what it means to be someone else – and I do not say it like the opposite of extraordinary, like another woman might, but as the opposite of diseased. My head tilts again, mechanical, the image of curiosity without any of the intent. “And you – who would you be, if you had the choice?”
I do not care – but, when you cannot close your eyes, it is always better to know.
@Vercingtorix || <3 || atwood, "fox/fire song"
“It is easier to admit it,” I say, with a tilt of my head, “than to allow it to be defined on someone else’s terms.” And, if I don’t do it myself, I know what will be made of me. I have seen the psychiatric subject, the patient on the table; and, no matter what I may be, no matter how incomplete I am, I will, at the very least, define myself. It isn’t a choice – it has never been a choice -, but it is some modicum of control.
Else, it is – the strangest daughter of the Ieshan house, have you seen her?
There is something quite wrong with that girl.
If there is, and I know that there is – at least it is mine.
His green-eyed stare is on me, more attentive than it has been for all the rest of our conversation; I have provoked his interest, somehow, and I listen silently as he begins to tell me how to smile. It is not so hard, he says, First, you have to practice in the mirror. You have to put on a skin and pretend to be someone else.
He doesn’t understand, I think, but he thinks that he does. I don’t say it. I simply listen as he impresses himself onto me, supposes that he understands. I think that the easiest way to explain the distinction is this: he looks at me, and he sees something of himself. I look at him, and I feel like I am looking at a sandwyrm, or a viper, or something more insignificant – a spider. Something outside-of-myself. Something with a mind put together in a fundamentally different way, so fundamental that it is as though we do not even speak the same language.
I cannot pretend to be anyone in the same way that I cannot pretend to be a snake. That would require some understanding that I know that I can never, ever attain.
It is why I am very honest, for someone who lies as a matter of survival.
He mentions his past lover, and I listen on, unsure if I am faintly interested or apathetic – I don’t think that it matters, in his fit of passion, and I do not bother to tell him that I could never be like him, and he could never be like me at all, because I could never understand what it means to be in love with someone. I understand what love looks like on someone else. I understand, but I know better than anyone that my understanding goes no deeper than pattern recognition; I have seen it so often that it has become recognizable.
But – asking me how it might feel is like asking me how I imagine the courtship of birds. I can see them preening each other, resting their feathered heads against their shoulders, but how could I know what they are feeling? If it is love, it is not love like any of mine, if I can be said to love at all-
(because I know, better than anyone, that everyone I proclaim to care for I care for because of what they do for me. Miriam. Ishak. All my other siblings, probably. If you were to ask me about my apathy regarding Adonai’s so-called illness, about my parents’ death – it is because they do nothing for me, they did nothing for me. I have been told that love, when it is proper, or good, is selfless. I can see that in Miriam’s face. Mine is profoundly self-interested, and I am not so sure that is love at all.)
I listen regardless, because he is Adonai’s newest lover – I think -, and it is best to know as much as I can about anyone who becomes involved in our house. And I do not miss the way that, when he describes his past lover, I can easily attribute his traits to my brother. Insistent on being better as a matter of compulsion. Slow to anger, as a matter of course. As gracious as a proper prince should be, at least in public. Quick to smile – once. Quick to laugh - once, I think, if I am remembering correctly.
I do not know how empathetic my brother is (I have never been good at gauging such things) – but what I do know is that he would surely think of himself as such.
The twist of his dark lips. The reason you state? It is why I was a good soldier. So he is a soldier. I tilt my head, slightly, a dark stripe of my forelock falling out of place where it has been braided back for most of the evening. I am Solterran enough to know soldiers. I am Solterran, and a Doctor, which is more than enough to have held soldiers down while they kick and thrash and scream, to hold my scalpel steady to save them from one gangrening wound or another. I am Solterran, and a Doctor, and this is enough to have discerned a difference between an apathy that is innate and one that is learned. But I do not tell him about the collars, or about soldiers, or about Solterra. I simply consider his question. If you were to be someone else, Ruth... who would it be?
I think, on instinct, of Miriam. Perhaps it is because she is the only good person that I know, and perhaps it is because I have always longed – in some way that is almost certainly misguided and arrogant – to be good, too. But I wouldn’t want to be my sister. I wouldn’t want to be the keeper of our siblings, to be perpetually suffering, all but martyred.
Martyrdom is vile, anyways. I don’t know why people think of it as such a romantic notion to begin with. There is always something voyeuristic about it; and something deeply narcissistic, too.
He is staring at me with a miserable look in his eyes. My gaze on his is not quite anything at all, and that, I think, is the difference between us.
“The only thing I would like,” I say, quietly, “is to be normal.” I cannot conceive of what that means, just as I cannot conceive, exactly, of what it means to be someone else – and I do not say it like the opposite of extraordinary, like another woman might, but as the opposite of diseased. My head tilts again, mechanical, the image of curiosity without any of the intent. “And you – who would you be, if you had the choice?”
I do not care – but, when you cannot close your eyes, it is always better to know.
@
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
