☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות
"I'M GIVING MYSELF THE THIRD DEGREE: / When did you know? When did you / know for sure? / orphaned. burned abandoned. / when she calls me on the phone / sometimes her voice is very soft. / I lean into it, like a campfire flow / on an early summer night."
"I'M GIVING MYSELF THE THIRD DEGREE: / When did you know? When did you / know for sure? / orphaned. burned abandoned. / when she calls me on the phone / sometimes her voice is very soft. / I lean into it, like a campfire flow / on an early summer night."
Yes.
I know that Ishak is ashamed of his history in the same way that I know that I don’t care about it; that is, about his history, and about his shame. If anything, I might say that there is something reassuring about his efficiency, much as I know that he would chalk it up to good luck – good luck gone bad when we met, but that is beside the point entirely.
When he admits to his own success, I simply watch him in the same neutral – apathetic – way that I always do. Still, when he tosses another grape into his mouth, my eyes do not move from his to watch the precise, violet arc of its form. (Somehow, the simple half-drunken toss of a grape seems sharp as a knife, when Ishak does it.)
I watch, too, when he doesn’t say a word to any of my remarks. Through what largely amounts to pattern recognition, the way that a zoologist might watch their subjects, I can guess at what Ishak is thinking with what I would like to imagine is some degree of accuracy. I am always less confident in my guessing when there is alcohol in his system, which disconcerts me primarily because it suggests to me that there are things that I do not know about Ishak, bits of him that I do not know nearly as intimately as I know my own mind. The thought of that rubs at me like sandpaper; but I don’t have long to consider it, because there is the matter of my brother to deal with.
(There is always the matter of my brother to deal with – if not one, then another. I like to think that the three of them constitute the majority of the trouble in our family, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thought that we might be better off without them, or with only one of them. Oh, I love my brothers, as much as I love anything-
but I don’t love anything much at all.)
Ishak has seen my brother. His eyes are duller than usually – still bright as chips of sky, but not quite as sharp. (I still think that he knows what I was thinking, but, if he does, he doesn’t feel like objecting. Most of the time, he would.) Beneath the bow of my lips, I drag my tongue across my teeth. I’ve barely drunk a drop – a sip of champagne, not prepared by my brother, enough to make me look presentable for a conversation with the members of one of the smaller noble houses. My mouth tastes sickly sweet regardless.
“I’m worried,” I say, slowly, “that the party might be too much for his health.” That’s a lie, of course. I’m sure that Ishak knows it. I love Adonai, in the most technical, meaningless sense of the word – but that doesn’t mean I worry about him, or I care about him, or I might have intervened the moment he felt sick. This is, more than anything, a matter of pride.
I love my brothers – and I am better at lying than any of them, and my teeth, I’m sure, have grown twice as sharp in my mouth as even Corradh’s.
I straighten, slowly, a final crop of pink petals falling from my dark hair. They’ll be crushed underfoot like the grapes; like spilled wine. “I think,” I say, as I turn my back to him, “that I’ll find him, once the party is over.” My gaze drifts over the crowd languidly, cold as a mantid and just as aimlessly watchful. It is impossible to do anything in this house unknown. Even our private life, I think, is public as the news.
I look at Ishak, over my shoulder, and my lips lift up in the sickle-like curve of a smile that means nothing at all – because I am an Ieshan, even if I am the forgotten daughter, even within the confines of my own home. And then I am gone into the crowd, my dark form bleeding like stone into shadow, unadorned tresses not even so bright as the manor walls.
If there is one thing that I am as good at as lying, it is disappearing entirely.
@Ishak || <3 || here
I know that Ishak is ashamed of his history in the same way that I know that I don’t care about it; that is, about his history, and about his shame. If anything, I might say that there is something reassuring about his efficiency, much as I know that he would chalk it up to good luck – good luck gone bad when we met, but that is beside the point entirely.
When he admits to his own success, I simply watch him in the same neutral – apathetic – way that I always do. Still, when he tosses another grape into his mouth, my eyes do not move from his to watch the precise, violet arc of its form. (Somehow, the simple half-drunken toss of a grape seems sharp as a knife, when Ishak does it.)
I watch, too, when he doesn’t say a word to any of my remarks. Through what largely amounts to pattern recognition, the way that a zoologist might watch their subjects, I can guess at what Ishak is thinking with what I would like to imagine is some degree of accuracy. I am always less confident in my guessing when there is alcohol in his system, which disconcerts me primarily because it suggests to me that there are things that I do not know about Ishak, bits of him that I do not know nearly as intimately as I know my own mind. The thought of that rubs at me like sandpaper; but I don’t have long to consider it, because there is the matter of my brother to deal with.
(There is always the matter of my brother to deal with – if not one, then another. I like to think that the three of them constitute the majority of the trouble in our family, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thought that we might be better off without them, or with only one of them. Oh, I love my brothers, as much as I love anything-
but I don’t love anything much at all.)
Ishak has seen my brother. His eyes are duller than usually – still bright as chips of sky, but not quite as sharp. (I still think that he knows what I was thinking, but, if he does, he doesn’t feel like objecting. Most of the time, he would.) Beneath the bow of my lips, I drag my tongue across my teeth. I’ve barely drunk a drop – a sip of champagne, not prepared by my brother, enough to make me look presentable for a conversation with the members of one of the smaller noble houses. My mouth tastes sickly sweet regardless.
“I’m worried,” I say, slowly, “that the party might be too much for his health.” That’s a lie, of course. I’m sure that Ishak knows it. I love Adonai, in the most technical, meaningless sense of the word – but that doesn’t mean I worry about him, or I care about him, or I might have intervened the moment he felt sick. This is, more than anything, a matter of pride.
I love my brothers – and I am better at lying than any of them, and my teeth, I’m sure, have grown twice as sharp in my mouth as even Corradh’s.
I straighten, slowly, a final crop of pink petals falling from my dark hair. They’ll be crushed underfoot like the grapes; like spilled wine. “I think,” I say, as I turn my back to him, “that I’ll find him, once the party is over.” My gaze drifts over the crowd languidly, cold as a mantid and just as aimlessly watchful. It is impossible to do anything in this house unknown. Even our private life, I think, is public as the news.
I look at Ishak, over my shoulder, and my lips lift up in the sickle-like curve of a smile that means nothing at all – because I am an Ieshan, even if I am the forgotten daughter, even within the confines of my own home. And then I am gone into the crowd, my dark form bleeding like stone into shadow, unadorned tresses not even so bright as the manor walls.
If there is one thing that I am as good at as lying, it is disappearing entirely.
@
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
