☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות
"AND SHE IS DYING PIECE-MEAL / of a sort of emotional anemia. / And round about there is a rabble / of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. / They shall inherit the earth."
"AND SHE IS DYING PIECE-MEAL / of a sort of emotional anemia. / And round about there is a rabble / of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. / They shall inherit the earth."
I know without asking that Ishak would rather be in Solterra.
I might be made of stone – or so the stories will tell you -, more native to the desert coastline than anything, but I don’t miss it. I don’t hate it here, either, but I don’t love it. When I am at home, I can never shake an itch across my shoulderblades, like being watched even in moments where I know I’m not, and the hospital is where I work and nothing more. I go out into the dunes to gather, and I spend evenings by the oasis, and nowhere feels right, exactly.
Smoke trails heady fingers past my face; the rest of the festival is a blur. If I were to tell you the truth, I am at my most comfortable in my room at night, the dark curtains drawn over my window, no one outside of my door; and I curl up with my textbooks, or my journals, and I begin to work myself over one unsolved problem or another, and sometimes Ishak is across the room, observing me when he thinks I won’t notice, and sometimes he curls up against my side, rests his jaw in the hook of my shoulder, and I never say a word, because I don’t need to. And now I am watching him watching me, tracing the movement of his pale blue eyes without ever looking away from him, and I am naming each muscle and ligament as I see him look at them inside of my head.
When he tells me lines and dots and suns, I am not surprised. It’s the arrangement that makes the meaning, he adds, and I tilt my head at him slowly, working my jaw in consideration, but I don’t say a word. I could probably recite the meaning of every single one of Ishak’s tattoos, if he asked. (For anyone else, I just wouldn’t answer the question.) But I’ve never had much of an eye for symbolism, no matter how many art classes I sat through before Mother allowed me to specialize in medicine, and it’s never done much to stir me.
I am surprised – in a flicker – when he tells me white. No Ieshan should ever wear white. Even Delilah is a ballerina, and she dresses in black silk instead. Adonai might have worn it, once, but if Pilate ever does, it’s a ruse, and if I did, it would be dirty in an hour; and Hagar has always had a mouth for gold and a tongue to match. I eye him, and then the white dots on his own tattoos, an accompaniment to the copper, and I-
I could ask him to paint me, but Ishak is no good at that. He can draw, sometimes, sketch something out in charcoal or lead – but he’s never been good with a paintbrush. I arc my neck, look towards the buckets, and I dip one of the dark brushes in a bucket of bloodred; and, when I draw it back and step towards him, when I am standing a hair’s-breadth away from him like I am performing open-heart surgery, when I press the sharp tip of it to the center of his chest, I-
“Ishak,” I say, as softly as I need to, “stand still.”
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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
