[P] of a sort of emotional anemia [fire]

[Ruth]

☼  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."

The air smells like woodsmoke and herbs, and the night sky is painted with dancing embers.

The festivities are brilliant, and I have the unpleasant feeling that I will be treating burns tonight. It is the perfect storm – ritual and fire combined. I linger in the shadows, not quite attracted by anything in the festival; I pass oomancers and painters and fire-dancers with scarcely a glance, my dull yellow eyes catching in the light of the bonfires even as I am in the dark. My family is profoundly religious, though I am not sure that most of my siblings – or any of them, really, save perhaps Adonai (and, with his current condition, even that is something to call into question; but some would say that faith is not faith if it is never tested) – believe what they preach. I certainly don’t, but, then, I don’t preach, either. Save for my seasonal pilgrimages to Veneror, which are a matter of appearance and escape more than anything, I do not partake in most any of the family rituals.

I am not religious, and I am not superstitious, either. (I might have been, once, but only in the purely self-interested way that I play at being most things; loving, kind, moral, responsible.) I have concluded that my mind is not primed to understand either, like it is not primed to understand most things of that ilk; I regard the festival like a case study, watch the people who go about their business like I might watch lab mice in a cage. I catch the smiling face of a young girl, or a man whispering into the ear of a woman, his lips twisted up into a smirk, and I see light-footed creatures spring through the colorful smoke, and I don’t understand any of it at all.

I don’t know why they enjoy it.

(I feel like I am standing in a box made out of glass.)

If I didn’t have business in Delumine, I wouldn’t be here. Seeing as I do, here I am. Attending the festival had been Ishak’s suggestion, however; and he is at my side, as usual, more like a shadow than the one beneath me. I drift through the crowds, well aware that he is following even without looking back over my shoulder at him, and I don’t stop my drifting until we stand near the outskirts of the crowd, close to some of the colorful paints and jewels strewn about the edges of the treeline.

I look at him, my gaze half-thoughtful, and I say, in my most inscrutable tone, “Ishak. If you were to paint me – what would you paint?”

It isn’t a request. (Probably.) It’s not quite a question, either.

They say that our mother carved us from stone, painted all of our features just so. If that is the case – all my features seem haphazard where my siblings are brilliantly precise. If that is the case – I wonder if she ever took a brush to me at all.

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@Ishak || <3 || "the garden," ezra pound

[Ishak]

☼  ISHAK  ☼
اسحاق

"I been looking at the stars tonight / And I think oh, how I miss that bright sun"

It is not often you find yourself in Dawn. It is not often that you find yourself in the other courts at all, really.


You are at Ruth’s side, as always.


The bonfire crackles and the celebrants dance and the night is young, as they say. This party, this festival, is just a little bit wild. You enjoy it much more than an Ieshan ball, even if you have a freer mandate at the latter.


Ruth plods through the crowd, aimed and intent at the edge of it all. You keep tabs on the glances thrown at the two of you, but no one seems intent on trouble tonight.


The grasslands here are supposed to feel endless, so you’d heard in the marketplace. Gossip had centered around who was off stargazing together. You’d laughed, honestly. There’s so much life here that you can’t imagine finding somewhere properly empty to tilt your head up. The bugs alone are a bit much.


Not that the desert is truly empty, of course. There’s plenty living in and beneath the sands.


Ruth stops and looks at you, as good a cue as any. Her tone is nigh on empty when she asks, “Ishak. If you were to paint me – what would you paint?”


You look at Ruth. (You are always.) You look at her.


You think of half-finished sketches and half-finished conversations. You think of the party last winter. You think of your own paints, done in blue this season.


Ruth would make a fine canvas, truly. You could paint her brightly, and the contrast would be lovely. You could use a dark metallic on her darkest parts, so that it would take a turn in the light to reveal her styling.


You’d paint the sun on her, of course. A dot for every life you’ve known her to save. (A mirror to you, with your specific dots for lives taken.) You’d put those meaningful dots on her shoulder, the same as your tattoos. You’d bisect her with a line on each side, not to match her markings but to match your scars. Above each diagonal line, you’d put another sun, perhaps.

You’d trail ancient patterns around her back legs, where they’d shine the brightest. And you’d spend an hour at least picking the beads for her hair. Gold, silver, white.


Because you’d paint in her all-white.


You can almost imagine it, like the visions you’d had in fractured crystal on that island.


“Lines and dots and suns,” you say. “It’s the arrangement that makes the meaning.”


You could show her, take a stick to trampled dirt if nothing else. You wonder if she’ll ask, or if she’ll drop it.


“In white,” you add, like it’s an afterthought.


Of course, Ruth would do better to remember that painting is a skill you lack.

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@Ruth | i return like a phoenix, yadda yadda, <3 | “spirits” - strumbellas

[Ruth]

☼  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."

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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@Ishak || there sure is a lot to unpack here!!!! sure is!!! || "the garden," ezra pound