Stay - Prelude
About the writing of 'Stay' :
Written rough, in this window, about two hours worth of scribbling without a plan, because I've only just joined here, and can't stand the idea of having a blank page. I want to do more with this. I have no idea what. It kind of.. got away from me.
The song in my head, when I started writing this, is older than I am. That feels really weird to admit to.
_ In the silence of your room In the darkness of your dreams You must only think of me There can be no in-betweens._ 'Stay' - Shakespears Sister, 1992
Again, the dream. Again, slow to wake, in a mid-summer sweat, fingers drifting to a wetness deeper than perspiration, mind clearing too slowly to know the truth of it right away. Pale fingers press hard on the ruin of a dream that escaped before it could be made solid, leaving only sin and frustration in it's wake.
"Who are you?" Mutterings in the darkness, with a throat stuck together and dry, meant for no one to hear. Always, in the back of the mind, out of the corner of peripheral vision, the glimpse of a ghost. Tall. Lithe. There are ears there, and one could guess, but it is only a guess. A hope of some sameness, something familiar to latch on to. "Get out of my head, ghost. Get out of my bed."
Up, and the sheets cling to her thighs, wet and twisted into her lap. Shae sighs, cursing quietly in the dark of night, another orgasm stolen from her while she slept, and dreamed of who knows what. She might be glad of that relief, but she was never AWAKE for it, had never had one of her own, conscious and willing, couldn't ever remember the moment, the feeling, the build up. Nothing but fog, and distress, and a headache forming under the tears wrung from her eyes. No relief, there. Only frustration, and the scramble to hide the damp sheets, remake the bed in silence, hope to remember she needed to wash the scent away at the first moment she had the house to herself.
Months. Years? Over a year, the dream shadow had haunted her, driving her mad with the elusive truth. Clearly something went on in those dreams that left her wrung out, that pulled instinct from her body that she could never recall, interrupting her sleep.
No sleep, now, she thinks. Back into bed, with clean sheets (the blue ones, the cloudy sky ones, the ones with no matching pillow covers, but who ever really cares about that?), Shae leans toward the bedside table, and the wobbling tower of books that would soon be overdue. 'Nymphs and Nightmares' sat below it. 'Delving into Dreams, Delving into You.' Most of this one was pop-psychology, contradictory new-aged drivel some three decades out of fashion, much in the theme of so many other books on this shady subject, but she'd highlighted a few passages, references to other books, mostly, and the legends of other cultures. Her lips moved over soundless words, squinting at the page, rereading, again and again. "Count from ten, let the world slip away from your body. You won't need it, where you're going.' " Rather morbid, for such airily laid-out out paragraphs. The rest of the words refused to sit still on the page.
"Show me. Show me, or leave me. Please.." She isn't crying, she's tired, but the tears leak down toward her temples regardless. When sleep comes again, the light is on, the paperback spread across her chest, her hindpaws tangled under each opposite knee. She'd been sat up lotus style when she started to read. Somewhere along the way, she laid down, only closed her eyes for a second, honest. Honest.
_ The floor falls away, and the night sky bleeds in through the rose-papered walls. She'd washed, she knew she'd washed, but the smell of sex stuck to her fingertips, she catches that exotic spice when she runs her fingers through her long dark waves. This can't be. She'd cut her hair, it's been short for so long now, but the thought escapes her in the first three steps toward the rushing stream. Not a stream. Too wide, too deep, too black under the reflection of a curled up crescent of moon._
_ The boat comes not long after. More of a gondola, really, is that the right word? Slim and sleek with it's head bent down at the fore in the shape of a swan, white pain flaking off with the river's abuse, to show a glistening black coat of feathers underneath, where weathered wood should be._
_ The man, the.. the.. she knows this. The ferryman, no, the gondolier, he leans over the edge, and the slender skiff rocks upon the rushing flow of the star-scattered river, holding out his hand for "Miss?" Compelled, Shae's slender hand fits well within his, wrinkled under it's wiry fur, and though she looks straight at his face, she cannot see who he is, what he is. No scent is there to tell her, horse or dog or cat, like herself? His eyes are dark, probably brown by daylight, slitted pupils like her own, fleck in olive drab.. not like her own. This isn't him, Him. He's old, and he fades into the background, humming under the river's song as the little craft is poled along._
_ "Where are you taking me?" "Miss, I take you nowhere. You chose to let the river guide you. You already know where it goes." Frustration, how typical, how tiredly cliched, and she's mad at her own inner thoughts, to dream up such a pueril, obvious answer that answers absolutely nothing. She thinks of tipping her oarman into the current for that, but the fault is all her own. Dreamtime awareness makes nothing better._
_ "He'll be there, won't he?" Shae's thinking ahead, too focused on finding her stranger, on wringing answers from him, banishing the source of what she can only presume are lurid dreams. "Where is there, Miss? Who is he?" But the voice has changed, the weight in the boat feels different. The old man has melted away, and left her ghost in his place._
_ In the dreaming she knows him, she can't not. The pointed curve of darkened ears, the sooty spots that drip down his snowy brow, the ice in his eyes that burns through her at first glance. "YOU!" The leopard bows his head, depriving her of the brilliant blue eyes. "I." She knew, she knows, she'll soon forget, the same spotted tom that has always prowled at the back of her dreaming, and of late too hungry to remain in the background, he's taken center stage. She rises from her wood plank seat, and the gondola lurches in the water. "You?" Again, he bows his head. "Aye."_
_ Somewhere between one push of the oar and the next, the boat pole drops away, melts into thin air, unimportant in the dreaming, for such is the nature of half-lucid thought. He doesn't need it, the swan can guide itself, and he kneels down in the belly of the boat, to gather her up in his arms, as the real world tears cross over, flowing freely, soaking into the night-blue silk that garbs his shoulder._
_ "I came to banish you," Shae sniffles. "I know." "You torment me so, I hate you for it." The tears threaten to choke her off. In her real world bed, Shae rolls on her side, and breathing comes easier. "I know." "You aren't sorry for it?" He only shakes his head before he whispers in her soft white ear, "No."_
_ Around a bend in the river, the long fronds of ancient willow trees shield the swan boat from the eyes of dreamland creatures. That is when his hands are on her, pushing through the thin film of a night dress she knows she's never owned, fingers furrowing into her pelt, insistant and rough as she trembles against his chest. The timid little Persian girl clings tight around the leopard's neck. She remembers, and she wants, and she knows she is loved. His kisses heal her anger, his lips quell her shivering, and transform her weeping whimpers into sounds of deeper pleasure._
_ The river shows no end that she can see, until the leopard has pulled her body tight to his will, drawn wave after wave of hot, wet bliss from her, left her limp and mewling in his lap, to be bathed in softer kisses, sharing back to her the rumbling purr of contented passions, though he'd taken nothing as his own. "The dawn is coming, sweetheart Shae." It's true. Even in dreams, the sun is rising, casting orange wakefulness over the river, painting a pastel blur off the wooden swan's brow._
_ "You'll leave me again." "I never left you."_
_ "I'll forget you again." "And you will remember again. I'll make you. As many times as it takes."_
_ "I don't want to leave." Her lover laughs, he shakes his head, bright eyes sparkling with some merry secret cruelly withheld from her. "You must go, Shae. Wake up, you cannot--"_
Stay.