Post by Kit on Jul 18, 2010 17:41:02 GMT 10
Title: Spaces in Brass
Rating: R
Length: 1, 930
Original and Subsequent Haunts: N/A, though most of the blockquoted flashbacks are stolen from my 31_days attempt in the Emelan fanfiction forum.
Summary: "And you made love under the summer stars, whispering promises to each other?”/ I flushed. "Something like that." -- Saati, by Lisa. Not actually IN that universe, but inspired by that line. Daja and Polyam try to fit their life in a cap.
“Here, lugsha. Take this.”
The staff is still warm from her skin. Ebony goes not give, but years of use and the weight of every step Polyam Idaram has taken since the age of seven, broken or otherwise, as shaped it subtly. Bent itself to her hand, harsh and soft. Daja’s grip is not hers, and falters.
“I don’t understand.”
The older woman’s face twists, and she takes Daja’s free hand in her own still-smooth right one, laying brass against her heart.
“Mimanders aren’t going to catch all the changes,” she says. “I don’t want them to. But you—“ she smiles, pausing briefly for the interruption that never quite arrives. “You will do it?”
Daja’s eyes are closed, and she runs her fingers across the Idaram star that crowns the Trader’s life. She spins the past month s out as wires, while Polyam watches.
“May I watch you?”
Daja’s eyes open, slowly, at the hesitance in those words, the Tradertalk brushing against her. “Watch me make” She flashed a smile. “If your mother knew—“
“—if I could, I’d strike fire for you and shape anything you wanted, but I do not have those skills.”
Daja kisses her, steady and slow and keeping her wildly beating heart between them.
Her hands are running over the staff again. Measuring, Polyam supposes. Life stories are by nature stylised things, an tracing her own life has always been flashes—girl and daughter to horse-breaker; wreck and ruin and wirok; yellow dye (“It’s so...vivid”), caustic on her skin; fire, and the shock of flesh shifting under her, her-own-and-not-her-own; balance re-wrought and the strange, sensuous relief of proper cloth and leather covering her legs again. Ash in her hair and bright, snarling victory in her heart as Chandrisa knelt to a slow-grieving Trangshi girl, and spoke her name. All this, in the space of a few thumb spans of brass.
“Are you sure you want me to touch this?”
Polyam laughs. She cannot help it.
Daja bites her lip, shakes her head, braids swinging. “They’ll all see.”
“That’s part of the point.” Her words are crow harsh and crow confident, and she covers Daja’s hand with her own. The gesture is long theirs, now. “You’ve taught me a lot about being sure.”
(Sure. Always sure).
Daja smiles, then. Her free hand moves over Polyam’s cheek, reading it as easily as she did the wires. “I don’t know why,” she says, a little rough despite her touch, “I’ve always fallen for madmen, or women who want to put mountains between themselves and me.”
“I don’t want—“ warm fingers against her lips.
“—you have to.”
The urge to bite is strong. A distraction. An instinctive response, years old, against the word, ‘have’. Obligation is entwined through her life, and has always tasted strange in her mouth. “Can you fit all of it?” she asks. “Every bit. The fights, too. The night you told me about that kaq who burnt your heart in all those houses? The stories you shared? That week I dragged you back to Gold Ridge? Trisana’s face when she realised...” She swallows. is kissed, her words half lost.
“Us, now, like this?”
“Everything has account.” Daja’s eyes are too bright, and Polyam’s own face aches, her eye heavy as the younger woman’s face blurs before her.
“Then Bookkeeper note that I love you, in these words and your work.”
Daja nods, once, and then turns to her forge, staff in hand.
Rating: R
Length: 1, 930
Original and Subsequent Haunts: N/A, though most of the blockquoted flashbacks are stolen from my 31_days attempt in the Emelan fanfiction forum.
Summary: "And you made love under the summer stars, whispering promises to each other?”/ I flushed. "Something like that." -- Saati, by Lisa. Not actually IN that universe, but inspired by that line. Daja and Polyam try to fit their life in a cap.
“Here, lugsha. Take this.”
The staff is still warm from her skin. Ebony goes not give, but years of use and the weight of every step Polyam Idaram has taken since the age of seven, broken or otherwise, as shaped it subtly. Bent itself to her hand, harsh and soft. Daja’s grip is not hers, and falters.
“I don’t understand.”
The older woman’s face twists, and she takes Daja’s free hand in her own still-smooth right one, laying brass against her heart.
“Mimanders aren’t going to catch all the changes,” she says. “I don’t want them to. But you—“ she smiles, pausing briefly for the interruption that never quite arrives. “You will do it?”
Daja’s eyes are closed, and she runs her fingers across the Idaram star that crowns the Trader’s life. She spins the past month s out as wires, while Polyam watches.
“Why so shocked, lugsha? I’m hardly unrecognisable.”
Daja stared. She knew she stared, and she knew that the longer she did, the deeper the Trader woman’s misunderstanding would grow, being used to stares for all the wrong reasons. She knew all this, but could not look away as Polyam Idaram walked towards her, gait smooth and the smile that had been in her dry, low voice echoing all around them. Except, of course, that smiles did not echo like struck metal.
“Surely you recognise your work, if nothing else.”
Daja shook herself. “Polyam?”
“There.” The full lips twitched. “I should be the one not recognising you, Oti-save me. You’ve grown—”
“—big, I know.” Daja stopped short of hugging her, but found herself half lifted in an uneven grasp, stronger on her left than her left.
“I head you’d set up in Summersea,” said Polyam. “Properly. Not with the xurdin and their Gods.”
“I have a forge, yes.” The usual spark of pride had a new taste when she said it to this woman. “And my best friends are xurdin.
“And probably still handle lightning.” The deep voice was rueful. And then she grinned, the expression more like to snarl or sneer, given the twists and ridges of her face, but Daja read wickedness there. “But no caravan wind’s heard your name for at least a year, prideful lugsha, so I figured you’d stopped saving empires and was ready to take callers.”
Daja laughed, cheeks hot. “I’ll leave that to Sandry,” she said. “But please.” Manners could be cool and comfortable, like new clothing. “Come in. There’s no need to stand outside my door.”
They both stepped inside, Daja feeling the other woman’s presence as warm prickles on the back of her neck. “Polyam,” she ventured.
“Yes?”
“You…just decided to visit me.”
“We have no debt,” said the older woman. “But I said we would always be friends. And we are both here.”
Daja turned, looking down the small distance at her. She could see that there were streaks of iron in Polyam’s hair, now, and that her part was slightly crooked. “Yes,” she said, surprised at her own whisper. “That seems simple enough.”
“May I watch you?”
Daja’s eyes open, slowly, at the hesitance in those words, the Tradertalk brushing against her. “Watch me make” She flashed a smile. “If your mother knew—“
“—if I could, I’d strike fire for you and shape anything you wanted, but I do not have those skills.”
Daja kisses her, steady and slow and keeping her wildly beating heart between them.
“This is nothing like your mother’s sister could manage.” Daja smiled at her houseguest, swallowing down the last of the tea she had made along with apologies for its unsmoked insipidity. “But thank you for sharing it with me.”
“You’re easy company.” Polyam shifted, gathering up plates and talking over the younger woman’s protests. “And it’s good to see you in a home-place. You were not happy at Gold Ridge.”
Daja snorted. “I was ten-years-old.”
“I learned many disturbing things, that journey, and I think that was the worst.”
“Excuse me?” Daja flashed a grin at Polyam as she tugged crockery from her hands. “You will stay the night, of course? We have room.”
“I am very glad you are no longer ten,” Polyam muttered, sitting down again as Daja started the pump by her sink.
Her hands are running over the staff again. Measuring, Polyam supposes. Life stories are by nature stylised things, an tracing her own life has always been flashes—girl and daughter to horse-breaker; wreck and ruin and wirok; yellow dye (“It’s so...vivid”), caustic on her skin; fire, and the shock of flesh shifting under her, her-own-and-not-her-own; balance re-wrought and the strange, sensuous relief of proper cloth and leather covering her legs again. Ash in her hair and bright, snarling victory in her heart as Chandrisa knelt to a slow-grieving Trangshi girl, and spoke her name. All this, in the space of a few thumb spans of brass.
“You can’t fix them, you know.”
“I know.”
“You do?” the words were strained, her own shattered voice spiking in her ears and making her wince. Wince away from the world that had gone too easy, too soft, to make sense. Daja was looking at her. She held her wrists, the good and the bad with equal weight, thumbs hard on ridge and skin.
"I don’t see anything that needs fixing.”
Madness. Poylam laughed. “Don’t want to bronze this face, lugsha? Not the shoulder?” She spat faults into the silence. “Don’t think you could fashion another breast for me? Wrist. Hip? You gave me a leg, but you haven’t seen—”
“—you’re not frightening me.”
Of all the words in the world, why those?
“Why not?”
Polyam could not read her. Did not understand the tightening of full lips and widening of her eyes, as dark as her own, but deeper set. So strange that such a set woman could be all fluid, now, leaning forward and kissing her, earnest and urgent and patient all at once. Wetness shared, sliding between them, Polyam’s response instinctive and delighted, coaxing a groan from the younger woman deep enough to shiver through both their bodies.
Ease, liquid hot, as Daja’s tongue flicked hers, and her lip, and then up the curve not of her good cheek, flushed and aching, but the bad one, where nerves flickered; guttering lights that sent feeling strange places. Daja’s tongue and lips on this dead spot, and the next, down her throat, and the world was needle sharp and skin soft, as feeling leapt and sparked and she was gasping.
There was everything wrong about Daja’s mouth on these places, but her traces made a ribbon from public-private shame—that knot on her collarbone, the layered, lumpen gash across her throat, marring and unspeakable, spoken to.
“Want,” Daja whispered, low into her skin. She spoke in Tradertalk, a language unused to begging. “All of this, I want. And to forget none of it afterwards.”
“Are you sure you want me to touch this?”
Polyam laughs. She cannot help it.
Daja bites her lip, shakes her head, braids swinging. “They’ll all see.”
“That’s part of the point.” Her words are crow harsh and crow confident, and she covers Daja’s hand with her own. The gesture is long theirs, now. “You’ve taught me a lot about being sure.”
It could have been either of them.
The tea—new tea, stolen with gleeful laughter—was lukewarm, its smoke scent long faded to a tease of the air around them while they talked. And they had talked, with hands and voice, Polyam catching Daja’s wrist as she interrupted Narmonese adventures, Daja laughing and tugging free, only to twist her hand and meet the other woman’s palm to palm, and their fingers slowly falling against and through each other, interlaced. An eyebrow raise. A flush. The language shifting entirely into sight and touch, and a kiss that came from both of them.
Of course they knocked the glasses.
When it spilled, pooling around their elbows as they leant into each other over Daja’s low table, it was the clatter and shock that had them apart, Daja rising and cleaning before the older Trader had a chance to muffle all her curses and haul herself to her feet.
“Let me.”
“No, don’t be stupid. It was my—”
“—Polyam.”
“Daja.”
Daja let a cloth fall, watching tea soak into the dense, yellow weave. A cleansing colour, after all these years. She sat. “I didn’t think you were nisamohi,” she said, very quiet.
“You didn’t—?” Words cut off with effort Polyam had not known she possessed. You didn’t look at me and assume? Unworthy thoughts, better unshared. Looking at the slow sparks of joy in the younger woman’s face, there was suddenly no need or time for shame. She blushed. Unfamiliar heat. “You didn’t.”
“I did not.” Daja reached forward, touched Polyam’s cheek. Her lip.
“I am glad you corrected me.”
Uncertainties and old shames could not withstand such a smile.
(Sure. Always sure).
“Listen to me.”
Easy, too easy, to think of flame. A flare from a banked fire, surprise from steady depths, leaving blackness to crowd in. Heat on her back. Her hip. Good side and bad. Tangled in her hair, gentle-tight with force to arch her neck, every kiss echoing her words, slaking argument with sweat.
“You haven’t said—”
A laugh, slightly ragged around the edges. “Not my words.”
Slickness. The tip of her tongue against her throat—the curve and hollow there, the pulse. A swipe across sound and ruined skin. Daja’s hands. Polyam is almost used to them now, used to their size; the square nails cut short. She is used to the patterns and the weights in her touch, and the way her own flesh tenses or gives under each weight in a new way. She has been made supple, made shivering. Polyam is used to those fingers in her mouth. The taste of herself. Easy to give into all that. Almost easy to feel the beauty her lover claims and to forget a far-flung date has become tomorrow.
She closes her eyes. She breathes, and the spiralling, spiking, shiver-supple noise of her pleasure comes out with it, even as she is aware of her abandonment, and so is never truly lost. Polyam knows what she is meant to listen to, and Daja smiles into her skin.
She is still very, very young.
Daja smiles, then. Her free hand moves over Polyam’s cheek, reading it as easily as she did the wires. “I don’t know why,” she says, a little rough despite her touch, “I’ve always fallen for madmen, or women who want to put mountains between themselves and me.”
“I don’t want—“ warm fingers against her lips.
“—you have to.”
The urge to bite is strong. A distraction. An instinctive response, years old, against the word, ‘have’. Obligation is entwined through her life, and has always tasted strange in her mouth. “Can you fit all of it?” she asks. “Every bit. The fights, too. The night you told me about that kaq who burnt your heart in all those houses? The stories you shared? That week I dragged you back to Gold Ridge? Trisana’s face when she realised...” She swallows. is kissed, her words half lost.
“Us, now, like this?”
“Everything has account.” Daja’s eyes are too bright, and Polyam’s own face aches, her eye heavy as the younger woman’s face blurs before her.
“Then Bookkeeper note that I love you, in these words and your work.”
Daja nods, once, and then turns to her forge, staff in hand.