“ Hey -” she says, voice quieter than she could remember it being, RAW with disuse. How long has it been, since she last bothered to speak? They didn’t need to, not in the classic sense, their minds used to each other from a time before the long endless black that is their world now.
It is always strange to see him, a little shock she may never become use to. He is reading but he should be wearing glasses shouldn’t he? Of course he doesn’t need them now, his body younger than hers, taller, stronger, filled with immortality to bursting from Lestat. His fingers don’t tremor when he lifts his tea, so gracefully with that old British familiarity - even as her mind imprints every moment it should slightly shake against the saucer. He doesn’t look up from the book, doesn’t need to, turning the pages with a soft fondness. Is it Faust again?
She doesn’t care to look at the binding, and even if she could pull from his mind what it was ( which she could not, despite her power his mind was a locked box with no key ), she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to know. Jesse, who has to know everything about everything, who could not tolerate secrets, DIDN’T CARE.
The red haired girl ( who is a woman, older than him, it still takes her by surprise every time, how could she be older than those old eyes ) moves to his side and sits close enough on the pristine white of the couch their shoulders brush in this beautiful little townhouse that is HIS. She doesn’t have things anymore, even the room he so graciously let her remain in is full of the imprint of David, the ex-Commander General of the TALAMASCA. Did she ever keep things of her own? Isn’t every place she ever stayed owned by some one else, some other vampire, or Maharet, or the Talamasca, and her? The happy little WANDERER with so little weight it is a miracle she didn’t float.
She leans closer, the cushion of curls so like as her Mother, her MAKER between them as she stares at the perfect art on the far wall, with it’s perfect mantle, with perfect knickknacks so carefully curated like his entire home is. If he only he could be the old fatherly figure again, or perhaps if she could only be younger, she would have crawled into his lap like a child would. Instead she allows this poor facsimile of intimacy.
“ It’s so QUIET.” She can hear the edges in her own voice, raw, and jarred like the edges of a WOUND. Red swims in her vision, but she forces it to not spill, to not run down her cheeks in it’s translucent pinky tones. Between Armand and Lestat she has had quite enough of tears for several more decades. Her hand slips across the hand on the bind of the book, like a glove but one that’s too small. His hands weren’t so big when he gave her tea back in the Motherhouse was it? It is like there is two people within him at all times, the old man imposed atop the younger. How long has it been? Which one is REAL anymore?
“ Talk to me about something, anything, it’s too quiet, David.” Her hand stiffens against him before she forces it to relax, “ PLEASE.”
|| @bodythieved / david ||
He knows she is here. He knows, without looking, and his eyes absorb words he does not read. David has ever been the adventurer at heart; ever the one to seek answers to questions most would not think to ask. He has seen his mysteries, he has born witness to ghosts and faced them without fear. But the one who haunts this room unsettles him most of all.
The white flesh of her skin turns pearlescent in the half-light; he has long since forgone the mortal dependence on illumination as he takes to his Kierkegaard or Zhu Xi or Proust. She moves like a corpse through turgid water, impossibly light upon the old boards, impossibly light as the weight of her indents only the gentlest curves in his perfect ivory settee. She might not have been here at all. And there was nothing, now, which seemed ALIVE in Jesse Reeves.
He was still a dying man when she breathed her last. He knows of the first great gathering in the Sonoma Compound mainly through that penned narrative, the first true chronicle of them all. The first assembly of the Coven of the Articulate. He cannot know. He was not there. But he has since glimpsed moments through the eyes of the ancients. Mere mortal heartbeats of time, witnessed through dark tunnels of millennial minds, all those who acquiesced to share with him the memories of the primitive tapestry in the hall, the shadows of the ancient redwood grove beyond the bank of modern glass. And above all else, Jesse. How like Maharet she was, pink seashell lips softened by the veil of tumbling red. How young; but she was a WOMAN, really. Older, still than even her great Mother had been when Mekare took her twin into the darkness.
A woman, yes, and so different even in the terror of that time than the in the shadow, now, of her grief. David, too, mourns them. But he will not know Jesse’s suffering. He will not pry into the eggshell fragility of her mind. He couldn’t possibly.
( But he worries. As he always has. )
He does not tremble as her hand, cool, so surprisingly delicate ( - has she always had such fine bones? she had always seemed so solid, but for those fragrant nights in the old French Quarter, chased by a terror of the Girl who was Not ) brushes across his own. She will find it warm, he knows, and soft to the touch despite the vivacity of the Brat Prince’s blood in him. He keeps himself well-fed, his skin smooth and flushed and brown beneath hers. The difference is more pronounced than it ever was. But his care has never changed.
“Hello, Jessica,” a gentle murmur, rolling in a rich and resonant timbre, clipped only by the same moderate cadence and measured accent he always had. His smile, teeth flashing so white in the semidarkness, is tender.
How young he looks, not even quite a man in his prime. But his hand slides free to close around hers, and the pages fan, collapsed, on his lap. He reaches with his open arm to thumb the curve of her cheek, twists to press a velvet kiss upon her brow. Black curls swim before his vision. He leans back. The grip of his hand is firm, sure. It is a crutch for him, a comfort, as much as he hopes it might be for her. And above anything else, he fears being weak before her. He will not be sickened, will not be made frail by loss.
“ ‘ The bramble sent to the pomegranate tree saying, ‘What good is the multitude of thy thorns to him that toucheth thy fruit?’ The pomegranate tree answered and said to the bramble, 'Thou art all thorns to him that toucheth thee.’ ”
He falls quiet, still as stone but for the slow pulse of his preternatural, stolen heart. A twitch pulls the creases of his lips.
“ How long has it been since we last talked of the Wisdom literature? Judges, I believe. Like so much of that ennobled text, the redactors pulled from the fables and stories of the world they knew. Exegesis always led me to wonder. So much genuine awe for a nonbeliever, really. ” His eyes turn down on her, bright and kind and alert as they had ever been. “ Was it known they recited the words of Ahiqar in their grand new scrolls? Or was it merely the mysticism of their time - so ingrained in human consciousness there was no true beginning of the Wisdom to them?”
His smile dims, but does not fade. It is regretfully acknowledging. “I never really knew.”
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