an itinerary of small devotions, bitti ෆ lingsha
DAWN ; the smoothing rain patters against the lattice windows and you are still mostly dreaming. lingsha sits up beside you and draws your hair from where it has tangled against your neck, smoothing the full dark length of it between her fingers. the braid you slept in has loosened overnight, which she refrains from fixing. only touches it, traces the shape of it down the knobs of your spine like reading something written there. a kiss placed at your temple, then another just behind your ear where the skin is thin and honest. she whispers something about your birthday that is too soft to hear, and perhaps that is the point.
— you smell like sleep—sugared almonds, white musk—and linseed oil, she will tell you later, laughing. the finest perfume on the luofu.
MORNING, EARLY ; the tending lingsha has made congee. plain, soft and salted, with pickled greens and a slow-cooked egg split open on the top like a golden eye. she sets it before you with both hands, and her rings catch the lamp-light. there are sliced xianzhou pears beside it, because she says you can never eat too much fruit, and a teapot of something warm and fragrant she has blended herself. when you ask what is in it, she says: things that are good for artists who do not sleep enough.
MID-MORNING ; the occupation it is your birthday, and you have chosen to spend it at the low table by the window, cross-legged on a cushion, because the rain makes the light arrive silver and even, and you have been waiting for this light for a week to paint under. your supplies are spread around you in the organised chaos she has learned not to disturb. pigment dishes, oil-stained rags, the brushes you keep in a clay jar you bought at market for cheap. the turpentine opens its sharp green throat into the room and the rain falls on the commission's tiered rooftops and makes the eaves sing.
you don’t notice your woman behind you. she stands in the doorway for a long, long time, simply watching you. admiring. she can smell the work before she sees it: the vegetal sweetness of your medium and beneath it, the faint wet-stone scent of rain through the cracked window. you are humming something. your braid swings gently as you lean forward. the blades of your shoulder pulse as you place your strokes. the light catches on your skin and hair...
and lingsha wonders (she will think this every time, with the same bewildering specificity) how it’s possible to be so devastating while doing something so ordinary.
NOON, OR CLOSE TO IT ; the interruption she comes to sit behind you on the cushion, fitting her knees on either side of yours and wraps her arms around your waist so gently you almost do not notice, until you jolt, and she’s cooing in your ear—it’s only me, shh. her chin finds its place on your shoulder and you feel her breath stir the fine hairs at your neck. she looks at what you have made, and does not say it's beautiful, because she knows you would deflect it. instead she says: tell me about this colour here, pointing to a shade you mixed yourself, and so you do, and her arms tighten slightly as you speak.
her lips land on the hibiscus at the top of your spine. a kiss pressed into the ink of it, deliberate and soft and over and over again. you keep painting, trying to keep the quiver of your hand unnoticed by her. (a failed attempt, for she only smiles into your skin and kisses you harder.)
— even after all this time, you are still just as nervous as the first.
AFTERNOON, THE SLOW HOURS ; the lap, the rain the rain intensifies and the room goes silvered. lingsha sits on the daybed and places your head in her lap. relieves you of your burdens, drawing them out with her fingers on your cheek—tracing idle, absent spirals like the ones alchemists draw in the margins of their notes. she hums something without a melody, a low vibration you feel more than hear, travelling from her body into yours through the bones of your skull. you are aware that she is reading you, her diagnostic touch memorising the tension you carry in your face, the places where you clench without knowing. she smooths each spot and says nothing. this is how she heals the things she cannot name.
EVENTIDE ; the birthday dinner by both of your hands. steamed bass with ginger and spring onion, a broth that smells like the mountains of another planet, rice cooked so perfectly it is an argument in favour of patience as a virtue. there is a single lit candle. no need for grand gestures here. lingsha pours you tea and you’re reminded in this moment that the quiet way she fills your cup exactly to the place she knows you like it, the way she has remembered which dishes remind you of somewhere you have never been but carry in your blood is the whole of it.
she gifts you a small parcel wrapped in indigo cloth: a new set of pigments, ground by hand at a shop she had to take three starskiffs to reach. she does not tell you this.
NIGHT ; the fragrance she lights incense in the bedroom, something she blended for you alone, a formulation she has given no name and written in no ledger.
you asked once what was in it, and so she listed off the ingredients, and then added and one thing i will not tell you, because a healer must keep some secrets, and also because it would ruin the mystique. the smoke unspools in the dark and you lean against her, nuzzle your nose affectionately against the pointy tip of her ear, and breathe, and the scent enters you gently. a lullaby with no words. warm and clean and a little sweet, with something deeper underneath it, something that you can only quite describe as home, which is only another word for her.
LATE ; the confession you feel her fingers in your hair again. she is re-braiding it loosely for the night now. when she finishes, she holds the end of the braids for a moment, holding a thought before releasing it. she whispers your name into the dark—just your name, serin. once again, with a kiss to your nape, serin.
you press your back into her warmth, and the rain goes on.
tomorrow there will be the commission, the market, the fanny pack, the smoke bombs, the running. tomorrow you will tuck contraband into the hollow of your bodysuit and smile like a girl who has never done a dishonest thing in her life. but that is tomorrow's woman. tonight's woman is here, braided and clean and held close by the cauldron master tracing the shape of a hibiscus on her back from memory. and, of course, the bed is warm on both sides.
— @bladieplease BITTIIIIIIIIIIII!!! 💝💘💕💓💗💖 happy (belated;; -w- urk.) birthday to my sweet friend... i know i wished you yesterday but here is me saying it loud and proud because i want everyone to know how i adore you so!!!! i hope this next turn around the sun will be peaceful and fruitful and everything you wish for it to be!! you deserve it so much for being a cute, kind, special soul on this GODDDD forsaken app!! you never fail to make us smile and laugh and feel important... when you send in asks or lil messages and express your curiosity about things!!! when you share with us lil life deets!! it fills me with such a warm fuzzy feeling... admittedly i feel shy at times interacting with you because i just think you are so. so cool :’) all your art and seeing you try new things over the past few handful of months we’ve gotten to know each other!! from collaborating on that cnc blade piece all that time ago up until neow... i am filled with so much heart and awe for you mybitti :3 WE (I) LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! enjoy this next year doing everything you’ve ever desired of doing :3 have some cake!! on me!! 🍰💘⭐️🧸
don’t have much commentary to add for this piece i think hmhmm... well, i drew some inspiration from this post of yours & this one of mine!!! and i hope we get to see more serin content this year (my selfish wish) :D very intrigued by her general disposition and how it ties into the nature of her work + lingsha (and blade?!) interactions... heh heh...