[Thu Feb 4 11:58:44 1999]From: Big, Beautiful, and Blamed no more (lanfear)
[Thu Feb 4 11:58:44 1999]
From: Big, Beautiful, and Blamed no more (lanfear)
Subject: My body is apparently a national treasure.
Must stop fishing for compliments.
Actually, that metaphor is a surprisingly accurate one. I cast my line in and let it trawl in the water as a sport to while away the day. But if I actually catch a compliment I haul it out and sit with it flopping uselessly in my hand, wondering if I ought to throw it back or club it on the head.
Maybe I ought to give up the whole sport?
[Fri Mar 12 15:29:58 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: A cold wind blows through from the past.
From the person I once was, who broke and was reformed.
Why can I not leave well enough alone?
And the answer is carried to me in the creaking of the shifting bedrock, from the fire contained in the heart of the earth, the fire bound in the deepest heart of myself.
Because it is not, has never been, well enough.
[Fri Mar 12 15:32:08 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: Why does it matter?
Because it matters. Because this world demands forgiveness but the law of my world is fury. Because of the choice I have made, and must make again and again until I am ready.
Because I am wolf.
[Mon Mar 22 11:54:10 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: What a nice weekend.
Please allow me to introduce a new pseudonym: Bruce. I know it's not in my usual style, but, well, it makes sense...
Lovely man. Good hot water bottle. Thinks I'd look reet sexy with a pierced belly button.
You know, he has a point.
[Thu Apr 1 10:27:20 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: Present
Five years ago I bought my first bottle of washing up liquid and felt like a 'real grown-up'. That was in some way a coming-of-age ceremony for the modern world, a ceremony of entrance into the drudgery and care of adult life, not celebrated. Past civilizations had it better.
But on that day I was an adult, and believed I saw with adult eyes.
Today, I reach another uncelebrated landmark and step into the true uncharted territory of adulthood.
I've got a solicitor. Now I really feel grown-up.
[Fri Apr 23 10:30:52 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: How can one who feels so much, sometimes feel so little?
This conundrum that I have never managed to solve. My soul sometimes seems made up of fire and water, of passion that I can scarcely support. Killing rage and the unfulfillable craving that passes for love tumble over one another, barely held in check by the veneer of silver that reflects the civilised world around me. Worlds within that I would die for or live for, never sure which, or why the two should ever be different.
Yet sometimes my soul is silent within, a silk screen of shifting mists and low clouds, shades of grey, and the passion is gone so far I wonder if my memories of it were illusions of the mist. There is nothing within me real enough to be touched, and the emotions of those outside me pass through without finding anything to disturb, to stir me to reflection. I have no heart to mourn, or even to be distressed at my inability.
Death did not touch me, though years ago it brushed against those I knew and stooped to take one in its talons. Why could I not even stir myself to care?
[Mon Apr 26 10:04:57 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: Yes, I am fat.
But let me let you into a little secret: I am beautiful.
It's taken me twenty years to realise that the two are not mutually exclusive, and I'm never going to lose sight of that again.
Lying in Bruce's arms, my smooth skin, my yielding flesh, all for him, who has shown me the truth in a way I cannot evade any more. Love me.
[Wed Apr 28 09:34:17 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: There is a world I do not understand.
There is another part of me that is a part of it, and sometimes she stares out of my eyes, hostile and amused and powerful. She frightens me, but more she frightens those who have seen her and known that that which moves my body is not me. And yet I am there, in the back, watching.
And yesterday a friend spoke to me of the same force in her, something terribly powerful, unmistakeably other. And he who had seen both said that the expression of cold amusement on her face was the same as that on mine.
We are afraid, and yet also we embrace our Other, for her power and for her strength. And there is something there that is also connected to Wolf, for when her Other thought of me, and it did, it thought of us as one entity, and I know he is stronger when my Other has control.
Can we both be mad? And yet she and I both have wondered, and thought. Do we imagine what we become, and does she imagine Wolf beside me? Yet would she imagine Wolf turning away from her, bored?
There is a world out there I do not understand. And yet I belong to it.
[Thu Jun 10 15:45:05 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject:
Vargen, oh Vargen.
How could this have happened without me knowing about it? I search for your name to find Catherine, and find your page:
Mikalya's Vargen of Wayreth
Born: August 12th 1990
Died: January 23rd 1999
"A great leader, a gentleman and a friend"
No, it cannot be, I will not have it so. I remember you given two weeks to live, still strong and lively, your gentle head, your amber eyes. Loving life you fought for it, and you won. You won, so how could you be deprived of that victory now, five years later?
I remember you pouncing on me in wolf play, careful not to hurt the fragile human. I remember the feel of your tongue on my ankle when I had twisted it. I remember you fighting Amaroq over me, the 'alpha female'.
There was no creature so gentle, so intelligent, so alive. None that loved that life more. So where are you, great heart, my beloved friend, oh my Varg? How could you have gone?
[Fri Aug 13 09:01:32 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: I allow myself luxuries in dreams I never would in real life.
But the luxuries aren't what you might imagine. No beautiful men, slaves, silks and depravity.
Instead I allow myself the luxuries of pain, tears, breaking down in the arms of my friends. I allow myself rape and murder and shame and unworth and rejection and acceptance.
I fear the glimpses of myself I catch through the distorted mirror of sleep. I fear myself passionate and uncontrolled. What am I that I need such things?
[Mon Sep 20 10:31:03 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: Things I miss. Things I need.
Do you know what I want most, what I long for now? It's pathetically simple. I dream of falling asleep with my head against someone's shoulder, in the embrace of someone, anyone, who is a friend first and foremost, with that deepest of loving bonds.
But I can't ask for that, and I can't make myself do it, sober and wake and knowing. It's an intimacy too great, one that I shrink from, the invasion of the shell, however fragile, that I've always built around myself.
It's an intimacy that I yearn for.
[Thu Sep 23 10:31:11 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: When I was sixteen, I wrote a novel.
At the age of seventeen, I rewrote it. At nineteen, I realised that it was utter rubbish and threw the rewrite away.
Last night, I opened the original copy (my parents had insisted on keeping it) and had a good perusal. As a result of this, I have come to two conclusions.
1. If I spent years diligently rewriting it, it might eventually reach the
point where it was merely bad.
2. All my favourite bits were in the rewrite. Damn.
It goes without saying that I'm still in love with the two main characters.
I'm not entirely certain what lessons to draw from this. But maybe 'never waste two years of your life on a bad fantasy novel' might be a good start.
[Tue Oct 12 11:29:46 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: Same channel, new programme.
I'm sorry, Bruce. But when you finally find that other half of self, how can you not join together?
A fire in the hearth, glowing embers, keeping the cold at bay. A fire in the heart, released from bedrock, burning with a steady flame. A fire in the hearth worth a thousand lightnings.
A fire in the hearth, beginning, that will burn forever.
[Tue Oct 19 09:17:48 1999]
From: Venus of Thingumibob (lanfear)
Subject: Get out of my mind, both of you.
After ten years I know you intimately. Every breath, every thought, was once mine before you took it, and even now I can fathom the complexities of your growth in the light that birthed you.
I needed you once but why are you still here, shifting restlessly beneath my consciousness at this time when you are most unimportant? Reminding me of the pain that begot you and the desperate love that set you free here to wander.
If I write you, will you finally go?
[Fri Oct 29 13:23:38 1999]
From: The Muddy Goddess (lanfear)
Subject: Now, and forever.
I find myself amused at how easily I am pleased. Whatever happened to all those dreams of dashing duellists and androgynous knights in slightly tarnished armour?
I woke up.
[Mon Nov 8 10:05:04 1999]
From: Moonlight carved out of Steel (lanfear)
Subject: Oh, hell.
Last night was the traditional RPGSoc fireworks party, as usual set off by Fenris at a fifth of the recommended safety distance.
It went wrong.
One of the cakes blew out its side, tipped over and fired into the crowd. There was nowhere to run.
I turned as the confusion started, scrabbling away with everyone else, trying to press among the other bodies by the house, seeking a human shield. Impact. Pain. I screamed. Amidst the cries of fear there were other screams of pain. Bright explosions in the crowd ahead of me and we scattered. I was still at the front, in the way. Another sting. Sobs of fear. Nowhere to run. They made a space for me by the garden wall. I cowered with their arms around me as the last shots went elsewhere.
We staggered indoors. I stood, shivering, inside the door, looking for Fenris, wondering who had been hurt, stinging from two impacts.
"I'm all right," I told the friend who asked. "I'm all right." Then I looked down, saw the ragged hole burned in my trousers and the blood-spotted, sooty, skin beneath.
There were three of us they made see the paramedics when they arrived. My shin had been burned by the explosion that ripped my trousers, and tiny pinpricks of blood broke the surface, though what caused them I do not know. Someone had a bloody bruise to the shoulder from the missile which had rebounded to burn his friend's face. There were others who had been hit. A few bruises, a few burns no worse than sunburn. It was Fenris I was worried about.
I found him still in the garden, in silent shock. I had known he would take it hard.
"You should be worrying about the people who were hurt," he was saying as I walked up.
"We're fine," I told him, putting one arm around him. He didn't respond. He didn't move.
After half an hour, an hour, he recovered his facade enough to drive us home. I would have done so except for the velvet tatters at my feet. I was desperately, desperately afraid he would try to take me to my house. But he turned towards his own home without putting me out. I still don't know whether that was simple habit, or whether he wanted me with him. I knew only that I was desperately, desperately worried about him.
Silence. Tea. After a while, the halting words of self-blame. I answered them as best I could, in voice and touch more than words. We slept.
I woke in the night and remembered. Fear. Pain. Arms around me that had not been Fenris's. Shock I had denied for his sake.
I think he heard the change in my breathing. He certainly saw it in my face. For the first time he reached out to me and I buried my face in his chest. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "What's wrong?"
What could I tell him? That oh, I had needed him, and he had not come to me? The guilt that I had not gone to him the moment the explosions ceased? "Don't know," I told him.
We rode out the night in each other's arms.
I left him reluctantly this morning. "Is Fenris all right?" they ask me, those who were there.
No. No, he's not.
[Tue Nov 9 10:06:24 1999]
From: Moonlight carved out of Steel (lanfear)
Subject: Fenris
"I love you," I whispered to him this morning.
"Even when I fire burning projectiles at you?"
I decided that hitting him probably wasn't the way forward. "Gods yes! You have to try harder than that to get rid of me." Pause. "Did you know I'd been hit?"
"No."
I considered that for a moment. It explained why he hadn't come to me. And it meant he'd had no time to torture himself about that before I'd come to him. "Good."
"I knew you'd been frightened though."
"Like that matters."
"And so had a lot of other people."
I considered that. "If people didn't want to be frightened haunted houses wouldn't do so well."
It was an opening gambit, a lead to what I wanted to say. I knew he'd point out the difference to me.
He did. He'd heard it. Screams of terror, haunting him.
"Fenris, if you did a similar display next year I can promise you you'd get an even larger crowd. And most of it would be the same people. People are like that."
He considered it for a while. "As long as it's hypothetical, because I won't do another one like that."
"I know." We might even want him to, but nobody would ask him, having seen him on Sunday, having read his guilt.
Of course, I'd said it all before. But this time he was listening.
After a while I got up. Heard a sharp intake of breath. Turned to see him staring at me with guilty eyes.
"What?" I asked him, knowing already. A bruise the size of a hand that he'd registered for the first time. His words told me so. I walked back, touched him, kissed him. "It's all right," I told him softly. "Spectacular, isn't it," I added flippantly over my shoulder as I walked away again. Then I grinned at him. "Next time, aim somewhere I can show people?"
[Fri Dec 10 09:54:12 1999]
From: Moonlight carved out of Steel (lanfear)
Subject: He is so beautiful.
And yet he will never believe it, no matter how I tell him, with words and with eyes and with the urgent touch of my hands.
His dark eyes are intense with unbelief, worshipping me with his gaze, drinking in the beauty I have never believed I have, shining in the dim light as his voice, broken with love, whispers that he is not worthy of me.
Oh, my love, how could you not be? Your eyes, your voice, your body, more than I have ever deserved. The self at bedrock that is the twin to mine, layered with the complexities of stubbornness, giving, frivolity, all these that I love.
"You are so beautiful," you whisper, and your voice binds me with threads of the lightest silk, stronger than a chain of thoughts and memories, that wind around my heart and make it whole.
"I would never hurt you," and your eyes are shining in the dark with emotion I can feel through your hot skin. "I would do anything to defend you. I don't know what I'd do without you."
And I know, oh, how well I know, for there is no longer anything for me without you, with the desolate half soul that is all I could have left to me.
"Then I will never leave you," I whisper, knowing it for truth. "Never."
[Wed Dec 15 12:40:45 1999]
From: Moonlight carved out of Steel (lanfear)
Subject: Cleaned out the kitchen.
With the result that I am now wanted by the UN to stand trial for genocide.
Scary things:
