Yahweh's Story Corner

[CallmeYahweh]

Hey all!

 

So, I thought I'd contribute something to the site other than randomly butting into conversations in threads and on skype. I can't draw, I can't sing, or sew, or grow flowers. But I love stories. And I love to write. So I thought I'd post some short stuff up here for ya'll to see. (Because I like you. And you. And you. You, not so much though. Okay, okay, even you.)

 

It isn't all FF14 related (in fact most of it isn't.) but there will be some stories of Rendal, and why he has a decidedly hyurian name eventually.

 

Feel free to comment, critique, etc. I don't mind, and in fact, I would very much like it. Other than that, enjoy!

 

 

 

My Columbina

 

It is late November and the mists are swirling down through the bronze-and-fire trees. The air hangs thick with the sharp bite of a quickly approaching winter.

 

The Artist, my Artist has his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his too large, too warm blue-grey coat. His breath comes out in hot, steaming huffs and puffs. He does not know that I am watching him.

 

He is running, looking for inspiration for this work. That is why I am here, why I have been drawn to him. He stops to examine a dead leaf, drawing his oh-so-beautiful hands out to turn the leaf among his fingers. I dance; a quick tussle of a jig, an elegant pirouette to a waltz. He does not see me as I press myself up against the flat of his back.

 

I whisper hotly into his ear: “Start with the breasts, the curvature of them, and then the hips. Their ample, wonderful swell, the dip of the waist. Start with what you want, what you need.”

 

He shivers and turns around, dropping the leaf. I laugh and toss my gold-spun hair in the wind.

 

I watch him, gliding from leaf to leaf, tree to tree as he walks home to his old gray apartment. Before he turns the lock and goes inside, he looks at the tree I lounge in. I feel a heat within me.

 

Inside I watch him set up the canvas. I touch his fingers as he selects paints. They hover over a bottle of purple before dashing the color onto the palette.

 

“Start with the breasts,” I remind him, breathing my fire into his heart. He puts on music.

 

I flit from window sill to doorframe, admiring myself in the mirror.

 

I hear him, my Artist, sing along with the radio. The music, the sounds of the notes arch my back, curve my feet. I can feel it in me; light and dance and song and joy.

 

He begins to paint, the brush strokes on the white, blank canvas, tender, gentle; as they should be when one begins to caress a new lover. He has taken my advice; I feel the heat, the passion, the longing as he paints.

 

“That’s it,” I whisper. “Follow that, pursue that feeling. Let me hear your body sing.”

 

His hands, those wonderful, strong hands ache over which color to choose. I flute my fingers along them, brushing tip of his to tip of mine.

 

“Yellow,” I tell them. “Then Orange.”

 

His hand wavers, for an instant and I can feel the tension. He waits just long enough to agonize me. Do it, I whisper, I gasp. Do it. Yellow, then Orange.

 

He selects green.

 

The first stroke is torture. The second, murder. The Venus, warm and comforting, womanly, earthy; her legs long and curving, her breasts bare and ample. The rise and fall of her hips, like great oceans. But now: he uses green to poison, purple and blue to bruise. His colors make a miasma out of her radiance. I scream.

 

“No! Fool! Imbecile! Damned!”

 

I scream into his ear. Pierce the drum, leave him without music. Break the fine, slender fingers, no more creation. Shatter the soul, leave him barren.

 

Nothing. I rage, stalking the canvas, tearing it with claws and teeth. Nothing. The Venus, broken and bloody, haunts my eyes.

 

“Monster! Devil! Faust!”

 

The curses do nothing.

 

The Artist, my Artist, once beautiful and open; now a fiend, devil, traitor. He does not hear me.

 

I take it away. My gift is mine to give; mine to take away.

 

His hand shakes. He screams, looking through me. My form is hidden from his eyes.

 

His strokes are fewer and farther between. His colors wrong. The choices he made come to light. He throws the brush down. It lands wetly at my feet, the paints staining my toes in garish, unchosen colors.

 

“Goddamn,” he says. “I can’t do this. I just can’t. This isn’t right. This isn’t what I saw in my head.”

 

I stand, in front of him, arms crossed in triumph. Perhaps he will listen to me next time. If he begs, I shall, perhaps, grant him a measure of my gift to get started again.

 

He turns the music off. I feel a part of my light fade. He takes the easel apart, washes his paints down the cold, gray sink. Tears, hot and wet and perfect stream down my cheeks.

 

“Oh, no.” I say. “What are you doing?”

 

He cannot hear me.

 

I flit to his side. He mourns; the sadness in his beautiful, narrow face makes me weep again.

 

“Oh no.” I whisper. “Don’t give up.”

 

He leaves the small kitchen and goes to his room. He reaches into his drawer. My Artist, my dear, poor Artist holds a bag in his hands. They look awkward and clumsy now as they unzip the top, spilling white powder onto the floor.

 

I am still crying. “No, no, no. Don’t stop.” He finds the spoon, burnt and black. The chemical odor drives me into another room.

 

I cannot watch.

 

I spill out the window. The trees whistle my name, the wind laughs around my legs, against them, between them. But I do not care.

 

I will return later. After the gray, swollen madness has left him. He rages without music, without dance.

 

When I return, he is in bed, asleep. A young woman is nestled next to him. There is a glow about them, peacefulness to the room. I feel a delicious pang of envy shoot through me.

 

I move the covers hiding the woman. She is naked; thin and dark.

 

I kiss her upon the lips and she wakes. I run my hands down her waist, her hips, her legs, her ankles. She puts on her underwear and walks into the kitchen. The soiled Venus is still on the floor. I cannot look at it for long. She picks it up, holding it gingerly, tenderly, and places it on the table.

 

“Yes,” I tell her. “Yes. Show him.”

 

She makes coffee and breakfast for him when she wakes. They talk about the painting. She tells him that is beautiful.

 

“But it’s not finished, is it?” She asks.

 

“No, it's not. I don’t like it much. It’s not what I wanted at all.”

 

I spin, dance. Sing. “Tell him. Tell him. Give him the gift again.” I whisper to the girl, holding her by the waist. “Tell him!”

 

“It’s beautiful. I think you should finish it.”

 

“Really?” He laughs. He does not believe her.

 

“Finish it, please.” Her and I are one for a single, divine moment. The music comes back, flooding my body from feet to head.

 

“I’ll help, if you like.”

 

He smiles. “Maybe.”

 

I dance to him, my Artist. Run my hands though his hair, touch his hands to mine.

 

The girl grabs a paintbrush.

 

“I’ll help. We could do it together.”

 

“No,” he says. “No. I need to do this alone.”

 

She looks hurt and confused. A smile plays on my lips. He is mine, she has served her purpose. The rest of the job is mine alone to do; I need no help.

 

“You’ll see.” He tells her.

 

Later, after she is gone and the sun has come back out, he turns the music on, gets his paints out. I guide him to the most suitable pink for my skin tone. This time, we will get it right. My gift is his again.

 

He ignores me and gets a new canvas. The Venus is forgotten.

 

“What?” I screech. “What are you doing?”

 

I watch him start anew. He mixes, blues and dark colors, a little orange. He makes a brown, golden and beautiful. I stand on my tip-toes and try to kiss him.

 

Nothing.

 

“Traitor! Liar! Trumpet!” I am not sure who it is I yell at.

 

He begins to paint. It is not me on his mind. It is her; the thin, rakeish woman. Each stroke is killing. My light fades, my music dies.

 

I curl up on the window sill and sigh, musically.

 

He whistles as he paints; the colors he uses are beautiful, the strokes deft.

 

I am still there when he presents it to her. They touch. She stands on her tip-toes, like me, and kisses him.

 

“It’s wonderful,” she says, looking at herself upon the canvas. She means it.

 

“It is supposed to be me.” I say to the trees, to the wind.

 

“What inspired you to make this? Was it some other woman?” She asks him, playfully.

 

I hate her.

 

The Artist laughs and holds her close. “I guess you’re just my muse.”

 

Something inside me fades forever. I am not dead, we cannot die. I go to stand, to leave, but crash instead, upon the floor. My legs are shaky, and awkward, too long, not strong enough. My thighs are thick and soft. My arms put me off balance. My breasts are large and drooping. My neck, gawkish. I struggle to the window and stare at my reflection:

 

I am transformed. Useless.

 

The tears that fall from my face are not perfect, pretty tears. They are small, hard, red-eyed things.

 

They do not stop falling.

 

The end.

---

 

 

 

And Her Words Were Static

 

She was mid-drink when he did it. A flick, a twist, like clockwork, gears sliding and locking into place. A moment of pressure, then, resistance, pressing against a bubble, and he was in.

 

Memories rose around him, a sea of moments, lived in every aching detail. He was at once, her, at 16, lying to her father, traces of love still fresh on her stockings, and again, at 30 when she stood over the old man’s casket, his face beaten and stained by time, and she spat. It landed below her father’s left eye and pooled there. He felt the slow realization that she wanted nothing more than to say she was sorry, and that she loved him, but didn’t know how. He knew of her secret hatred for her job and her mistrust of Megan, the dark skinned tenant two floors below her.

 

Slowly, her voice brought him back enough to feel her hand on his leg.

 

“What?” He asked her.

 

“I said, do you want to go back to my place?” An olive, skewered to her toothpick, touched her lips, her teeth slowly pulling it into the darkness of her mouth. When it disappeared, she licked her lips.

 

“Yes,” he replied, dropping a clean twenty on the counter and grabbing her hand.

 

She giggled, and continued to do so as she stumbled out of the bar, and onto the sidewalk. She took a step forward, and almost fell, the thin heel that supported her shoe snapping.

 

“Oops,” she mouthed.

 

He helped her regain her balance and walked slower to his car. Rain rolled in small droplets down her bare arms and she shivered. He knew it was because of the time she and her sister had camped out in the woods beyond the small town she grew up in, and both, trailing idiot teen lovers, to the beach, had danced naked in the rain. She couldn’t remember if she had gotten laid that night. But he did.

 

He opened the door for her before he went to the driver’s side and slid in. Immediately he turned the heater on.

 

“Shit. I forgot my coat.”

 

She was busy eyeing the leather interior; sliding her long red nails down her seat. “What?” A pause and silence. He looked at her. She looked at the stick shift, and then, “Hey, this is a nice car. You own this? You’re not renting it from somewhere to impress me, right?”

 

He ignored the question. “Where to do you live?”

 

She pointed. “Drive straight until you come to 7th, then turn right. My apartment building is on the left-hand side.”

 

He didn’t need to ask, not really. He knew exactly which building it was. Had seen her, a fresh college graduate, unload boxes into her room. He could feel the bristles of the carpet on his bare flesh.

 

Inside her apartment, they fumbled together, their bodies tangled. She wriggled out of her dress, tugged on his pants, and grunted when she discovered his belt.

 

A brush of lips to skin and they tumbled onto the bed.

 

She slid on top of him, arching her back. Her black bra partially unhooked, one strap hanging off her shoulder.

 

“Do you want me to go down on you?” She asked.

 

He shrugged, she slid lower. One of her nails scratched his skin.

 

In the darkness, he tried again.

 

He felt himself dig into her; pushed his fingers against her mind and felt it rise against him, felt it crescent darkly under his fingernails. Again things clicked and she was laid bare before him. A thousand lies, a thousand lives, crashed into him. They pulled at him and he felt their guilt, their triumph, anger and sadness. He felt his body reel, his hands going to his head.

 

He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard himself scream.

 

She pushed him off the bed. “Christ! Get out!” she shouted. “Jesus! What is wrong with you?”

 

He stumbled out of the room. She held a white sheet against herself.

 

He stumbled in the darkness. Memories assaulted him endlessly. He was, at once, falling down a flight of stairs at age 12, and learning to stand on a surfboard at fourteen, being yelled at, called incompetent by a former lover, tears staining his face, at twenty-four. His body fell against a wall. He retched, his stomach pushing everything out of him. Somewhere, distantly, he knew his vision was dimming at the edges. Sound would soon collapse, becoming nothing more than shrieks. He welcomed it. It would be a relief. If he was lucky, he would black out soon.

 

He stumbled, fell against a table. Something crashed. Glass splintered around his feet, catching the sodium yellow of a street lamp through a window and laying the light like a spiderweb of light at his feet.

 

A couch met him as he fell.

 

Everything was dark.

 

When he awoke, it was not quite morning. The sky bruised prettily out the window. Pain needled through his head and something crusty stuck to his face when he peeled it from the cushion. He ran his hand over his face and wiped what he could onto the floor.

 

For the first time, he noticed the television. The woman on it frowned as she picked at the acoustic guitar nestled on her lap. Her hair was short. A tattoo of tribal design ran across one of her cheeks. Green block letters read, in the bottom corner of the screen: MUTE.

 

He watched her, filth crusted to his face.

 

He pushed, reaching out to her, to taste her memories like he had a thousand times before. He was met with nothing.

 

His eyes sagged and felt heavy. He laid his head down, and in the dim glow of the television, he fell asleep.

---

 

 

 

 

Slowly, He Tumbles

 

The moon hung bloated and green the night she danced for the Devil, her footfalls traced in fire. Sparks, like lapping waves rose up and splashed against her bare legs, as against the cold stone wall, her shadow moved in a suicidal rhythm.

 

The Devil laughed. She was not the best he had seen. Like ice, like death, he reached his hand out and cupped her chin. She quivered in his grasp, her mouth opening and closing silently, her breath ragged. Holding her chin, he raised his other hand and struck her hard against the cheek. Her shadow crumpled, spun, toppled backwards, and sank to the floor before getting up and continuing to dance.

 

She checked the wound on her face, using the dance to disguise the motion. A flick of the wrist, a jingle of bells, a twist, and a pirouette; the mark was wide, but it was not deep.

 

The Devil stretched his wings, unfolding them against the walls of the room. A few of the remaining feathers still sticky with crusted blood, fell onto the ground. Behind rheumy eyes, he saw the fire and his mind went to Nero, and his fiddle.

 

A slow smile crept across his cracked lips.

 

A flutter of movement drew him back.

 

The girl had left. He was alone.

 

He thrashed – the chains held him.

 

He roared – his voice failing, coming out little more than a whisper.

 

He wept – his tears did not come.

 

He ached. Oh, how he ached.

 

Shifting in his chair, more brilliant feathers fell to the ground. Even dirty as they were, they caught the last dying flickers of sparks and tried to shine.

 

Without regret, without humor or remorse, with nothing, he began to laugh. It echoed off the walls and came back to him an alien thing; a sound not made by him.

 

The Devil sat chained to this throne and waited. Eventually, he slept. It was fitful and full of mismatched dreams: snakes, apples, sin, dying leaves. The fall.

 

The last dream was of Him. The Devil – no, that was not his name here, -- Lucifer stood proudly, wings spread before Him and smiled as His words filled Lucifer with light, and with life. In his dream, the sound of His words spread from wing-tip to wing-tip and out, past the walls of the Silver City. In his dream, His words were everything.

 

Writhing in his sleep, the Devil muttered and twitched fitfully.

 

Lucifer, alone, beside a stream, watched, as tears, crushed from his eyes, tumbled down his cheeks like diamonds in his reflection. Deep within him he felt something shift and change; something hardened, developed scales, and began to slither.

 

The discordant jingle of bells woke the Devil from his sleep. His back ached. At some point in the night, one of the chains around his ankles had gotten twisted and wrapped around his leg. Thick, dark blood oozed from the wound. Before him, the dancer began to dance. Waves of sparks rose around her as she moved. In the shifting light of the fire, the Devil watched her shadow.

 

It had begun again.