CHAPTER ONE: La Petite Impératrice

Stillborn.

The foal was to be the greatest heroine of all

She lay still, upon the damp hay

Her eyes not to see a glimpse of daylight

Before her light flickered out

The innocence of her skin

The short hair

The knobby knees

And the anguished heart of a ghosthorse

To be broken

After the precious drink the night bleed from its torso like the devil couldn't. Emmanuella swept the empty cave of her mouth with her tongue, hoping for remnants of her last dinner - four days of darkness ago - but could only fetch a couple of droplets of strawberry wine in the rear of her throat. Combat, the ghost said, concealing itself behind her wardrobe in the darkest corner of her stone chamber. It stipulated she fight for more, but there was none to be had. Emmanuella chanted to her cold fright, swathed in the most skeletal of quilts, and the ghost chortled at her. Emmanuella nibbled on the last of the three crackers she allowed herself for breakfast, choking them down on an empty stomach. Silly, silly was it's rebuttal and Emmanuella wished to shed tears up here in the dusty tower that was full with spiders and their houses in the windows that she infrequently went near. The ghost was her isolated companion, a skeleton of the imagination Emmanuella’s childhood brought to her, and in the topmost corner of the mansion she had been transported to six months before. A sniffle was fetched to her nose; it dripped onto her hands, enveloped inside the quilt and pressed to her mouth. Her boxes of matches were too far away to get in touch with; she was in the crook in the room near the laundry shoot, sitting atop the wrench of a furnace that groaned out puffs of warmth when Emmanuella least expected it.

There was no denying the ghost; its mind was all over the place, and nowhere at all. It may perhaps comfort her at night when the old castle rasped and shivered, and she shivered inside of it, or it merely could have hysterics in Emmanuella’s direction, the cold wind from the ghost’s lungs nipping Emmanuella to her toes. Right now the breathless pair glimpsed out the domed windowpane into the panting night. Rain came down to confess its sins to the earth and the brown grass that contacted the edge of the woods. The trees fashioned a brutal barrier to any kind of greenery that was outside. The parents had not lay foot outside the crumbling walls of the villa in five months and thirty-one days. She brushed the tail of the quilt up into her lap in tremendous strength. How strong the furnace was, it held on to the quilt for inspiration that Emmanuella did not have. She did not have it for days now. Four days since her meal and four days since the rain had not let up. She fell hushed and emotionless to the source of her only device of need, and dropped her head into her lap.

She was losing precious dreams this night. The rain on the thick windows reverberated throughout the sizeable tower that was locked from both ends. No one wanted to come in or go out. Emmanuella would mask herself in infinite whispers on nights like these, her chest cold as dry ice, and the floating smoke curling up into her nostrils until she was dead. It would be a nice rotation of events at least. At the very, very least. The gratification would be undreamed of, in particular to the one to imagine it, she decided as the furnace puffed out a breath of hot air and she was able to progress from her spot, more comfortable than if she was smoking a cigarette. Shutting her dry eyes, Emmanuella gave way to a strange aspiration. One of careful consideration and perfect creation. It was a dream only a dreamer could reverie. Maybe just one pack of clove cigarettes. Just one, she pleaded to no one, and no one could take notice of her. The wish - or want, conceivably even need - was a silent moan. Not even an undertone could be heard though, not over the soft footsteps Emmanuella took, the whooshing of the ghost over the sensitive floorboards, and the quivering walls of the castle itself. They all had warmth in mind.

As Emmanuella glided over onto her petite bed, she observed the air above her shift shapes into an ice-cream cone; oh she hadn't had one of those in so long. In years upon years. Her stomach confessed its endless ache to its owner, who was already unkindly aware of it. The ice cream toppled off the cone and she roughly tried to catch it, but the form of the ghost slipped back into it's proper being. She cursed all of the shadows that did not show themselves like this one, and all the foods in the world that she could not ever ever eat again. Obedient as it could be, the ghost hovered above Emmanuella's bed, a heartrending look crossing the white see-through face of the child that used to live where Emmanuella should be actually living, not dwelling. There were so many innumerable opposites in her life that she wished that she could count them all.

The deceased five-year-old child crooked her head to the side, studying Emmanuella with vigilant eyes that would not ever age. Visible to the believers, the light that the child drew inside her torso helped Emmanuella to breathe easier, seeing the shadows dance with the flicker of the child's spirit. The child had believed, and it was now that she was stuck with someone whose heart had broken those months ago. Emmanuella’s soul was beyond mending, worse than a book whose spine was shattered, worse than an obedient puppet who had killed itself. A pair of tears tripped out of the corner of Emmanuella's eyes; they dribbled off the edge of her chin and tainted her worn bedclothes. Her black nightgown sheltered the tips of her toes, and it was buttoned up to her chin. The child soared around the tops of the tower, hiding for moments in the wardrobe and behind the dress form, until ultimately it spoke in softer tones than Emmanuella had ever heard from a child. She closed her eyes, influencing her brain to not remember the orphanage, or anything related as if her memories could be wiped away like a tear by a Kleenex.

"You are a muse." It came out of the child's mouth directly; she knew clearly what she was saying and whom she was saying it to. Years in this house, Emmanuella could not imagine the languages she must have picked up, or chosen to overhear, the stories she must be able to tell... oh god they must be magnificent. "It has a rhythm about you, a picture to explore, I would prefer you seeing this yourself, but as blind as you are, there would be no confession. You are too elaborate for that, electric girl." Emmanuella never felt like herself when she was talked about. It was a dance she did not know the angelic steps to. They had to be angelic to insure the heart of the matter. It was never clear. She lay face down on the bed, her head turned towards the side, breathing erratically. The child knew nothing of her, nothing more than what she observed, which couldn't be much. Emmanuella dared never to be in her room more than the hours after twilight and before sunrise. She would drive herself mad if there was any other way about it. But these rainy days kept her inside, and inside her head. She had been kept here more than because of rainy days, and nonetheless the days ached with her. More tears raced down her ghostly cheeks. The rosiness that was in other's cheeks made Emmanuella want to trade anything she had to look healthy, not only to look it, but to feel it. She didn't like eating, but it was nighttimes as these, where she missed it more than anything possible. More than the feel of scrolls under the pad of her thumb or ink spilling down her legs.

"Vous ne comprenez pas," Emmanuella cried to the ghost, her thin hair sticking to her wet cheeks - white eyelashes adhering to each other until she looked grim. She knew how she felt - it mirrored in the child's face. Furor met with furor. Speaking the child's native tongue took her abruptly aback, and Emmanuella huffed, and turned over.

"Understand! I could tell you the thoughts in your head before you put them together yourself! Do never tell me anything about understanding you mortal!" And there it was, Emmanuella almost burst with a laugh, the word she despised to hear than almost any other. Because she was simply not what the word required – which was to have no magic flowing through your veins. Even as much as Emmanuella hated whom she was up in this tower, with a fading body – she was turning into a chameleon. The child had never seen Emmanuella perform her magic, and that was the way it was in this house where nothing could be controlled. Not her temper, or the weather, or the love that she would express on the walls in ink that she squeezed from plants herself, or on the backs of paper that was sent to her from plentiful places by…by…The sun was rising this new morning. Emmanuella had waited it out, with the ghost as her witness and confession.

“You may…if you wish dear. I say that to you as my voice is breaking because a heart of yours, one I can see that is hanging on to all emotion that is left in the world, the pure and the evil – you have yet to choose which will be yours – but you may confess to me, and I will be the woman you wish, and listen.” The child took her place underneath Emmanuella’s bed, laying still as wind on a dead day. The live one stayed in place, her breathing slowing, but still able to be heard and closed her eyes.

“Forgive me…Mother. But I have sinned.” She paused to think about the starting places. Where did anyone start? With what they had to get off their chest first, and she had so many. This chance had only happened a handful of times before, when the child was either truly entertained by what she was learning, or when Emmanuella would get down until her forehead would touch the dust of the chamber floor – and the child would laugh at her until she could no more – forced to accept Emmanuella’s vacant eyes, but her perfect rhythm of speech entranced the child. As years had not taken her body, there were other personality quirks that had also not been smoothed over. Like her impatience and need to not be left out on anything that went on in Emmanuella’s miniscule world. But there was also her impracticality of not wanting to be the creature to speak first.

“J’ai…been the receiver of a broken heart and killed two deer with my hands for a supper that I was not allowed to have, yet I bent the rules in my favour and ate them all by myself.” The lies were slippery to hold on to and she let them out. They were not under any bad lessons of herself or of anyone else, but the relief on her chest was more than any other words would speak of. Her breathing evened under her steady control and the ghost could hear the moans of the slim mattress and her job was done. Her sad eyes tucked away into the folds of her pillow and the breath in her throat was caught between telling the truth or all the lies she loved. Emmanuella cherished telling lies, her hands would back her up and the whole cycle of making others believe would be complete. Her hands weren’t built for that; they were for a whole lot more.

Reaching under her slip, she pulled a box of matches from the waistband of her underwear, and lit the candle that stood erect on the nightstand beside her - taking it in her hands - she quickly fled back to the furnace as to warm her cold, cold heart. Running her fingers past the flame, through it over and over, Emmanuella gazed down to the courtyard below her window, where light was beginning to cast revelation over the dead trees and charred fence that had been broken since the first day she moved in. Emmanuella descended in to a crouch, blowing out the candle with a splutter of breath. Her freezing bottom touched the floor and she saw a white figure beneath the soaring willow tree, the only tree that still stood – despite all the trepidation that had been put upon it. The boy without a name or face, as he pulled a note from the pocket of his long skinny jeans and placed it inside the knothole the tree carefully had dug inside itself, and as soon as Emmanuella could be sure it was there, the shape was flickering into the trees, the woods and beyond.

She laid a flat palm against the plate glass window, absorbing the cold and the frost that settled down upon her fingertips, dripping down the space flanked by her pointer-fingers and thumbs. And Emmanuella closed her eyes, her nails screeching down the pane until she was outside, in the same position she was when she was just upstairs. She could see herself if she looked close enough, the shell of her body still there, she would have to return quickly, as she stole the paper and closed her eyes, feeling the age of the tree. Then it happened, she was back upstairs. The rain had drizzled to a stop, and Emmanuella sat down upon her bed, a flash of light and she unfolded the stiff paper, her fingertips feeling for spaces where the writer thought he could not possibly write anymore, the tip of his quill pressing down until the paper would complain and the inspiration would strike back.

Closing her eyes as if blind, her fingers crinkled the paper, until the words would soak into her memory. They would scar her fingers, her thin fingers would bleed over and over from the terror Emmanuella brought to them, once and again, over and over from her obsession, a quick motion of love between paper and brain, mechanisms bonding together until she could find the notion behind the piece of poetry without reading the careful lines, or searching for another meaning behind each word. This was who she had been chosen to be in this tower, on this island, desolate, but not alone. The parents could not understand her nor bother to care about her, and she was free to be the one who – before – she was scared to show the world. The earth would still never know of her, but she could be safe enough in her tower, that was never shared, except on the most heart breaking occasion.

The candle was upturned in Emmanuella’s hurried rush to close off her mind, from evil thoughts she hadn’t thought of in months. Three of them. She coughed violently, and Emmanuella Lion Fournier was thrown into a trance. Falling off the bed, she threw up on her side, choking brutally, until her dull brown eyes rolled back into her head and she was still, the memories playing across the insides of her eyelids like a movie on a television screen, and she was the only member in the audience, forced to watch for the amusement of some other.

As the movie started, Emmanuella’s body tried to reject the film – it threw a wild fit until loss was the only gain. Tears streamed down her hollow cheeks until calmly…she saw the face of the boy she had handed her bleeding heart over to months previously. But he had abandoned her, her the leader of the Misère De Minuit cult. The demons in her head kept the movie playing as Lion thrashed about on the floor, her aching back hitting the stonewalls, her hands scratching the shaking bed frame until she emptied her stomach yet again. Lion played victim to the scenes of her first love, the way he spoke to her the most dominant and beautiful words that were in existence. And when he spoke of more – maybe there was a way off this island – she did not pay attention to anything except his pretty face, pretty words, and what the combination did to her hands, her head, her powerless mind. He held her hands in his, and the hands revealed to him the truth of her path until a single day, months ago, Lion woke up and he was gone. The cult had to fish him out of the black lake surrounding the island, as she watched from the window of her tower. Those months ago, and she had not left this room, as it killed her a little to miss the wonders that were outside her window, it murdered her bruised and shrinking heart even more. She was a vain girl, and leaving this castle – as she saw reason naught – would bring apart everything she could not stand. It would bring out the worst in her, so she took the meals sent to her, but stood away from the windows and the earthly world. Her first love had brought the world right into her hands and into this room and his death had taken them right back out. Lion’s heart had not grown back to the mess it was before, it still bled for things Lio could not understand, and that the cult could. They sent her food, and clothes they made themselves, but this was the first time she had received a poem. It would send her over the edge; she could see her lover’s face in her mind, the last slow motion shot before she was released from the trance, and her body relaxed, but she could not fall asleep after all of the memories in her mind.

The poem ripped in her grasp, the ink pouring from the page like the heart of the poem had been cut out brutally, and left for dying. Lion grabbed the shredded papyrus, her hands shaking vehemently, her body twitching with it, the slips of papers falling through the gaps in her fingers. They hit the ground, scattering in all different directions so that they had Lion diving underneath her bed, coming up with handfuls of nothing. She screamed desperately, at the top of her lungs, clawing at her hair, her scalp turning red until she flew away.

Lion hit the ground in the forest with a jarring fall, her spine shuttering at the length of the plunge. She couldn’t understand how there was this change; she had vowed never to come into these woods again. The wet leaves underneath her thin slip of a nightgown, her quilt having been left behind. Moving into a self-protective crouch, she put both of her muddy hands firmly onto the ground, what was left of her fingernails digging into the soft dirt and she focused on her deathly cold room in the tower, paying attention to her wanting to never face the cult ever again, not any day that was near or far away from tomorrow. Her eyes clenched shut like her fingers did into a fist, she was not moving at all, until a pair of strong hands pulled Lio up by her armpits. She curled into herself carefully, this boy who she had saw what could have been minutes earlier – he was still in the same apparel, his soft blonde hair still damp and sticking to his scalp like a wet dog’s fur coat would do – he helped her to her feet. Her feet slid as she tried to run away, bringing her back into the position that the boy had just helped her from.

She mustn’t call him a boy, Lion decided – he was older than she was, which could only be told from appearance and brain activity – they both might as well be five years old. Placing her head into her hands to throw him off, he crouched down beside her and Lion elbowed him in the nose. She could hear a bone crack, whether it be hers or his – and she got to her feet by herself, running as fast as she was possibly able to towards the castle, towards the edge of where brown met green, but she was getting no closer to where she would rather not be, and no farther away then where she could stand it. Tears continued to come down her mud-streaked face.

The blonde boy got to his feet easily, blood was coming out of his nose that he impatiently licked away, and he took Lion by the elbow. She stood up easily, her elbow loud with pain, but he pushed her aside, and strode back into the woods. Lion wobbled on her skinny white legs, bruised with time and lack of consideration, and watched the boy push aside a branch from the infamous willow tree, just wide enough so she caught a glimpse of the pasture on the other side. An ache inside of her throat caught with the breeze and made itself speak out loud in the forest. The mud squished beneath her toes, sliding underneath her heels so that Lion walked a few feet at a time before she could reach out and touch the willow. It was fantastic, the ways that it felt the same, but also she sensed with experience that it was all too full of its appearance – the tree. Surrounding the branch with her hand, she pushed it back and forth until it gained enough momentum to swing on its own. Like a pendulum, it moved so slowly and her eyes gazed beyond it, where she had been before. Where she had told the mass of the cult that she would never go again. They had looked at her with such terror, she knew how lost they must be. It was not her responsibility, Lion held onto the branch harder, it poked her wet skin with sharp needles and brambles until her feelings reached their highest crescendo and Lio was on the other side.

How the cult would see her – how she wished she knew. Their thoughts, it would be a painful experience to hear them and yet let them wander all alone, like she had. They could hate her or embrace her, she stood stiff as a ironing board in front of the small group, her arms limp and all the blood falling out of her face, down towards her toes that tingled with the sense of grass. Wet grass – but the beings before her were from top to bottom dry. There were twenty of them she saw right away, sitting in the grass or lazing in the trees, couples or stand-alones, how she wanted to be nothing to them, the thought of death in her mind, bubbling towards the top. Lion’s angry mind overtopped, the last of the dangerous chemicals she had in her brain mixing and exploding. Her feet twitched, her hands rubbed against the cotton of her slip and no one spoke to her. Their eyes – she saw their wild animal eyes hungry for something from her – something she would not be able to give.

And then the boy – he peered around a thick trunk of one of the many trees – a girl’s hand in his and Lion choked back a tearful gasp. He was an enchanted boy; she felt it through her hands that were burning, scorching beside her sides. His blonde hair drooped over his blue eyes, brighter than dawn. What a giant he was compared to the others, broad shoulders and a frowning mouth. Lion dropped her eyes to the grass stains on her ankles. She couldn’t be brought back how this was turning out to be – just a quick jaunt into the woods and everything would be all right? She didn’t think so, nor did the ones who looked at her mercilessly. There were enough blank faces to scare her right back to the top of the tower. Dropping to her knees, her head was between her knees, her hair splayed across the grass like a confused crown upon her head. And it was how they saw here, all of them. So the full moon – still in the sky – shined down upon the liars, the abused, and the parent-less. Lion cried with her back towards them – the lovers and the ones who would only see dreadful things from their past, not able for forgiveness.

The pasture was not large in size, not small in minds. Dark green grass of colours that would never be seen elsewhere left scratch marks around the ankles of boys and girls of ages from childhood to young adult, and then they were ceased by words being taken out of their throats. Trees of all different ranges in height and size hid humble abodes to people with skin of all the same pale colouring, peachy but practically white. There was nothing to set them apart or bring them together, but all were here, hanging laundry from strings made by them, searching for the next word to give them inspiration for the greatest work of their life or lazing about in the soft grass, soft, as imagination would bring. Or perhaps they would jump from tree to tree, treehouses being reached for from the stretch of dirt and moss and leaves of all colours. There were no limits once you reached the forest, if you could get inside. There was no way to join the cult, no one braved the island off the coast of France from the outside world, lives being brought in by two joining together and the leader, why was the leader picked? Her of some sort of odd being they had decided. It was one single being that breathed the most undreamed of words in orders no one would think of. And it was decided simply and just with the nods of heads that Lion would be the leader. Her imagination could bring this forest alive, they believed – sad, as she could be to tell them otherwise. There was no magic in her mind, nothing she could bring – but no, they knew otherwise and it was how she was dealt with. She didn’t want to think of what a mistake they had made by choosing her. She didn’t want to think of the pain they had brought her, but the joy of the companionship once found, but not forever lost.

Lion scratched the soft area of skin beneath her left palm; the patch of skin had been branded with the mark of Misère De Minuit. She scratched it continuously, beneath her shade of hair. Her fingers ran over and over the raised skin, circles inside circles, and the word she feared itself – Twilight. There was no leaving the cult behind once she had been marked. There was only death, and death there was a lot of here at the island. Any leaving of it would be met with a certain end – one that lurked in the minds of all the members and leaders and even the parents. They were the servants of death – they brought it unto the island, but they were too afraid to take it off – and alas they had failed their mission to deceive. It was awful, the way it had first been described to her underneath the hood of the black bag, something of endless pain and intolerable night. Emma screamed inside of herself, her organs and blood and veins all twisting into something of a rigid knot. She felt the hands upon her back before her mouth opened and she could once more let the cult know how she felt. It was a feeling of bliss – but one she never felt so often as she preferred. How the pain set her apart like she did not wish, it was how they had chosen her, the servants of words and the blackest of nights. Her scratching picked up in pace, until the mark was bleeding from all ends and corners. Tears were mixing with the dark red liquid, thick mercury coloured mess, until one hand was quicker than the others. It covered her self-inflicted wound, called for the others to bring her a tourniquet and then all was done for.

Lifting her head – Lion saw the kind face of the girl she knew well. It was she who had brought the first piece of poetry to Lion, she who captured Lion’s imagination and brought it here, the one who first spoke the words of this place, and finally she who held the boy’s hand the closest. And all of the ways she was more than what Lion would become made her tears increase, and the hand close around the limb harder.

“Nous sommmes ici. Always.” The girl’s dull blue eyes searched Lion’s face for a word or two, but found horror and solitude. Neither Lion nor Caroline could see through each other’s face, their soft skin peered through ratty hair of warring colours. She lifted Lion’s chin with a finger, hand letting blood soak through the thin, spindly fingers until the soft cotton of a bandage took her place, the dark blood immediately finding home amongst the crossed threads and pads of cotton saved for such occasion. Their blood was scared in these lands in the forest, they loved it with a distinguished heart, and a crowd was soon beginning to form around the two girls. Lion lifted her head with a sound like a mew, she couldn’t be sure if the cult missed her, but she knew finally what was missing from the endless days up in the tower with the ghost, but more often with herself and her dangerous mind, dangerous hands.

The boy held himself away, smelling the easiness of the blood with his nose. It was delicious, he and Caroline joked that they were all vampires, the way the sight or far-off smell of kill delighted them all. It was a meal in itself, which meant their rations would live to see another day. The members that were in the forest were starting to drift into the light of the pasture, some of the shiest peering behind trees at their queen. He didn’t know what to say, what to do – he had been their trust when Lio was gone, and now she was back, it was noticed that he was to give it all up. Just as easily as it had been handed to him. There had been no time for poem making, he had to hunt for the children, with minds as great as there ever were – or ever would be.

Leon sniffed with the feeling of hatred towards Lion and she immediately felt it. Her eyes – from all the way across the meadow met his. Her deep brown eyes, the colour of chocolate Leon knew, pieced his with an angry glare. He was taking her position, he assumed, and that she could not stand. He knew she was power hungry deep inside, Caroline would never admit it, but she was his mate, so she slowly minded him. She was his mate, it would have been decided. But the leave had throw off everyone. She had chosen differently, his heart had felt it with a sad break and twist and cry. Looking at his bare feet, there was no way he could meet her daring eyes once more. They terrorized him. He would wake up in a cold sweat at twilight, at midnight again, her deadly eyes, the feel of her warm hands the time he had touched her to brand her with her mark. He had been the one to do it, the one who had brought her into this dangerous living. She could have been free without him, Caroline had no say over anything, he had been the one in charge, the one who the littlest wanted to be, their eyes shown when the looked at him. His father had been the leader and now it was turned over to her. She had plucked it right out of his hands – the bitch, the selfless bitch.

Look at how she held all of their attention, her head on Caroline’s shoulder as she brushed her hair through her fingers, their blonde and brown hair mixing together. They had been such superior friends, how the pain of their being brought him. They couldn’t know, they couldn’t ever know. His fingernails gripped the tree trunk before him, screeching down the trunk until he was squatting on the forest floor, leaves rustling underneath his jeans, his feet. Leon pulled off the tree’s skin with an angry snarl; the tree was becoming bare around the bottom, his hands opened automatically and he scattered away the bark. Sweet Caroline, he watched her bring a smile to the girl’s lips. All of them together, hands touching hands, Lion’s shoulders being caressed until her tears stopped and the smell of her blood became more prominent, his eyes burned with the smell, dripping his own saltwater tears down his cheeks until he was forced farther back into the forest, tearing past strings of drying clothes, until he dropped to his knees before the river, hidden behind trees and beaten pathways that led to places more secret then names and kisses.

His poem. His stupid poem that had taken longer to write than anyone knew. He was out of words. Terrified, he was, and he was out of words. The Misère De Minuit killed people once they were out of words. Like chickens in a slaughterhouse, Leon had said to him. His reflection in the clear water showed his ugly expression worn upon his tattered face. He was not up to standards like his father had been. He couldn’t keep the cult going. It had been months upon months of hunting and looking for the right plants and skinning the trees for paper and fixing quills or using charcoal rocks. There was no time to think about words. It was all he thought about though, there were too many out there, and too many combinations to keep him from straying. And once his poem was finished, he had sent it to her, forgetting of anything, hoping she would help him, but all instead he received was a frozen girl, terrified to the limb, and he was supposed to watch as she found someone again and he would be slowly shoved into the background, his father would be forgotten, he would be forgotten.

Leon shoved his hands into the icy pond, wondering about how she could come back now, after control was lost, and be received as she was. Caroline would be the first, she was such a dense girl to bring Lion back. They could survive without her; they didn’t NEED her for anything. His eyebrows crushed together on the bridge of his nose, blonde hair flying askew as he punched the water repeatedly. Back he pulled in fish, splash into the river’s mouth. Droplets of water ascended the air into his hair until he was spent. His chest moving fast, he slapped his thighs with his hands, shoving away from his sitting position. Spinning around, he was going to head back to his tent when Lion appeared. Her hands were in front of her, eyes closed, and before Leon had a chance to get away from her – flee, anything – she was upon him.

“Those words did not sound like yours, and if I were to know no better, I’d say you were dried up. Like a well.” She spoke clearly, her voice the scratchy sound of quill to paper, and he pulled his hands into fists. She did not know a thing about him, and he did not her. There was judging going on, they both could see it, but neither of them choose to admit to it. She had been the one to help him write his first poem, he the one to first bring her back now; he saw it in her face. It was the poem; it was him…his eyes flashed with brilliant anger.

“’Tis not you, please have no sense in flattering yourself. The fit…I had, the ghost and the…please don’t think you have any say in the matter. It’s done, and I’ve come to give you this.” Her hands were so small and swollen from the fights they had given, the answers they battled to figure out. They covered her offering until he reached out a hand to grab it from her. Lion’s hands parted and she dropped a box of matches into his hands. They were her last; from the lonesome way she looked at them. His need for fire was greater than hers, he could say he found them in the forest; the cult would surround him in gratitude. He could picture it already, and his grey eyes gave him away to her. She smiled, a taunting one, a one that he would receive with a smirk or a wink that would make him blow up. Caroline...

“I’m not finished in any way you may think. Those words belong to me solitary, and if you don’t care to see it, I don’t care to hear your view on the matter.” The box of matches felt so good in his hands, they rubbed corners and unconsciously he opened and shut the box, the endless problems he could solve advancing on him right away. How amazing she was, to give him the box of matches that could save him. He could see her castle from here, the roof that was about to fall in on itself, and the flag that had never waved from the tip of the tower that she spent her cold nights in while the cult were warm with their wool blankets they made from scratch and the comforters they had found or stolen from past occupants, from laundry lines, from places where people lived and breathed and had lives that were not surrounded by words. He wondered so carelessly what that was like.

Lion knew Leon thrived for something that was not within his grasp. He would never find it here with the cult, it was something he would cry out in the night for, something that he was not born into, as she had the same problem, but someone else had solved it for her. Leon looked at her with some gratitude in his eyes, she knew him for who he wanted to be. He knew her past and how she ached for a little bit more than she always had. It could be her downfall. She lowered herself down to the river’s edge, past him to the place where he had just been thinking. Dipping her feet into the water occasionally, she saw him behind her in the looking place – the water – he was running a hand over his face. His hands were calloused, she had tried not to touch them when she handed him the matches but it was inevitable.

Her feet were the same colour as her blank body. So pale and fragile and ill Lion was that the cold water almost took her over, her soft skin, her lazy movements. She felt his gaze upon her back, where her nightgown started and the chill of the skin she wore ended. It was a scence from one of the movies she had caught the Sisters watching in the orphanage. He would bend down behind her, Lion’s head would fall to the side as he would move his fingers through her hair. How slow it would seem, but the actuality would be quicker. She would never want it to end. These were new – her thoughts – as she wriggled her shoulders to get rid of the sensation Lio was bringing upon herself. She turned her head around to see him lighting a fire with the dead leaves.

They were on different sides of the fire, the expression on Leon’s face was unreadable, but her own…Lion looked down with the disgust she felt for herself. Jealousy ached in her legs, her arms, and the pit of her stomach until she was dizzy. It licked the space near her feet, the fire did most apprehensively, picking up lifeless leaves and demolishing them with the most evil of noises. He was enjoying it. Leon’s face was ravished with excitement and he couldn’t see he had trapped her like the burning of a witch at a stake. Lion trembled. She stood up to shout at him to stop it, but the words were pushed back down. She wasn’t doing it; she owned full control of the words she spoke. All those wonderful, ageless words were being stopped, a cork in the bottle of strawberry wine that she loved. It would make her feel so full and so power controlled.

Just the look on Leon’s face confirmed her qualms that he was over his head. Desperate, wild eyes, the fire reflected at her. The fire was so hungry, so demented and crazed that Lion was left for naught with words to save the situation. It was powering through the border between them, that she was left with the river and he with the mind control that was burning away with the fire. His hands were dancing, his eyes were rolling as the fire burned closer and closer to him, closer to her, there was a line that danced with each other. She could drop into the water, but he would have to run, and no doubt the lovely fire that it had once been would chase after him. It would overtake him…swallow him.

He was on her side of the fire, tumbling into the water before her as she blew icicles that came from her cold heart onto the fire that was shocked into ashes. She was pulled into the water by his arms, encircled by them. Leon was so stronger than her, so weak in the power of his controls. Lion would die to help him, the fire was beyond her grasp, and she could only think of the things she might do if not left alone all those hours and months to figure out her purpose. It was this, Lio knew, as her mouth found Leon’s below the water, for a second, no longer than two and then they were being pulled out – gasping and dead for air.