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31_days2007-06-01 10:39 pm
gaisce.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2007-06-01 10:39 pm
[June 1][Utena] The Land of Nod
Title: The Land of Nod
Day/Theme: June 1, 2007. "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed."
Series: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Character/Pairing: Miki POV, with slight Miki/Kozue
Rating: PG-13, undertones of incest
Once there was an Eden. Its distance lay in the measure of innocence. Filled with halcyon days whose light could only be seen in ancient memory, yet its shadow cast across the lands and the roots of its trees wound themselves between the lines of an idyll and the notes of a symphony. It could only be found when lost, only be described when forgotten. Eden’s power lay in being unattainable.
Miki was naïve in many ways, still he knew that much. His desire was not for the mythical Eden, but the gates to his ‘Sunlit Garden’ were as forever closed to him as Paradise was to the first of Man. Although the garden still existed with patio tiles cracked and the lawn turned brown, he could visit only if he chose to see how decrepit it had become in his absence. Or chose to see how the changes within himself made it ugly and impure for him to look at now.
The garden still tantalized, haunted him with its emptiness. It enclosed the house Miki’s parents had left to him and his sister. She said they had been abandoned, but he couldn’t believe her anymore. They had not been cast out into the harshness of the world like Adam and Eve. It was not a Fall, simply...moving on. There was comfort to be found in the empty rooms, he said, even if it was a lonely kind. Even if their once loved haven had become a means to entrap them with the reminder for how things had been irrevocably altered.
One day he made the mistake of remarking about the state of the garden, how the weeds and vines had overgrown everything it was more like a wild wood in their stories than a proper backyard. Kozue simply laughed and said if it was fit for wild beasts maybe she would spend more time there. He turned away in disappointment and disgust, retiring to the conservatory to practice on the piano. He stopped inviting her to join him after she told him there was no reason to continue the charade and she would never play again. She never asked him to join her in the garden.
He suspected that was where she went to hide that night of the recital where he had been too sick to leave his bed. They found her in the morning in one of the unused rooms, but Miki knew where she had been for the night. He knew at the touch of her frozen, clumsy fingertips and the smell of hyacinths still faintly lingering in her hair.
Her fingers were still cold when she came home from her late night rendezvous. They surprised him with their chill the times she would suddenly, and without reason, press them against the nape of his neck. Teasing him at how unaware he was. Once or twice he remembered such hands slipping under his bedcovers and her quiet request to keep them warm, but it was all wrong—the smell and the memories and—Kozue! he would say. Then softer, Kozue, go to bed.
Go to sleep.
And Kozue, silent as a prowling beast, would slip into her own bed in the pitch dark. He didn’t know if she really slept or not, he couldn’t know that. Even if it was daylight and he could see her face, he would not know if she was truly asleep or feigning. If she was lulling him into a false sense of complacency with an instinctive defense mechanism children and prey used. And even if she slept, he would never know what she dreamed of.
But he managed to find rest. A fitful kind, where he often tossed and turned, but it was still sleep. And when he dreamed, which was rarer still, it was of sunlight and a garden very different from his waking dreams.
Day/Theme: June 1, 2007. "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed."
Series: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Character/Pairing: Miki POV, with slight Miki/Kozue
Rating: PG-13, undertones of incest
Once there was an Eden. Its distance lay in the measure of innocence. Filled with halcyon days whose light could only be seen in ancient memory, yet its shadow cast across the lands and the roots of its trees wound themselves between the lines of an idyll and the notes of a symphony. It could only be found when lost, only be described when forgotten. Eden’s power lay in being unattainable.
Miki was naïve in many ways, still he knew that much. His desire was not for the mythical Eden, but the gates to his ‘Sunlit Garden’ were as forever closed to him as Paradise was to the first of Man. Although the garden still existed with patio tiles cracked and the lawn turned brown, he could visit only if he chose to see how decrepit it had become in his absence. Or chose to see how the changes within himself made it ugly and impure for him to look at now.
The garden still tantalized, haunted him with its emptiness. It enclosed the house Miki’s parents had left to him and his sister. She said they had been abandoned, but he couldn’t believe her anymore. They had not been cast out into the harshness of the world like Adam and Eve. It was not a Fall, simply...moving on. There was comfort to be found in the empty rooms, he said, even if it was a lonely kind. Even if their once loved haven had become a means to entrap them with the reminder for how things had been irrevocably altered.
One day he made the mistake of remarking about the state of the garden, how the weeds and vines had overgrown everything it was more like a wild wood in their stories than a proper backyard. Kozue simply laughed and said if it was fit for wild beasts maybe she would spend more time there. He turned away in disappointment and disgust, retiring to the conservatory to practice on the piano. He stopped inviting her to join him after she told him there was no reason to continue the charade and she would never play again. She never asked him to join her in the garden.
He suspected that was where she went to hide that night of the recital where he had been too sick to leave his bed. They found her in the morning in one of the unused rooms, but Miki knew where she had been for the night. He knew at the touch of her frozen, clumsy fingertips and the smell of hyacinths still faintly lingering in her hair.
Her fingers were still cold when she came home from her late night rendezvous. They surprised him with their chill the times she would suddenly, and without reason, press them against the nape of his neck. Teasing him at how unaware he was. Once or twice he remembered such hands slipping under his bedcovers and her quiet request to keep them warm, but it was all wrong—the smell and the memories and—Kozue! he would say. Then softer, Kozue, go to bed.
Go to sleep.
And Kozue, silent as a prowling beast, would slip into her own bed in the pitch dark. He didn’t know if she really slept or not, he couldn’t know that. Even if it was daylight and he could see her face, he would not know if she was truly asleep or feigning. If she was lulling him into a false sense of complacency with an instinctive defense mechanism children and prey used. And even if she slept, he would never know what she dreamed of.
But he managed to find rest. A fitful kind, where he often tossed and turned, but it was still sleep. And when he dreamed, which was rarer still, it was of sunlight and a garden very different from his waking dreams.