Entry 536; Day 1065
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The gardens have been brought indoors. This is the best that anyone can manage to say as they come into the cathedral on this summer morning.
Indeed, the gardens must have been destroyed, utterly ravaged for the sake of these roses in their prime, these irises, these white hydrangea like mounds of snow. The altar fairly groans under the offering of heaped flowers: cherry blossoms, apple blossoms, white roses, white lilies, white tulips--every flower and its marvelous name. Arched doorways are draped in garlands woven out of wisteria and lily of the valley. Pale columns, already twined in soft clouds of lilies or roses or pomegranates or cherubs (they're more or less Corinthian columns, but no one dares point that out in so many words) are draped again in long garlands and ribbons. Every arch, every point, every vault, every niche, every corner has seemingly sprouted flowers overnight. White marble, white ivory, white stone now glistens with green leaves and white flowers. Saints and angels of other times and other places wear crowns of flowers, bear wreaths in their hands, carry garlands of their own. And, touched with gold as gold will touch a garden on a summer morning, their halos and crowns and robes glitter bright with candles--needless candles for all the sunlight pouring through a thousand windows, and each one bright as thought set not with glass but with a dozen kinds of jewels, stacked sapphire and ruby over rose quartz and emerald, scattering fragments to turn white violets to red or blue. The gardens must be utterly destroyed in this kind of maniac sacrifice. There must be none left--
--save for one patch of flowers which, one must feel certain, were set aside to be carried by the one for which the entire cathedral attends: white roses and white lilies, wrapped in white ribbons, it must be.
The obligations of City and curse cannot be entirely undone, but the details, the agreements and payments have been made in such ways and in such complex cascades of sacrifice upon sacrifice that, although the weather is fine, the obligation is for a curse. And, hence, it should be little wonder than it is to the call of elfin trumpets and bells of strange and alien metals that this wedding should commence.
But, perhaps these elfin trumpets, these goblin offerings are not so strange. They are strangers, visitors for the day, but they have filled huge haliotis shells with pearls and laid them at the door to the church, they brought her emeralds for her to set to flash among the tresses of her long fair hair, they brought her threaded sapphires for her cloak: all this the princes of fable (who knew they would not have her) did and the elves and the gnomes of myth. For this was of the country from which she came, and so it was good. And partly she still lived, and partly she was one with long-ago and with those sacred tales that nurses tell, when all their children are good, and evening has come, and the fire is burning well, and the soft pat-pat of the snow-flakes on the pane is like the furtive tread of fearful things in old, enchanted woods.
The last darkness of the cathedral is lifted now, as the heavy doors are opened by unseen hands, and the brightness and the coolness of the day spills in and draws to it all the scents of the hyacinths and narcissus waiting before, draping languidly on caught clouds of silk or damask, lining the path to the altar--and with them the scent of one small monkshood flower.
She had only just stepped into the cathedral, white and ivory against still more white and ivory. Save for her hair: such a striking shade, golden, bright, shining, that impossible color that seems to vanish save in its own shine, and impossible to name, falling about her pale shoulders in tendrils and curls and waves. Her face, pale, like a rose petal itself, but marked with bright blue eyes--and their brightness shines even through the fog of her veil.
Her dress was white and it whispered, such soft fabric, and delicately striped in ivory and white--stripes just subtle enough to shimmer and vanish as she moved, so that anyone looking would find himself staring to see if he had seen what he had thought he'd seen. But, of course, he had. And, of course, that was far from the only thing a man would see about her. The clutch of roses, white but for the palest of pale pinks there at the calyx, pinned at the top of the bodice of her dress, and the angle of the stripes as the fabric was cut around the shape of her (so small, so delicate, more the shape of a bird than of a woman). The shape of her dress, how she rose through it, the drapes and folds and gathers of that same faintly striped fabric tossed all around behind her--as though perhaps she were a goddess, gathering up all her trailing glories and gown about her, an excess, an embarrassment of riches, pinned up and around her and draped to trail behind her, lace and silk and satin. The other clutch of roses, the with same palest of pale pinks at their base, pinned to her hair--and those pins doing nothing to keep it from tumbling around her shoulders as it pleased, and never mind it. What good it did was to keep up the veil that hung before her face and trailed behind her, like morning mist, like faintest clouds, like the finest breath of snow, yards upon yards upon yards of gossamer for the sake of gossamer, trailing longer than the train of her gown, spilling cataracts of itself nearly to the doors of the cathedral itself. Her veil might as well have been made of the flights of birds and her dress might as well have been made of those same swans' wings or feathers for the way it fit about her and behind her and around her, white and falling from her hips, with its myriad of pleats and tucks and folds and gathers so that it resembled nothing so much as the closed wings of a thousand white birds, gathered up and sleeping; or like the careful turret-building of mother-of-pearl to be found in a broken-open shell, stacked in chamber on chamber and row on row; white, like she was rising out of a fountain of water. The only darkness to her was the shadow of her hair and the shadow of her veil.
So, take these soft stripes that may not be stripes at all. Take this most delicate of lace. Take these palest of roses. Now, if you are a fairy princess, as you so seem, call the birds to fit them to you.
But despite the fragility of her--porcelain, rose petals, ivory, moonlight, dawn, and pearls--she was brave, and she was bold, with a voice that surprised everyone, and a spirit that stopped at nothing--a familiarity in that, hauntingly, as she, ghost-like in her veils, would walk the path two others had wanted in differing directions and she would arrive where both had wanted, despite those differences.
And here, now, as the eyes, the windows of a thousand faces turned to her, she would seek out only one pair belonging to the one shadow, the one darkness in the grandness of the cathedral before her, the one place where the scent of hemlock and hellebore and monkshood and belladonna could be found.
[//filter failed]
[Filtered from Known DELILAH Members || Unhackable]
I am in no mood for this.
~C.
[//end filter]
[ooc: The compulsions of a curse are difficult to overcome, even when there are other things at play. ...also, Cain is apparently a CainxRosella shipper for the day? Well, or else he was away from the Network when he was writing the RiffxCan stuff--or maybe that'll surface later...]
The gardens have been brought indoors. This is the best that anyone can manage to say as they come into the cathedral on this summer morning.
Indeed, the gardens must have been destroyed, utterly ravaged for the sake of these roses in their prime, these irises, these white hydrangea like mounds of snow. The altar fairly groans under the offering of heaped flowers: cherry blossoms, apple blossoms, white roses, white lilies, white tulips--every flower and its marvelous name. Arched doorways are draped in garlands woven out of wisteria and lily of the valley. Pale columns, already twined in soft clouds of lilies or roses or pomegranates or cherubs (they're more or less Corinthian columns, but no one dares point that out in so many words) are draped again in long garlands and ribbons. Every arch, every point, every vault, every niche, every corner has seemingly sprouted flowers overnight. White marble, white ivory, white stone now glistens with green leaves and white flowers. Saints and angels of other times and other places wear crowns of flowers, bear wreaths in their hands, carry garlands of their own. And, touched with gold as gold will touch a garden on a summer morning, their halos and crowns and robes glitter bright with candles--needless candles for all the sunlight pouring through a thousand windows, and each one bright as thought set not with glass but with a dozen kinds of jewels, stacked sapphire and ruby over rose quartz and emerald, scattering fragments to turn white violets to red or blue. The gardens must be utterly destroyed in this kind of maniac sacrifice. There must be none left--
--save for one patch of flowers which, one must feel certain, were set aside to be carried by the one for which the entire cathedral attends: white roses and white lilies, wrapped in white ribbons, it must be.
The obligations of City and curse cannot be entirely undone, but the details, the agreements and payments have been made in such ways and in such complex cascades of sacrifice upon sacrifice that, although the weather is fine, the obligation is for a curse. And, hence, it should be little wonder than it is to the call of elfin trumpets and bells of strange and alien metals that this wedding should commence.
But, perhaps these elfin trumpets, these goblin offerings are not so strange. They are strangers, visitors for the day, but they have filled huge haliotis shells with pearls and laid them at the door to the church, they brought her emeralds for her to set to flash among the tresses of her long fair hair, they brought her threaded sapphires for her cloak: all this the princes of fable (who knew they would not have her) did and the elves and the gnomes of myth. For this was of the country from which she came, and so it was good. And partly she still lived, and partly she was one with long-ago and with those sacred tales that nurses tell, when all their children are good, and evening has come, and the fire is burning well, and the soft pat-pat of the snow-flakes on the pane is like the furtive tread of fearful things in old, enchanted woods.
The last darkness of the cathedral is lifted now, as the heavy doors are opened by unseen hands, and the brightness and the coolness of the day spills in and draws to it all the scents of the hyacinths and narcissus waiting before, draping languidly on caught clouds of silk or damask, lining the path to the altar--and with them the scent of one small monkshood flower.
She had only just stepped into the cathedral, white and ivory against still more white and ivory. Save for her hair: such a striking shade, golden, bright, shining, that impossible color that seems to vanish save in its own shine, and impossible to name, falling about her pale shoulders in tendrils and curls and waves. Her face, pale, like a rose petal itself, but marked with bright blue eyes--and their brightness shines even through the fog of her veil.
Her dress was white and it whispered, such soft fabric, and delicately striped in ivory and white--stripes just subtle enough to shimmer and vanish as she moved, so that anyone looking would find himself staring to see if he had seen what he had thought he'd seen. But, of course, he had. And, of course, that was far from the only thing a man would see about her. The clutch of roses, white but for the palest of pale pinks there at the calyx, pinned at the top of the bodice of her dress, and the angle of the stripes as the fabric was cut around the shape of her (so small, so delicate, more the shape of a bird than of a woman). The shape of her dress, how she rose through it, the drapes and folds and gathers of that same faintly striped fabric tossed all around behind her--as though perhaps she were a goddess, gathering up all her trailing glories and gown about her, an excess, an embarrassment of riches, pinned up and around her and draped to trail behind her, lace and silk and satin. The other clutch of roses, the with same palest of pale pinks at their base, pinned to her hair--and those pins doing nothing to keep it from tumbling around her shoulders as it pleased, and never mind it. What good it did was to keep up the veil that hung before her face and trailed behind her, like morning mist, like faintest clouds, like the finest breath of snow, yards upon yards upon yards of gossamer for the sake of gossamer, trailing longer than the train of her gown, spilling cataracts of itself nearly to the doors of the cathedral itself. Her veil might as well have been made of the flights of birds and her dress might as well have been made of those same swans' wings or feathers for the way it fit about her and behind her and around her, white and falling from her hips, with its myriad of pleats and tucks and folds and gathers so that it resembled nothing so much as the closed wings of a thousand white birds, gathered up and sleeping; or like the careful turret-building of mother-of-pearl to be found in a broken-open shell, stacked in chamber on chamber and row on row; white, like she was rising out of a fountain of water. The only darkness to her was the shadow of her hair and the shadow of her veil.
So, take these soft stripes that may not be stripes at all. Take this most delicate of lace. Take these palest of roses. Now, if you are a fairy princess, as you so seem, call the birds to fit them to you.
But despite the fragility of her--porcelain, rose petals, ivory, moonlight, dawn, and pearls--she was brave, and she was bold, with a voice that surprised everyone, and a spirit that stopped at nothing--a familiarity in that, hauntingly, as she, ghost-like in her veils, would walk the path two others had wanted in differing directions and she would arrive where both had wanted, despite those differences.
And here, now, as the eyes, the windows of a thousand faces turned to her, she would seek out only one pair belonging to the one shadow, the one darkness in the grandness of the cathedral before her, the one place where the scent of hemlock and hellebore and monkshood and belladonna could be found.
[//filter failed]
[Filtered from Known DELILAH Members || Unhackable]
I am in no mood for this.
~C.
[//end filter]
[ooc: The compulsions of a curse are difficult to overcome, even when there are other things at play. ...also, Cain is apparently a CainxRosella shipper for the day? Well, or else he was away from the Network when he was writing the RiffxCan stuff--or maybe that'll surface later...]