For Cath…just a brief, romantic New Years interlude…hope you like. The regular update (and feedback response) should be later this week...
BeguiledWe are standing on a precipice; on the edge of our Age, a dark sea rising before us, and a silver coin just above, in mid-toss with no where to land.
Heads, it’s you. Tails, it’s me.
Till then, we are only we and the night stretches on, undiscovered, unbound, endlessly patient, waiting for us to decide: will we stay? Will we move on? Take that first step into what we cannot know, yet is always the same?
If we are young and wild with moonlight, if the bell of my lips does not ring, calling you to me, if you are not what you’ve always wanted and there is nothing but wanting, expectation between us, could we pretend for a while, the moon is not a currency to be spent in one night, on the price of a chance?
Let her be full and bright –eyed to the world, like a well for making wishes in.
She led them away; she knew everywhere and all the ways of getting there. Behind the library a wooden staircase wound upward and way, to the roof, to the outside and the robin’s egg blue of the night sky, speckled like an Eastern tapestry. To Tara, the sky was an exotic, mystical landscape, round and sensual, only just out of reach. There were nights she wanted to wrap herself up in it; but not alone.
Willow knew the sky by its patterns; knew them by heart, could point out the buckle on Orion’s belt, the distance to the closest nebula and all the points of its frequencies. She could name the mountains of the Moon and all the satellites of Jupiter. The sky was no mystery to her, never had been.
So much had changed.
The salty coastal breeze hushed from this height, weaving far off a woman’s lilting soprano through the air; there was a music festival in town this night, they had seen the flyers pasted throughout the school. They didn’t know the singer. Her song was meant for swaying and touching, outdoors, for moon dancing and for star gazing. Not the kind of star gazing Willow Rosenberg might have thought of, with various refracted lenses, but the kind that requires the eyes to be closed, and cheeks to be touching, resting against one another as the strange attractors coalesce, circling together, spellbound.
I’m wild again, beguiled again, a simpering, whimpering child again,
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.
Willow’s arms wound loosely around Tara’s waist, her fingers tracing drowsily, gently beneath the blonde’s shirt, over the small of her back; her lips softly touching at Tara’s neck, again and again, lightly pressing the smallest of kisses, warm and lazy, without want or haste.
I couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t sleep, when Love came and told me I shouldn’t sleep,
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.
Her head resting against Willow’s, Tara’s arms fell around the redhead’s shoulders, she felt light as air and held tightly, perhaps to anchor herself. Willow’s fingers, drawing slow, entwining circles on her skin felt comforting and loving; she raised her chin to Willow’s kisses, her head rolling back on her shoulders. Her eyes opened and the jaspering crushed velvet above seemed to be holding them, enfolding them within, like a newborn constellation.
Lost my heart, but what of it?
She is cold, I agree.
She can laugh and I love it
Although the laugh’s on me.
The slow journey of Willow’s lips found their way to Tara’s, and paused there to rest; she hugged the blonde close, pulling her in, secure and knowing; the world had slipped away beneath them, slipped under their kiss, smiling as it turned away.
Turning and swaying, they lingered in their breath-sharing, the almost-kiss between sleep and waking, too drowsy, too longing, only wanting the pale softness of the other, like a pillow, a downy bed for their senses, for their whispering touches.
I’ll sing to her, each spring to her
And long for the day when I’ll cling to her,
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered and am I.
The music grew faint and faded; the moon was yawning. A tender exploration had begun: lips and tongues and eyes and cheeks, fingers wed and unwound. They were learning a new language, one without words, save one, repeated over and over, spilling from their lips, which held to the other, drawing out the warm meaning, the wetness of it, the taste of breath, life and the falling of it, down the inevitable edge, the birth of stars and finally, drowning.
TBC...
"Human kind cannot bear much reality." - T.S. Eliot
You write Willow in panic mode rather well.
Nothing else to say except wow. I am a very happy, very blambustered 
Dish.
oh, much applause from the audience.
at: 1/2/03 11:32:29 am
P.S. - when's Camp Flutie coming back? I miss it!! 
It's the little things, you know? The world doesn't have time for the big stuff. How often are we truly moved by great events? The earth shakes once in a while; wars are fought and lost and people go away or come back and someone new is born or dies...that's the dramatic stuff for the newspaper or a book, but what really matters are the things we just don't think about, imho. If a broad view is taken, they are not so simple or small, but the bits and pieces of what we are all made of. P.S. - Glad you liked the inclusion of Rodger and Hart; I'm not such a great fan of musicals (have you ever been a rehearsal pianist? Yeesh.), but I love the songs and they wrote some of the best. 
Beautiful.
