Work Text:
astronomical twilight
- underneath, underfoot, under heads and legs and hands-for-beds, it is a linen-crumpled, lace-caught blanket, streaked with green from gathering dew-drops and splotches of brown here and there where small bumps and humps of mud and dirt bulge out of the ground; it is a mess of linen and lace and the thin, ticklish stalks of grass, worn long and shaggy and a soft, sliding sleek against skin - it is a bed christened rather than a bed made, temporary and fleeting and impossibly permanent, and above, there is a canopy of shadow-drawn stars -
- a rush of hot air, swirling and licking at exposed skin, flattening hairs on end and smoothing down speckled, pebbled skin; there are storm clouds gathering in the distance, thunder rumbles in a low, throaty growl, and the tip of our wand, elm this one with a Hungarian heart, our wand now gleams charcoal-white and smoky; spun into the wind, the promise of rain, heavy and tantalising, earth-born and storm-called: we can taste it, chase it across collarbones and along the curved ridges of ribs, taste it and taste it on lips and on hips and in the salt-sweetened sweat that cools on skin in beads strung out like stars -
- it giggles, the brook, as it bubbles by, inches away really inches away: skipping over rocks rounded flat over time, chipped away by an invisible thief; a hushed thing, it gurgles along in a trickling whisper, hidden by the hiss of the wind through the trees, brushing leaves and against leaves, twig against twig in a clattering, bustling hustle, supple and sibilant as it goes - a nightingale nearby chirps a song, mournful and mellowed, tugged shallow by the shadows as they fall, slim and long and swallowing up; it is an orchestra at night, sleep-ridden and somnolent and playing a lullaby up, up, up underneath the stars -
- two hands on top of each other, warm and cold-tipped, long tapered fingers and we move together, hand-in-hand and hand-against-hand and hip-against-hip and mouth-against-mouth; we are one and the same and different and the same, so much the same, and the wands, elm and silver lime and Veela hair and dragon heartstring press against one palm, then the other, but there is no difference from one to the other, it weighs the same, feels the same, thrums the same, teasing sparks from skin and popping in swarms of spotted, spiderweb butterflies, berry-red and cherry-stained and the pitted-burn of embers sputtering, and they fly in circling, fluttering rings, rising in spirals, looping round and round with off-beat wings and fading before they catch the stars -
- white turns to greyscale, ink in water and blooming, blossoming out underneath our skin, tanned brownish in flecked freckles, buttons lost bouncing away in the dim dip of dusk, little hard discs of ivory trailing tiny tails of cotton-thread; starlight, wand-thin and drifting, dancing as the clouds - storm-summoned and silver-smithed - shutter the slim wedge of moon, pale and milky, dyes champagne-orange bright along the crests of folds and creases; it is dappled bronze-cast and dropping down into the valleys and trenches of material and empty spaces between body and bed: bronze becomes red becomes twirled and twisted and snarled with white-gold, curled and fluffed and cold as stars -
- dusted with a velveteen fur, fingers brush skin brush fingers and grass, as the storm breaks overhead with a crash and a clash, thunder-bright and lightning forked, fletched with feathers in spiked, stunted cream, soured and spoiled; and it rains, it rains and it rains, little drops of water-coated slips, peach-skin-soft and swept off thighs and chest: there are stains where they bleed, butter-yellow and it is lemon to taste, lemon to smell, lemon and lime and honey-sweet clementine - though the lime is silver, carved feathered as lightning and stamped with scales, tipped strand-blonde and whispering, voiceless and voiced, our wand to us and us to we; the yellow echoes in eyes, blue ocean eyes, mismatched and paired-up and mirroring the stars -
- wings overhead on a breath dart across the sky in a black-lit blaze; it soars, arrow-shaped and turns, sinking over the horizon down into the line at the edge, dark and blurred and buzzing like bees, kept penned in at the very limit of here and now and then and there: everything before it is caught, bleeding across blue in a purple-grey haze, turning it darker, sea-like where it reaches down to touch, fingertip to fingertip, at one end, cobalt-blue and midnight-violet - but overhead it is wrung dry, thin and washed with too much water so it blinks splashed green-grey shadows a lace-bitten curtain over lavender-blue puffs and a violet-pink pond, deep and vast and strung with a net, this never-night time, astronomical twilight, studded at the crossing-points with stars -