harpy: bored, lazy and... generally bored, actually.
creator, and highly sporadic updater, of themetaphorazine.
residing at present in London, UK.
putting scraps of fic here because, well, they needed a home: when they're done, they go to the ff.net account. everything else is in the journal. c&c would be great.
contact: metaphorazine at hotmail dot com
This 'blog' kept extant due to the charming pitas.
currencies
currently reading: books: paradise lost: john milton essays: francis bacon children of the mire: octavio paz
manga: angel sanctuary: yuki kaoru (vol 16) rurouni kenshin (vol 1) d n angel:
yukiru sugisaki (vol 3)
currently watching: shoujo kakumei utena yami no matsuei dragonball z (yes, i am scum.)
currently hearing: slain by urusei yatsura: urusei yatsura grace: jeff buckley te deum: hector berlioz exterminator:primal scream no strings attached:nsync
currently playing: final fantasy vii - still in midgar. because i suck.
current hair colour: pink. needs dying red. and soon.
currently going all fangirlie over: kurai arakune belial faye valentine saionji kyouichi hilde schbeiker kaoru kozue lucrezia noin technomancy ('...!')
Mother kept her pills in a cabinet, in a drawer, in a little thin brown plastic bottle with a thick white plastic screw top. The top had to be twisted and pushed down, but was always kept on loosely because she couldn't open it otherwise, and father got angry when she asked him to help her. One time, father had got so angry he had broken the bottle on the tabletop, and tiny shards had fallen from the larger jagged pieces in a slim shimmering rain. It was quickly vacuumed up, but not before Yue had managed to slip and land his arm in one of the larger ones left on the table. It was just like Yue, said his father, to do something stupid like that, and mother had had to ask him to leave the room while she bandaged her son's arm. His face was unnaturally solemn: he had stopped whimpering when father's voice first raised itself in scorn and anger.
After that, mother started to get her pills in thin brown plastic bottles instead of thin brown glass ones. Mother never asked Yue or Sae to open the bottle for her, even though they would have gladly: she could not let the children do something like that, and anyway - holding the bottle up to let the light shine through and form a brown patch like a bruise on her cheek - it was supposed to be childproof, wasn't it?
Of course, 'childproof' depends on the child. It fascinated Yue to twist the cap and press it, exactly the right level of tension in his wrist and it opened for him like a box of secret treasure. The pills scattered in fear as father's heavy tread was heard in the corridor: a fistful of them was collected and shoved back in and Yue turned guiltily around, brushing the fallen rest out of sight.
"What is your son doing in here?" His wife in the next room was easier to address than the child in the same one, a cringing brat with fear written all over someone else's face.
"I was looking for Kaa-san..." The wrong answer to a question not even aimed at him. Yue raised a protective arm too slowly to block the blow as it fell across his shoulder: not his face, not often, not unless father was really angry. The shoulders, the chest, the upper legs were safer, now Yue was old enough to go to school. Little use Yue's own silence when his body could shout it out for him anyway.
The teacher's face would be thin and tired, however young, and she would express her worries in the politest usage she knew: Katou-kun never seems to take an active part in basketball, the coach has told her, although apparently he shows real potential when he tries. Perhaps he would be able to stay behind for practices? Perhaps he could stay behind, too, for some more Maths tuition: really, the work he is doing is not at the sort of level we would be expecting by now, he might have to stay down a year.
When father got home, Yue would be in his room, and Sae before the door with bright eyes and a work prize to proudly display, to distract him from her brother. Still, however wide her smile and sweet her questions and deflections, the anger always seemed to bubble back up the moment that face was raised to his in some sort of subtle mockery.
Once there was a little princess, and she and her brother - a prince, as all brothers of princesses should be, though not all are - lived in a cottage in the woods. They were not rich royalty, but then not all royalty have to be rich, so long as they are royal. One must always be careful how one addresses any little girl one meets, for the most humble-seeming of them all may in fact be the most noble of all little princesses. I am not sure whether our princess - the one we shall now discuss - was the most noble. Perhaps you will be able to work it out.
Our prince and princess, living as they did in their woodland cottage, were very poor, and often very hungry. And our prince, being a true prince and noble, worried for his sister the princess, because no princess should ever go hungry. He planned to set out one morning and find food for the princess, and for himself, too. When the princess discovered his plan, for in those days there was nothing that he did not confide in his sister, her heart went out to him, and she decided to go along also. He could say nothing to dissuade her: our princess knew her own mind, and could not be swayed. Since she was also well skilled in the wiles which every girl learns, she pointed out to him that he could not possibly leave her alone, at home: what protection would she have without him by her?
Reluctantly, the prince agreed, and the two of them set out one hungry morning.
This journey for food they had made before, and each time marked a route with white shining pebbles. These tiny stones shone like sparkling jewels in the moonlight, and so like jewels that other princesses - for the world they lived in was full of princesses - wanted them, and they came to the prince and asked, please, may we have these jewels? The prince could deny nothing to a princess, and so he gave them away. He tried to explain that these gems were nothing but little rocks invested with brilliance by the moon and her light, but the princesses were so eager for their gifts that they paid no heed. Whatever a princess thinks is a jewel, they said, it shall become a jewel. Such is the power of a princess.
Perhaps the prince forgot that he might need these for cats'-eyes to guide himself and his sister back home: perhaps he though that, having made this jorney so many times before, the pebbles would be unnecessary. Perhaps he knew that they would be needed, but his generosity was too great.
Every girl should learn needlework. It is a study every young girl should take up, should pore over their first sampler under the eye of a teacher or parent as they painstakingly cross-stitch the figure of a cat, or a pony, or a flower, and a suitable little maxim should curl across the bottom, and then their mother can put it up on a shelf, or stow it away in a drawer and never look at it again.
Relena is very good at needlework. She has dainty hands which have mastered the art of the tiny stitch, not too tight and not too slack, and when she ties the last neat knot she snips it off with a pair of special nail scissors (never used on nails) and pulls the thread through the needle, twisting it into a coil around her finger with a calm feeling of accomplishment. The French mistress at school always used to compliment her on her sewing, so precise and so very perfect. She once felt awkward at the compliments, but now she accepts them with a gracious nod of her head and a smile, and hopes the people around do not think her too stuck-up.
When Relena came home from school one term, she saw her old sampler on a shelf and was horrified at its clumsiness. Thankfully, her mother went out to a party the next night, and she was able to quietly abstract it, seek out some wool and replace all the most glaring errors of wrong-sided cross-stitch then. Her mother did not noticed the change, she hopes. Of course, if she had she would never have mentioned it. One does not discuss these things.
Once, when Relena was sewing a cushion-cover, canvas stretched taut on a wooden frame, the needle went in to her finger. To her credit, she did not make a sound: she merely paused, and pulled at the threads that had been finished and were tucked in order between the sewn lines. No-one, watching her, would have thought that anything was wrong: she was just meticulously checking her work, to make sure the cover would lie smoothly over its cushion.
The blood was not enough to stain the canvas, but she held it away just in case, and sucked at it lightly. If she had been a princess, a real princess, a princess who had been kept away from needles and spindles and all things sharp because of a curse laid on her before she was old enough to deserve it, the prick might have sent her into a death-like sleep and left her for ten years surrounded by roses. She was obviously not that type of princess, maybe not any type: the dot of red barely swelled, and her skin was unpleasantly blotched for only a little while. Then she continued sewing, and the cushion later sat in mother's parlour and was admired by her charming friends.
She wondered about it, though: about the sudden dot of focus on the tip of her finger that held her attention for longer than it should have, about the stretching of the skin like canvas on a frame when another needle inched its way under, but not under enough to draw blood. The tiny lines over the skin were just like the lines of holes for threading embroidery silk through, and if one had a small enough needle and fine anough silk one could embroider new patterns through it, new patterns that would not be in any of the books of reference.
Relena realised this line of speculation was absurd and possibly dangerous, and put it aside. It sat on the same shelf as the overambitious mini-tapestry she had started once, before she knew her limits. She would come back to it someday.
Dorothy had laughed at Relena's hands folded under the latest piece of work - laughed and then smiled, and not in apology.
"What are you doing?"
Relena had no words to explain. Girls are supposed to sew, it leaves the mouth free to talk except when biting off the end of a thread when hands are too occupied to pick up scissors and cut. Girls learn to sew because it gives them something to do, fills up their time usefully, like learning to play sonatas on the harp and to paint watercolours of rural scenes. But Dorothy would only laugh more if she said that, would only move as if to pat Relena on the head like a puppy and then check herself and smile again. Dorothy could never understand: this sort of logic was beyond her, or beneath her, or anywhere far away from her.
The other girls understood: they leant down to pick up thimbles and more thread when necessary, humble voices lost in the bending as they asked about the need for demilitarisation. Those were the kind of questions Relena knew how to answer. Relena had learnt it all at home, her eyes dropped to her needle, listening to the raised voices that filtered into the parlour from the dining room when father and his friends had dinner together.
Relena would be allowed to stay up late those nights: she would sit with a hand neatly positioned over the correct fork for the starter, and bluff old men with kindly eyes that seemed to sum her up as a pretty child to pet and ignore would ask her simply-phrased questions. Relena was fifteen now. Oh, no, Relena couldn't possibly have just a sip of wine, it wouldn't be proper. Never mind, the spill wouldn't stain that much: Relena could always get another dress, if it was too bad. Yes, that would be fun, Relena did like pretty dresses.
Relena herself never spilled anything on her gowns: they would go back into the wardrobe pristine, and hang there until the next dinner party, when the right one would be chosen and scent sprinkled over it to hide the reek of mothballs. The gowns were always white: father liked to see her in white, like a fairy princess, Daddy's princess. Stains spread across them quickly, the red of claret soaking like blood scross her lap, and the thick starched napkins were no help to tamp the flow. Embarrassment would fix her to her seat when the other women got up and were supposed to retire.
When her mother came around to her side of the table, explaining to her friends that of course children were sometimes like that, wasn't it simply awful?, her eyes would widen in shock at the red that trailed down the bodice and pooled across the thighs. Relena's eyes would flash to the man next to her, who had forgotten all about his accident and was already braying out the latest information released by the Alliance to his other neighbour, and mother would nod in understanding. With a napkin across her front to protect mother's dress she would be led away in a hug: Relena was tired, of course, she was not used to these late nights.
Mother's friends thought she was such a charming child, staying up so late and behaving so well. They fingered her embroidery as if planning to buy it, looked up almost guiltily when she reappeared in a plainer dress, and then turned away as she sat down. She would smooth down her dress, missing the white folds already, and unfold her next piece of canvas. Her thighs were sticky.
blogs I read, reverse alphabetised for no other reason than my perversity: