The Cow, Ariana Reines

The Cow, Ariana Reines

Taking someone's cigarette out of their mouth: Multiple meanings - used a lot in media to convey control, power play, very masculine, I'm your boss and this is mine now, get over it. Mildly flirty, look at me, all in your space and shit, seductive. You're not allowed to smoke, because I say so.

Putting the cigarette back in their mouth afterwards: Ground-breaking. Would be less erotic to just fuck honestly. Who does this?

when kafka said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it’ and when brontë said ‘if you ever looked at me with what I know is in you, I would be your slave’ and when Sartre said ‘if I’ve got to suffer it may as well be at your hands’

“I would die for you.”

“Yeah, but you won’t shut up for me, will you?”

The haze over her vision clears as she comes to, eyes spiraling her skull in their dizziness. The first thing she sees is soft, candle-lit light, and smoke that gently rose from a crackling fire at the center of the hut she'd woken in. Mari is strewn neatly across a bed, her body feeling stiff as a rock, as if she'd hit something hard and fast before waking up. She groans in response to muffled, incoherent voices that steadily become clearer the more that she wakes. She finds just enough strength to turn her head and stare drowsily at whoever else occupied the room, looking as spaced out as a slowpoke in a coma. | for adaman!

Some of the times he checked up on her, he almost couldn't believe she was still alive.

At first, they hadn't thought it'd been the case. The body worn and broken, harsh under the gravity of the world hauling into the earth, before someone felt the cold strawberry skin of her nose and realized that it still drew air, breath turned to mist when warmed enough to do it. Lucky, that her landing close enough to spot in the frosting river reeds of the mirelands, to rouse ruckus, to be hauled back. Lucky, that her landing was softened, perhaps, by the mud & the foliage & the tension of that crackling frenzy in the air that might've spat her out in the first place. They'd not have been able to save her, as autumn rolled in on itself further into summer's sleep, if she stayed out there too long.

A story Adaman recalls to himself as he overlooks her; a duty, in a way, to himself to ensure, to manage, to see. Each day, she continued. Each day, an anticipation. He doubted it to be one of Galaxy's, the clothes too different, the person too unknown. Not theirs, but whose? who, where, what did she come from?

A secret to be answered in time. He tried not to get his hopes up that it'd be answered at all. Even if she hadn't died yet, a fall like that rarely goes without aftershocks.

It's late by the time consciousness dribbles back into bones. The smell of herbs through the warmed air, something bubbling atop fire, the sound of fabric and skin shuffling as he moved, attentive and slow, as he spoke to the more medically wise who'd been attending her. he'd offered to take the responsibility to look after her while they rested, with only so much to be done, that could be done. Easiness in his voice, reassurances, then goodbyes as he attended to the broth. ( a family recipe, one said to bring new life. he liked to think, even slightly, that it could help... )

It's only when the two left that dark eyes flick over, her breathing turning harsher with unconsciousness slipping back, and see her coming to. The task dropped, the sound of Adaman's robes shuffling is quick as knees shuffle in a scurry to her side, searching for something over her form; over her face. How long has the stranger been asleep? ( the answer comes instantly, second sight, second intuition. 4 days, 19 hours, 42 minutes. like clockwork, like divine knowingness. )

Sinnoh, he was glad to see any life at all, regardless of how distant she was now.

" Come on... Come on... You've got it... " the words are a soft wind through teeth as he leans a little closer as though trying to make it easier for her to recognize, one hand's knuckles pressed into the edges of the mat, her old clothes folded nearby. It's as a hand reaches, soft in the open air nearby, that he sees the white of her eyes; regardless of how distant; and relief takes him only for a moment. Perhaps pride, bubbling beneath the surface, at the other having drew breath long enough to do it at all. a complete stranger, and yet, still they lived.

" There you are. " a subtle congratulation he doesn't expect to be felt as the reaching fingers make purchase, gently at the side of her face, the other joining it's brother, slipping under her other cheek as he gently lifts her head, thumbpads lightly pulling taught the edge of the eye where crows feet would one day linger as Adaman studies her face, her eyes, looking for something unknowable.

It's unclear if he's found it after the moment passes, and he carefully sets her head down to rest back 'pon the cushioning beneath, gingerly, as he softly speaks not fully intending for Mari to listen, " Hey, Stranger. We thought you were a goner. Glad to see you prove me wrong. "

*me, literally sick with want* whatever