Work Text:
The sky fills with heavy grey clouds that afternoon. It should rain, it should thunder, but no such thing comes, and you feel restless. You think about the handkerchief, your fingertips grow cold. Something is not right, and it feels you might know what, if only you dared to think. You are not a coward, certainly not a dreamer, but you'll have to admit that there are indeed times when it is better to be ignorant and forget. Or perhaps not better but-- oh, maybe you are merely dreaming.
You trace your mistress's steps, and it seems that she, too, is electric, that something is bound to catch fire. You trace her steps and allow yourself to forget. (Your breath seems to catch.)
And the Moor's eyes are filled with fire and you watch him watching her and wait for thunder. There is a blush rising to your mistress's cheeks. It might be her white hands tremble slightly. Her dress is pale and you can see the shape of her shoulder blades through the thin fabric. (Like a dream: wings bursting through the skin painfully, like vines from a dead body.) The Moor is beautiful and unsettling, it's like his light swallows her whole.
He asks you to leave; for a moment it seems impossible, for you are his wife's shadow. The door is heavy as it closes behind you. A shadow of an impending doom crosses your mind and is gone before you reach for it. The skies are heavy with the promise of rain.
--
The fabric of the wedding sheets is smooth and heavy in your hands. You repeat the word under your breath, wedding sheets. All this seems so very final somehow.
When your lady returns, her cheeks are glowing and her eyes very bright, as if the light of fever was illuminating her from the inside. You are not quite sure of what is going on, but there is an awful lingering feeling that maybe you should know, that you might if--
You've never been quite able to comprehend your lord, he appears blazing and unpredictable, his thoughts like words of a foreign language, where you sense a ghost of a meaning but it keeps slipping through your fingers, words as jewels whose worth you can only guess. It is worse now. He has always been kind to your lady, charmed by her, tamed by her, and you haven't needed to fear for her sake, even though she sometimes seems like a foolish child, burning cheeks and fearless steps. But now you are but moments away from the start of the storm, and you wish you could save her from such a furious wind.
She appears as though she has a fever and her eyes are ever so dark. Again, you are asked to go, and again it feels impossible. I would I were thy shadow. You are not a dreamer, but even so, there are times when you dream of foolish things. Your lady looks at you, or no, past you, and her movements are slow and graceful, she is a sleepwalker, unafraid and so near at the edge of the cliff.
(You wish to wake her from her dream. To let her stay asleep and grasp her hand. Sometimes you have to allow yourself a foolish dream or two, as much as you detest such things for they do nothing but make the world more painful than it already is, by their sweet calls of what could have been. And so you dream. That you might grasp her hand and run. You dream dark woods, branches tugging at your hems, hoods shadowing your faces, her white hands. You always dream the pounding of horses' hooves in the distance, like a nearing thunder. Sometimes it's Othello's men, sometimes Iago, with a strange smile upon his lips. Most of the time, though, he does not come, and you don't know whether to feel betrayed or relieved. You dream running. You don't dream happy endings, just a momentary escapade, pounding hearts, the bittersweet flavour of freedom.)
"If I do die before thee," she breathes out, clouded eyes and something that resembles a smile dancing at the corners of her mouth. You think you hear thunder; you do not.
You admonish her like a mother would a half-dreaming child recounting her foolish nightmares. Her words sink somewhere in your ribcage. (Handkerchief, cold fingers.) There is a thought that never sounds out loud in your mind: if you are her shadow, you will be sure to follow, should she--
She sings the words of a dead woman, you go to unpin her, and you find that your steps, too, have grown light like those of a sleepwalker. It seems all you can do is wait for the skies to break. The earth is quivering beneath your feet. Perhaps you are ghosts already.
And dreaming these dreadful dreams, your fingers trace out your lady's shoulder blades (wings breaking free from underneath the skin, a horrifying, glorious transformation) and in a dream, you dip your head down, your lips ghosting over her shoulder. She may feel it or perhaps she does not. It makes no difference. You dream of dark woods, your lady has stolen a song off of a dead woman's lips.
You shake yourself awake. You are not a dreamer, you are a realist. It is simply that the air is heavy, that there is a nearing thunder.
When she asks who is at the door, you say it's the wind and maybe that's it, it's the wind and tonight there will be a storm and your lady will sleep soundly in her wedding sheets and tomorrow the air will be clear and fresh. All will start anew.
When you leave the room (a shadow leaving), the song about the willow, the dead woman's song, keeps haunting you.
And that song tonight will not go from my mind.
The clouds are heavy and the thunder won't come.