Rubies and Diamonds Make Stardust

She had to see him. One last time. Not that any amount of times would be times too many. She couldn’t get enough of him. All the time they stole together. All the lies, the scheming, the plotting. Just for a moment of peace in one another’s arms. Forbidden. A word that had become engraved in both of their lives. It was nearly more tragic than any previously known fate of ill-crossed lovers. Lovers they were, had been, couldn’t be. None it made sense any more. Everything was a heap of confusion. There wasn’t a way out, how had they even found a way in?

Her footsteps pounded in echo along the corridors she ran through. Pain seared through her lungs, tore at her side, rendered her nearly unable to continue. But she couldn’t let the moment pass. Her last chance. With every fall of her feet another memory washed over her. Kisses. His lips gently caressing hers… forcefully taking what he wanted… turning the tables, the give and take, leader and follower falling from one to the other in perfect sequence. Who was it to tell them what they could and couldn’t do anyhow? And yet they listened. To the voices of unreason, the pressures of family, the unrelenting stance of friends… fate. Evil fate. What a tangled web woven through the air, impenetrable by every thwarted attempt and yet the memories.

Laid out in bed, ravished by the fireplace, under the stars, sweaty skin upon skin, sliding, moving, completing… the completion unquestionable no matter where it was they were coming from: it was that place – when they were there, wrapped up in and on and beside one another – the place was perfection. Nothing could disturb it. Nothing could shake it. The taste of salt burning their tongues, their taste so sharp, tongue to skin and skin to tongue. As slippery and destructive as magic itself could be. Illusions.

Breathless, she ran, breathless she had been staring into the depths of his eyes. Breathless she pressed on, breathless, as she looked him over, loving his perfection. Breathless the world depended on it – her world depended on him… fingers entwined in each other’s hair, the cries of animals as passion fueled them together. War rent the world apart – his body tore into hers and she welcomed it, existed only for the next time he would rip into her. The tempo never mattered. How sweet it was or how raw – every time it was the equivalent to being gutting, bearing all to each other and lapping up everything that was offered all in one majestic moment. There hadn’t been enough moments. There wouldn’t be any more.

A sob tore from her throat as she burst from the building and out onto a balcony overlooking the labyrinth of gardens below. Her upper body leaned too far over the railing, carried by the momentum she had built up. She barely bothered to pull herself back and did so only to appreciate the pain searing through her hips from where they had just made rough contact with the wall she had slammed into.

The sun was being to set, the sky streaked with reds of blood, purple of bruises, and yellows of decaying skin. It was tragic and beautiful. Below was a world of white. White like the color of emptiness, the color of succumbing into a world of nothing, a world where you leave even yourself. The color to flaunt solitude. The trees looked as though they were on fire as the sun sank and she raised her head for a moment, wishing the flames would lick her skin clean from her body, that they would steal away the layers of muscle that constituted her being, that they would eat away her life so she wouldn’t have to face the black hole the oncoming night would deliver at her feet. No such luck. Illusions again.

Pressure of a giant’s hand crushed in on her head. Pressure equivalent to what his family had placed on him. The present, the future unfolding before her eyes. A raven dark as sin cried out and took flight. The words from below drifted up.

“I do.”

“I do.”

“I did,” she whispered and the pressure became too much. It blocked out the last gentle caress of the sun’s rays to her cheek, it blocked out the newlyweds below that had been forced together, it blocked out the remains of her life – not quite as she had wished it, but perhaps this was better. Quicker. No more pain of what she couldn’t have. On the other side you could have it all, couldn’t you?

As her body crumpled, life stamped out, the groom glanced up to see a flash of red disappear behind a cement wall. Flames ignited around the dance floor as he led his bride to the center. For just a moment his ability to breath was refused, his heart stopped, his step stumbled, and he knew. His eyes – so cold since he last held her – turned toxic as he sucked air into his lungs, felt the pounding in his chest, and smoothly turned into a waltz. There was no hidden agenda in the steel depths. There was nothing left there at all. She had stolen his soul and it had left his body behind, unable to bear the separation any longer.

Above the festivities, lost in the night, a new star rolled over and was born into life. Tangled web unwoven and no one but them knew the difference.