Drunken thoughts in a bar

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

The bar was beginning to spin around Rosie, turning every single mirror into a dazzling display of light and movement. Sometimes when she blinked they seemed to dance in time to the music, which filled her head until it seemed that there was nothing left.

Three (or five) tables back, Rosalba had smiled her first (or third) smile, and the man who stood before Rosie at the bar was gazing across the room and dreaming of things he had never had the courage to wish for before. He held his pauch in a little and ordered champagne to celebrate the hopes and dreams he had for tomorrow.

Every now and then the floor seemed to twist a little, and Rosie wondered if she had fallen on board a ship. She had been a ship once, great and golden, and still remembered what it felt like inside the ocean's arms. She remembered the soft kisses of the lumbering waves of the mellow summer and the hard urgency of the autumn storms. She had been loved and loathed by the ocean once, and maybe that was the lover that she had forgotten in the strange mist that had brought her back home.

Five (or three) tables back, Satrap Sam had drunk his eighth (or sixth) drink, and his face was slowly turning from gold to silver. Soon his teeth would fill his face, and he would be pale with good humour. On the table next to him, a girl with pale gold hair bent towards the boy who had loved her for years, and kissed him with a newfound generosity. In the morning she would break his heart, but right now she felt kinder than she had before.

Rosie had only ever kissed one man. His kisses were as soft as the snow, and sometimes when he lay inside her, he cried tears of ice. He had taught her to dance when her legs were still newfound, and he told her that he loved her still. So why was that not enough?

Malachi was as bright as a blackbird, reflected in a line of upside down bottles along the bar. His one violet eye winked like starlight and three men had walked away, questioning their sexuality. He was the most beautiful thing Rosie could ever remember seeing, and she was sure she had seen many things. Once he would have been the perfect Pirate King, and she wished that she could be a ship again, so that she could carry him through a thousand new stories.

Rosie was not in love with him. He had never made her feel as if she were made from cut glass, or spindrift on the wind. He didn't touch her like the ocean had touched her, and she did not know if she would ever want to vanish behind the curtain of woodsmoke and late night dreams with him. Yet she would die for him.

Dominic (who was far closer to being Rosie's type, really) loomed in a corner which seemed to have developed its own central heating system and lost its population. A Summer Courtier in every home. Would that keep winter away? Should you keep winter away?

She meant to ask Malachi that, but the words came out all wrong.

The bar span like a carousel. Did that make Malachi a painted horse? No, he wasn't. He was a person, even if he was hers. What did that mean? Rosie remembered belonging to someone, and remembered again the wonderful sensation of security that lay in an owner's arms. Was that what Malachi sought? She wasn't big enough, or strong enough, to wrap him up and take care of him until he shone.

His hand on her cheek was soft.

"Life," he said, "is the Story that you want it to be."

Rosie's smile was as slow as the tide.

The bar was like a ship, and she was afloat in it.

She tilted her face up towards the bar and stared at the stars which winked in a thousand vodka bottles, and imagined herself flying into them forever.