Burning Man
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OOC: Backdated to February 24th
<Jesse Fforde> When Clover suggested that they build a bonfire large enough to burn things on, to cook things on, Jesse had the idea. Larch Court, yes. That’s where some of the things were. There was also the apartment at Veil Towers that he wanted to clear out; burn or sell everything before he sold the place. He didn’t want it anymore. Or maybe he could give it back to Felicity. Would she even want it?
Recently, things had been said. Words had been uttered after realisations had been made, and there was a weight on Jesse’s shoulders that had shifted. There’d been ropes tied around his heart – elastic ones. A piece of it was off gallivanting somewhere else, though that piece grew smaller and smaller until the elastic band snapped back into place again. The metaphorical organ was whole again, brimming and blooming and flowering in a way that he would be loath to admit. But he admitted it. And there was baggage he needed to get rid of.
First thing’s first, however – they had to build the fire. He led Clover out the back door into the vast garden. There were remnants from the last fire built, the rocks still in place around the perimeter, though the ground was half slushed with snow. He stared at it for a second before he glanced back through the door. “The bed. That bed, in there. Lots of wood. That can go first,” he said, heading back indoors. Sheets, quilt, mattress and all. They could buy a new one for the space, if it was required.
<Clover> The lighter had been a birthday gift, whether Jesse had acknowledged it as such or not. The bonfire had been his idea, but the lighter had a purpose, just as the flames had a purpose. The first time she’d experienced a Fforde bonfire, she’d been in the company of cherished faces, gathered with Kenlie, Victor, Ishaq, and Kaelyn. She’d had one of the better times in her relatively short time as a vampire. So it came as no surprise that she looked forward to yet another bonfire. The flames took her back to other instances and cleared her mind. Nothing more and nothing less.
The leather jacket was the first thing cast aside. She’d gone back to their Limbo apartment to grab the garment, but she had no need for the extra clothing. Her t-shirt sufficed. When he mentioned the bed, she nodded, as if he could see and hear the gesture. He moved, but she remained. Clo went toward the circle of rocks and kicked at some of the snow that had gathered in the center. Even if they had fuel for the flames, she didn’t want the collection of snow to damper their time. The snow went to one side of the rocks, moved from the interior of the circle to the exterior. How many bonfires had the rocks seen? Off the top of her head, Clover remembered two fires, but there could have been more, hundreds more, each one meaningful.
After she’d cleared the snow, Clo went to help with the bed. She took the mattress and dragged it out, even though the wooden frame was the most important part. He deserved that part. He deserved the opportunity to break the frame apart; he could have dragged the whole thing out, for all she cared. It was his fire. It was always his fire. “The first bonfire I had here, we sat back here and smoked one. It was hilarious. I think Kaelyn got high,” Clo laughed. “If it weren’t for that bonfire, I don’t think I would have gotten hooked on them. The fire, that is.”
<Jesse Fforde> As soon as Clover took the mattress away – a heavy thing, by all rights, but they were vampires and these kinds of things were easy – Jesse wasted no time in exacting a certain kind of violence upon the bed frame. His actions were not entirely angry; there was an excitable fervour to them, as of a man who suddenly found his purpose. With every crack of wood, every splintering wrench, he felt the memories slip away. Every memory associated with this bed, every romp beneath the covers, every softly spoken word, drifting into an abyss that he would never try to breach to get them back.
The wooden slats were the first thing that he carried out; he started to build them into a haphazard pile in the middle of the stones, but a pile that had a purposeful structure to it. Sticks at right angles. He knew the lacquer would help the flames, would fuel them. A chemical imbalance in the wood that was once natural.
He grinned at Clover as he made his pile. Did she know what he was doing? Did this make sense to her? Did she know why he had picked that specific bed? He was calm, though. He was happy. His eyes gleamed with a fire that wasn’t yet born; the slimy Salamander, Mandy, had all of a sudden appeared on his shoulder. That tricksy Fae, never wanting to miss out on a good inferno. “I can’t remember the last time I got high. You were probably lucky that it didn’t work for me. That none of it does,” he said. He wondered how much worse he would have been than Victor is now, if he’d been able to get drunk.
<Clover> Clover didn’t know Jesse’s reasons for selecting the bed, not that specific bed. She hadn’t put that much thought into his actions. The bed burned. They wanted the bed to burn. And so they’d brought the bed out onto the lawn to burn. Clo didn’t know whether he wanted the mattress to burn yet, since they had to start the fire and coax the fire to such a level that adding the mattress wouldn’t extinguish the small flames. She dumped the mattress next to the circle of stones, their firepit, and imagined the flames climbing into the night sky. If she’d turned, she would have made out the smaller image of Victor and Kenny’s house. They’d all lived in Larch Court. Even she had a home within the court. She’d felt secure there, just as secure as she felt at Circle.
“It doesn’t work on me either, but there was something about the inhale and exhale that made me feel as if I were getting high,” she grinned, tipping her head back to look up at the night sky. “You’re just as lucky that it doesn’t work. I don’t think I’d be an alcoholic.” She stopped there, allowing him to fill in the blank sentences that she’d left unsaid. She would have relied on something more, something different. And they would have suffered together.
For the moments that followed, she just looked up at the wavering stars. When it seemed as if she’d remain in the same exact position, she turned her attention back to the mattress and began stripping the polyester from the exterior, destroying the outer shell. The fabric created a tiny pile on the lawn, a pile of white on the patchy snow. “I brought something to burn too,” she said. She continued working, even as she spoke. She pulled away more and more fabric until there was nothing left. No, until she’d collected enough fabric to consider her job complete. Only springs remained.
<Jesse Fforde> As Jesse crouched by the small pile of wood, he gazed up at Clover. The way that she stared at the stars; the way she seemed so content here, with him. Indulging in the good memories – the memories he didn’t want to slaughter. It made him happy to see her happy; to see her unencumbered by the apparent loss of her good friends, unhindered by her possessive nature. Right now, the depression did not seem to have its claws in her, and he wanted to keep it that way.
He watched as she started to pull all the stuffing from the mattress – there’d be all kinds of scents attached to that mattress, which was why he chose not to breathe it in. Not until he’d started the fire. He reached over to grab some of the fabric which he twisted around one of the splintered bits of wood. Releasing his new lighter from his pocket, he flicked the lid and watched as the flame ignited the fabric. Whoosh! More memories, sacrificed to the ether. Mandy’s tongue flickered, the creature’s little claws clinging to the fabric of Jesse’s shirt.
He stuck the burning torch into the heart of his pile of wood – he held it there, waited until the wood started to ignite, the crackle and spit of it encouraging him to get up and retrieve more kindling. A bit more of the fluff and fabric would do, until he dragged out some of the heavier pieces of wood. “What have you got to burn?” he asked, curious. He imagined it might have something to do with Jersey or Athena. Something that was once meaningful that she now wanted to let go. They’d done this kind of thing before, hadn’t they? It was almost ritualistic.
<Clover> The object she’d collected from their apartment meant a lot to both of them. He’d once invested everything into the object, and then they’d argued over him retaining ownership. Out of everything she had to burn, from meaningless objects to meaningful objects, she’d selected Grey’s ring. She chose the ring he’d used to propose to his ex-fiancée. She meant to take one of the most important pieces of his past and set it ablaze, to bid adieu to the good and the bad attached to the object and every time, every memory, stored in the metal. Clover wanted to answer his question, but she wasn’t sure whether she had the nerve to use her words. Blurting out a response seemed like the worst possible way of answering him.
Instead, Clover rubbed her hands together, freeing her skin of stray fabric. She stuck her right hand into the front pocket of her jeans and closed her fingers around the ring. To keep him from seeing it, she’d closed her palm around the piece of jewelry. The last time they’d been together, the last time they had the ring between them, she’d broken his ribs, and he’d destroyed the items atop his ritual table. She didn’t want a repeat of the last time. “We don’t have to burn this, if you don’t want to. I didn’t think,” she stopped, tightening her hold around the ring. “When you weren’t looking, I went back for it.”
Clo finally opened her hand to reveal the gleaming silver color. She plucked it from her palm and held it up in the air, as if she were admiring it in the starlight. “I won’t break your ribs this time around. I really don’t want to argue about it either. I kept it because you kept it. Other than that, I don’t know. Maybe I understood better. I still have a lot of things in storage, I think, and everything in storage seems equivalent to this ring.” Was she rambling? Perhaps. Was she nervous? Maybe.
<Jesse Fforde> Clover seemed hesitant, almost. The way she stood, her swaying silence, had Jesse straightening, zeroing his attention upon his partner. His eyes tracked every movement, watching the hand that held the object which she claimed they didn’t have to burn if he didn’t want to. It was only then that he realised it wasn’t something of hers she’d brought, but something of his. Even before she opened her hand, he knew what it was. What else could it have been, so small as to fit so snugly in her pocket, in the palm of her hand?
She did ramble, though the words weren’t unheard. It wasn’t the ring he wanted to question. It wasn’t the fact that she had gone back for it, that she still had it, which he wanted to investigate. Strangely, he was more curious about the storage. What did she have? Where? How long would she keep it, and what exactly did it mean to her? Why was it so significant? He laughed.
