Letters to her. (Zodiac)

[Cristiana]

Her mind spewed the thoughts she kept in as her own fears. She was asked to start, and the mind spew came out without filter.

“Are you going to get upset the next time I go out of town on business or fall asleep for a few days or weeks? Do you still feel the same? Is waking up and returning mainly for you not enough? Is this all for nothing? Are you still into this?” She looked up and fell silent. She gave no reason why she would be this nervous but she was. It was burned deep into her gut, and manifesting in other ways like things not getting done because she was distracted by other things in life. “Do you want to try?” She said quieter.

“I know you are not perfect and my expectations of this are high. But it is only because I believe in this and us. I look at you and see how beautiful you are. It’s not just your looks, it is your soul. You are kind and giving without expectations of a return. You put yourself out there even for your friends, for the people you care about and get overlooked.” She paused for a moment and the look of love splashed over her features. . “Look at you! Look at how you dressed tonight! You look stunning! Mouth dropping! And all so we can have this conversation? My fear is … you realize I am not good enough for you and walk away. That as much as I work this is me hiding my head in the sand like an ostrich so I can’t and don’t deal with the bigger issues at hand, like the problems with us, so I work! Like the problems with my childer. We’ve both lost so much and it weighs on us, the past relationships. Is this just a fling as a rebound from them?” She stopped to sipping the drink in front of her. Zodiac wanted to know all that was going on in her mind.

“What happens if it doesn’t work out? We can make promises to be friends but who knows what will happen and if it ends badly and we can’t get past that if we move forward. There is so many variables. Are you willing to lose what we have now? Is there more in store for us? I mean look at the shambles of this town and what a sad state it has become. Politics have ripped relationships apart in the past that everyone thought was solid? What if that happens?” Her find slid over the pack of cigarettes but she toyed with them nervously rather than pulled a cigarette out and light it up. She was fidgeting again. No matter how she fought against it. The feelings she had for this woman exceeded what she could ever comprehend or say. To say I love you seemed obsolete at this point because Zodiac knew she loved her, but she didn’t understand the extent of how amazing she seen Zodiac.

For the longest time they had been friends. She watched how much this woman helped people. Her admiration for Zodiac wasn’t misplaced. She was the glue to sanity for many. The ear and shoulders to many more. And guide, that can’t be forgotten. She’d guided so many with her readings. How does she not see past the bad parts of her past are just a fragment of what makes her such a beautiful person.
But was it their time? She really wanted it to be their time, but… but… but… always a what if and but in the way.

[Zodiac]

Whatever buzz that had been starting to form vanished when Crissy began to speak. She kept her face friendly and did not let go of the woman’s hand. She had asked and now she was getting. Zodiac did as she always done for the living, the dead, and the ones in-between.

She listened. Not just with her ears but other senses as well and as she did she separated the nonsense from the important. Some of it she latched on to tightly while the rest fell into a holding spot of semi important to be addressed later and then the stuff not worth her time rolled on down to the exit of her brain. The girl could not help it. It was how she had been trained to think when dealing with others. Sessions with the cards were quite akin to someone babbling away like Crissy was doing, but at a slower, controlled pace. Both the truth and the ******** came out in the process. Not that Zo would ever come out directly and call another person’s view ******** to their face in a session. No one wants to hear what the feel their innermost feelings are and basically nonsense and especially not at a moment like this. No, she would gently guide them to come to that revelation themselves while pointing out the truths.

Once Crissy had grown silent, she took a sip of her own drink. It had taken some determination for Crissy to say as much as she did, but now she had to process it. Zodiac picked up the pack of cigarettes the woman was in danger of poking to death and took one.

”Well, first things first.” she smiled as a small plume of menthol laced smoke escaped her lips. ”I would like you to try and see something from my perspective and I want you to keep in mind I am accusing you of nothing. Do you understand?”

She stood up and stretched and began to walk around the table slowly as if deep in thought. Her body movement suddenly quite different. She was not walking as if to preserve her modesty in the brief clothing she chose to wear that night, but as if she was in her parlor dressed the way most would expect of her. She paused and leaned on the back of the chair she had been sitting on and looked deeply into the woman’s eyes.

”Will I get mad? That is such an interesting question. I don’t get mad. I truly don’t. Everybody does it. I understand people have more things to do in this world than keeping me happy. I have done it myself at times. Business is business and such. Personal quests, vendettas, blood oaths, a long winters nap and the like? Been there, done that.”

She paused. Another puff of smoke as a odd looked settled into her eyes. ”The difference is, I tell people. The people I half way give a **** about know. Do I get that consideration in return? Hardly. People I have loved, my childers, people I would have followed forever. Suddenly, they gone. Not a visit, phone call, telepathic message, text, Facebook posting or Post It Note. Just GONE!”

A bit of anger slipped into her mindspeak now, despite her efforts to stay calm. ”Of course I try to find out what happened, and no body knows. My efforts to contact them? Zero results.”

She began to pace. ”Tempy vanished without a word. As did the majority of my childers and others. How long has Tempy been gone? Without a word? Tempy, Allie, Velveteen, shall I keep adding to the list? There is a bunch of them. Not everyone was a lover in my bed. Some where the best friends one could ever hope for. People I trusted, respected, looked to for advice and guidance. Gone. And I have no clue what happened to them or why. Was it me? Did I drive them away with my own brand of neediness? Are they still alive or are they floating in the shadow realm? And what if they expired outside the range of the realm? Gone forever and I don’t have a single clue what happened and why? And is it my fault?”

Zodiac lashed out at an empty table-sending it crashing into the wall. ”I can’t deal with such uncertainties any more. If someone is leaving– say so! Taking time to sort things out? Fine, but let me know what is going on! Maybe a text during the process saying ‘Hey, I’m cool’ or something.”

“I don’t think I am asking so much.” She stood there shivering as if she was freezing. ”If you want to discuss us as more than friends– that is the deal breaker. You let me know what is going on and I swear on my grandmother’s soul I will do the same for you. But if you can’t do that? We friends. Always have been and probably always will be, but I don’t need that pain in my life anymore. Am I making sense now?”

[Cristiana]

Cristiana jumped up from her seat when the table went flying. It was an instinct, to flinch and get up. She watched Zodiac, one step, one foot in front of the other she closed the distance between them. Her arms enveloped around the woman as she spoke into Crissy’s mind. “That is fair. More than fair.”

Even with the tremors the woman was letting off, she didn’t think it was so much shaking as it was waves of negative energy coming off her. “I will tell you, talk to you about coming and goings. I can do that,” She looked at her, “Because there is nothing else more in this world that means a damn as much as you do. You are more than a friend, and if telling you hey I am heading out of town is what is needed, then that is what it takes.” She looked over at the woman, her features softening as she looked at her.

“Don’t you see, I always woke up and when I did, it was to you I went to find. I’m sorry I didn’t mention going to sleep for long periods but I just never thought anyone cared if I disappeared. It was the depression and anxiety, I just never thought I mattered much here in this town.” She said sadly and actually meaning every word. It was how she felt, like her existence was more a hindrance to people in the town. She was nothing more than the class **** up.

Her lips brushed over the woman's forehead. A tender press of the lips before pulling back just as quick. With a shake of her head, “Sometimes, the mirrors lie and so does my mind. It tells me no one cares, no one wants me around. Sometimes, it says nothing matters and there is no love for you. Look at everything. Gaijin hit me, Quoth fought with me then left without warning, even the two I looked up to just …. Well Micah was a different case. But I was thinking of him like a sire and poof, he stopped coming around like I didn’t matter. I tried to call on him and he never had time for me. I was out of his little family. Tempy, just left. I felt it too. But it just made me withdraw.”


“Aurelius cheated on me and left me. Then tried to come back and when I said no he left… but the worst one, the one that hurt was Vaughn/Zwei. Well Quoth hurt but when I lost Vaughn or his other half Zwei … my heart felt as though it was ripped out, thrown on the ground and spit on… before blowing it to pieces with a shotgun but worse because it was all my fault. I can see every moment I went wrong with him like when we died together and he finally came out of the SR, I turned my back on him and he never did that to me. There was the childer, all of them even the more recent ones. I’ve felt it too Zodiac. But when I woke up all I could think of was …. Where is Zodiac?”

She pulled away, all the way off and stepped away pacing herself. She lit another cigarette, because the old one burned out in the ashtray. “To lose you, I think would hurt worse than I have ever felt. I can’t even fathom the pain of it. We are more than friends, aren’t we?” This is where she felt off, the not knowing. It not being clear. All she could think of was to curl into a little ball and not feel the agony of possibly losing someone so important. “All I know is I love you, and in this crazy ******* world there isn’t a lot of love as I feel toward you. If that isn’t something, I don’t know what is.”

[Zodiac]

She stood there listening, Not resisting the hug or the kiss. Crissy seemed to understand what she was saying and the inner rage slowly began to seep out of her. ”So you understand? I don’t need to know normal comings and goings of anyone, but I cannot help how I act when it is someone I care about in some capacity just vanishing.”

“I become afraid,” her mindspeak barely a whisper now. ”It takes a lot for me to care, and once I do it is hard to simply shrug my shoulders and say ‘Oh well, they are probably gone for good-time to move on.” Her stance relaxed as she watched the woman. She knew this behavior from Crissy. She put herself firmly out on a limb and was waiting for said limb to break or if Zodiac would saw it out from under her like some cartoon character. She blinked softly and smiled as Crissy admitted her feelings.

”It is something,” she answered when the woman finally finished talking. She lifted off the floor just enough to allow her to drift towards Crissy. ”And yes, when I realize I have not heard from you in a while, the thought ‘Where is the brat?’ gets stuck in my head till I have an answer.” Zodiac’s hands reached out and lifted Crissy’s face up to look at her.

”We both have lost, we both know the pain, so we can make sure not to leave each other in dire emotional straits, yes?” She drifted closer till the pair was almost touching each other. ”There is probably half a hundred other things about me that would have you screaming in less than a week if you were around me all the time. Just as I am sure there are things about you that would do the same to me. But in the end, after all this time, we usually find ourselves standing in the same area all ‘Hey hoe. What’s up?’ That matters more than you think it does.”

A soft kiss touched Crissy’s lips before the gypsy pulled her closer into a deeper kiss. Arms snaking around her back and shoulders. ”You love me? I love you too. Always have, so why not?”

[Cristiana]

It seemed like forever before she had whispered those words that sent her heart soaring. It was exactly what she needed to hear. Zodiac did love her, and there was more here. Where Zodiac’s hardships feel into what if she leaves, Cristiana’s was what if it is one sided, if she never did and I was just yet again a plaything. It had kept her biting back feelings, or even expressing those feelings as much as she wanted too.

Crissy reached into her pocket, pulling something out and holding it in a closed palm. “I was hoping you would say that.” Holding out her hand she showed Zodiac the rings, two of a matching set. “It's not a wedding ring, so don't think I would be that silly, just a reminder of who holds my heart.” She tapped Zo’s pointer finger, “So you can look down and even in the darkest times know I am still there, still here. No matter where I am, or what bum is trying to pick up the bartender that night, this is where I belong and it’s home.” There was one for each of them so they could forgo their doubts, let go of their fears. Crissy has had them in her pockets for a while now, for when the moment was right.

Zodiac perhaps intentionally left an opening for jokes. So many jokes! “Oh I know a few things to have you screaming darling, but I don’t think it would be a bad thing.” She laughed, the opening was left wide and she just had to fill it in.

So what happens now? They get keys to each other places?.... Which she was pretty sure they already had those. It was always new and exciting, but this was what felt right after all those years of feeling wrong or misguided. Something had always held her back and here is where she felt as if she could be her whole self and not be judged. Instead of saying all that, she grabbed Zodiac and kissed her dipping her backwards as she did.