The Futurist [Pi]

[Pi dArtois]

Elliot had become a rather proficient businessman. Pi thought it surprised him as much as it made him proud that the businesses he owned were so successful and in his way, he was so damn good at it. The once gypsy musician who had spent years of his life roaming the globe with little direction and some unrealised expectation of what his life would be.

Pi often wondered what would have happened to him, where he would be if it hadn’t been for the fateful stopover on his roaming to this little backwater in nowhere Canada. The same could be said for everyone who had become a vampire. This place had turned into a Bermuda Triangle, sucking people into a void, one after another disappearing into the ether that was the vampiric life.

A Hotel California vortex where you could check out but never leave, ghosts of their humanity lingering in the world, stuck in this small place lest mortality caught up with them and sent them to their natural conclusion.

Yet here they were. Fate maybe, luck for her definitely. Lucky that she’d been noticed by a dreadlocked preacher with grandiose plans that had never panned out and who she hadn’t seen in nearly three years. A vampire who had dropped off the grid and for whom she couldn’t drum up the energy to care about. But all of it had brought her to this moment with Elliot, in finding the other part of what she’d realised was an incomplete soul.

And here he was, giving her a quick look at her ‘perfect’ as if rings cost ninety thousand dollars everywhere and there wasn’t an eyelash to bat at the extraordinarily ridiculous price tag of it. Yet, he had become a rather proficient businessman and oddly, Pi had always been a undeniably awful spender. Elliot, the man who had developed a golden thumb for making money had joined his life with a woman who had a rather uncanny inability to keep hold of it.

When he pulled out his credit card and handed it over she grinned widely.

“If they aren’t, we’ll bring them back and demand a refund.” She quipped, for once letting her guard down and enjoying the moment.

The old man gave them both a narrow look Pi couldn’t decipher. Either it was suspicion at their state of mind or something else. Another Pi, on another night would have worried about the potential suspicion and knowledge, but tonight that Pi had left the building, choosing instead to cling happily to the man kissing the top of her head, her cheek leaned against his chest. Behind his back, where her hands joined along the base of his spine her finger played with the ring she hadn’t taken off (and never would).

[Lancaster]

Elliot laughed; his mouth opened, his tongue moving to form the ‘D’ at the beginning of the sentence Damned right we will. But the words didn’t come. Gears clogged up and something in his psyche ground to a halt. This place probably wouldn’t still be here in two hundred years, and even if it was, he doubted that waltzing in telling the owner that they wanted a refund for rings they’d purchased two centuries prior would go down well. There were usually time limits on these monetary transactions. Two centuries was too long. It would be a bald-faced lie to say they’d come back in two hundred years to collect a refund, and thus the sentence didn’t pass Elliot’s lips. Instead, he huffed and yet continued to smile. Of course, he paid no mind to the expression on the shopkeeper’s face; he harboured no worry or concern. His laughter allowed the topic to slide.

Several things were needed before the transaction could be complete. First, the credit card had to be swiped; the transaction was approved, which had Elliot worried, to begin with. Surely there had to be some kind of limit to how much a person could spend in a day. But perhaps this immortal-person’s credit card came with its special perks. Less constraints. Then, forms had to be signed for insurance purposes. Boxes were prepared, even though there were no rings inside. It was as if the shopkeeper couldn’t let these precious items leave the shop without preparing everything the way he was accustomed to.

The transaction was finalised quickly and painlessly. It wasn’t long before they were making their goodbyes and the shopkeeper was thanking them and wishing them luck. Elliot held one of the little boxes in his hand. They were nice boxes. Proper navy lather with plush cream insides, a silvery-gold inlay, with a shimmering clasp. The boxes themselves were a work of art.

Out on the street, Elliot glanced left and right; but as soon as he glanced down at Pi, he couldn’t help himself. His hand snaked around her waist and he pulled her close, lifting her slight body just slightly, probably easily pulling her feet from the ground. She’d feel the hardness of the box pressing against her back. The other hand cradled her jaw and neck as he stole a kiss from her lips. A lingering kiss, that only broke free so that he could utter his question.

”What do we do now?”

The process had been quicker than he had thought it would be. Their original goal was complete. Now, he feels like there should be some kind of celebration.

[Pi dArtois]

She felt married.

Elliot pulled her into his arms, her feet leaving the ground as she molded herself against him and tilted her chin to better match the kiss he gave her. And in her heart, they were married. More than married.

It was funny how two rings could make a commitment more real, solid in a way that spoke of years of tradition that it gave gravitas with its mere presence and imbued innocuous rings with so much more than the sum of its parts. The ring sat heavily on her finger, a miniscule weight easily worn but the thought of it made her smile, made her think things she hadn’t thought of for her and Elliot. A lifetime, two lifetimes, three, five, ten.

One day in the long future ahead of them they would remember this day as the first day of what they would call their marriage. Maybe they would have another, maybe a few, maybe they would celebrate each fifty years of their life together with another non-ceremony, this one with a photograph they could line up in an album that told the still picture tale of their life together. And in those years that stretched out into an unknown distance she could imagine how seamlessly they would move together, two bodies in sync as one thought.

It was a romantic notion but she held it dear none-the-less.

When he grip around her loosened and she slid down his body to find her own feet, she stayed close loath to lose her hold on him or to move out of his arms.

It was a night for magic, for something soft and light and just for them. They hadn’t invited the masses to view their union because they hadn’t needed crowds to commit to one another (nor really had they wanted any). Not for this one. But for one night she wanted to forget either of them were vampire, or that there were obstacles they’d had to overcome in order to be together, and that there was a city filled with beasts who cut with sharp teeth and razor talons.

Tonight she wanted only the man Elliot and the woman Pi. It was this on her mind that she answered, her response that from the woman Pi would wished herself to be if she hadn’t been born to the mother she had, and who had lived through the childhood she had. This Pi was a woman in love, staring into the eyes of the man she had just pledged her love and her life to, whose ring she wore.

“Snow angels.” She replied quietly, her smile small, soft and delicate. A winter blooming orchid, shyly peeking from behind the carefully constructed glass house that protected it from the ravages of the snow outside.

Pulling him with her she made her way back the way they’d come, stopping at the clearing they had passed, a park, long deserted, snow, pristine and unmarred, soft, fluffy and deep. Still holding his hand she pulled him into the virgin snow drift, cold seeping through her jeans, chilling her legs, until she found a spot, big enough for the both of them. “Snow angels.. right here.” She said, still holding his hand she spread hers wide.

“Together?”

[Lancaster]

Snow angels were such a childish pursuit, but this did not deter Elliot. There was no hesitance within him whatsoever when Pi suggested that they enter a dark and deserted park to make their mark in the freshly fallen snow. They would make their angels, they would gallivant around the seemingly virgin expanse of space, their feet kicking the drifts into mounds, pressuring that snow into the ground. Maybe, when morning came, the commuters would see the footprints, or the smudged shapes vaguely resembling heavenly bodies and they would wonder what had happened during the night. They might imagine the exact scene that Pi and Elliot enacted; they might remember their own youth, their own nights of days gone by where they themselves had gallivanted around a park with someone they loved. Or maybe they would feel the keening sadness of those who have not experienced any such love; maybe the marks in the snow would only deepen their sense of loneliness.

Or maybe no one would notice, because everyone’s all wrapped up in their own lives. Too much so to care about anyone else but themselves. Or maybe they wouldn’t notice because more snow would fall, and all signs of Elliot and Pi’s gleeful childishness would erased from the world. At least physically, for it could not be erased from their hearts.

For although Elliot Lancaster d’Artois could often be far too serious, although his woes and emotions weighed heavily upon his heart like stones that wanted only to send him to the very depth of despair, at his very heart he was not a serious man. Not really. He preferred to be optimistic. And, he preferred to be childish. He preferred snow angels over dinners with wine and formalities. Formalities were the bane of his existence.

If Elliot were to hope for anything in their future, it would be just to be. To never have to worry; to never be victim to nostalgia for a past that he could never reclaim. On that night with Pi, however, where the rings were first placed upon their fingers, he didn’t think about the future, nor the fact that he couldn’t actually foresee there being a light at the end of the tunnel. As the years wore on, perhaps his longing for the past would only strengthen. Perhaps his woes would only get worse.

But Pi would forever be his light. He had already reached the end of the tunnel and the world that he discovered there was nearly as dark as the tunnel itself, but he would have Pi. He would have her always. And whether they may part, they would always come back together again, like two halves of a whole which could not live entirely apart.

The chill did not bother Elliot. They would make their angels; they would throw their snowballs, and they would collapse together in a heap, somewhere, in the darkness of the park beyond the reach of any light. The fresh snow would fall and dust their intertwined bodies, before they would go home, just before dawn, to indulge in a scalding shower; to melt away the frigid cold that had settled into their bodies, due to their clothes soaking up the melted Winter ice. And the rings would remain upon their fingers, weighted with meaning, that perhaps only the two of them would understand.