writing again

[walk_ins]

It's been nearly nine months since they came to Taos.

After several false starts, including several days' reversion to the bizarre form of aphasia she had at the Academy, Zillah has started writing poetry again.

The poem form is called an ovillejo.

Too late to smell the rising smoke,
You woke.
I'd risen early, looked around
And found
The collar that you'd placed upon
Me gone,
Like fog that fades away at dawn.
I set a match to standing hay,
I set my foot upon the way;
You woke, and found me gone.

Zillah sits curled on the couch with her knees drawn up and her chin resting on one of them, watching her poem as it flutters through the woman's hands.

Comments

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie sits with one foot tucked underneath her and the other tapping idly at the leg of the armchair, reading the poem. She looks up at Zillah.

"Thank you. For showing me this."

[walk_ins]

"It was a dream," Zillah murmurs. "I caught it. In the words. They, they came when I called them, and they stayed where I put them down."

Her eyes flick up from the paper to meet Charlie's gaze, and in her face is a strange frightened joy.

"I remembered. I remembered how I did it."

[ladyfirestarter]

"I'm glad."

Something of an understatement for this exultation, this triumph. She can't rein in the smile that's already stretching her cheeks; it hurts good.

[walk_ins]

"Your dream," the girl says unexpectedly, straightening a little. "I think it was yours."

[ladyfirestarter]

"Mine?"

The smile slips.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

[walk_ins]

"Not --" Zillah shakes her head. "Not your dream. Said it wrong." She bites her lip, frustrated. "A moment's touch, recognition. Gold and blue flame wraps the singing wood. No. Still too -- "

A breath, and then very slowly and clearly: "Your memory. Something you remembered. I dreamed it."

[ladyfirestarter]

Something you remembered.

The woman's face is very still.

"Give me a match," says a little girl sitting in the same seat, her voice trapped and desperate. "I'll light it."

Blink and there's no little girl, and no one spoke.

[walk_ins]

"No. I know. Wasn't like that." She's looking down at her knees. "But --in the dream. It all just opened. And we came out. Came home."

She looks up. "And I may safely write it now," she says earnestly, "and you may safely read."

[ladyfirestarter]

Her smile comes back; it's a little sad, and a little wistful, but a genuine smile for all that.

"It sounds like it was a good dream."

[walk_ins]

Zillah looks unexpectedly pensive at that, and doesn't answer right away.

Finally, in the tone of someone making a careful distinction: "It made a good poem."