Fandom: Final Fantasy X Pairing: Baralai/Paine Title: Red as Snow Author: Luc Court Warnings (if applicable): Spoilers, Teen Rating Author on LJ: rabbitprint Author Website:http://www.rabbitprint.net/ Why Must This Story Be Read? Simply because it's extremely well done. He does a great job getting into Baralai's mind. The only flaw is that it can get boring, but if you can get past that, it's well worth it. :) It's a sequel to Blind Spot, but you don't need to read that fic to get this one. Luc Court's writing in general is pure poetry.
In my dream, she is smiling. That is how I know it is not real.
Her hair is long. Much longer than it should be because it is let down, long as a swordfighter would never allow it lest it become entangled in one's blade and one's eyes and that be the difference between a wound mortal and a wound slight. Her hair starts that way when I am looking at her shoulder, but by the time my gaze moves up to her face, it has transformed itself into doves that rise into the sky.
"I'm dreaming," I tell her, feathers surrounding us both. And she smiles.
That is how I know it is not real.
Which makes it so much easier to be able to look at her, straight in the face. Past those crimson eyes of hers that have always been her strongest color. I can say the truth to her, gentle, such as the reality of "You're not here." Then later, "You were never here," and eventually, "Goodbye."
She is a creature of russet when she fades away from me. Brown collapses into red like mud-water reversed when a suicide opens their veins in the river; night swells the corners of my vision while my sight is obscured. I am drowning in warm blood. Everything smells like her, right until I feel like vomiting.
When I wake, my hair is always spread out on my pillow tangled. My face is buried in its mess. The world looks grey when I first open my eyes, grey strands from my scalp and grey fibers of my pillowcase, and then I lift my head dizzily and remind myself that both are white. It takes an effort.
They say that there are teas you can drink to help you sleep better, mixtures that the shoreline healers use that taste of berries and a few from the mountains that are thickened by dust. Other charms exist that the fisherfolk use so that they will not be kept awake in terrified conviction that the thump of a barrel against the hold is actually Sin's fin come calling. Tie coins in your hair, or beads. Drink elixirs that leave you groggy the next morning. Do anything it takes, so long as you can keep your thoughts bottled up until the next day comes and you can properly distract yourself until night returns to haunt you like the smell of a lover's sweat in your clothes. Then do it again. And again. And again.
If the tossing and turning I do at night is any indication, I will need all these methods and more.