Chapter 3
The bathhouse was stone-built and subterranean, dug into the dirt and clay, the walls steam-glazed so that when Gabrielle crossed the threshold into the dark, candle-lit room, her fingers cradling the wall for guidance left a wet streak of three lines in parallel, collecting drops which ran down her digits into her knuckles, coalescing into a single stream on the ulnar side of her hand, down her forearm; the warmth of the air hazing her mind as she feels the heat down her throat, but the shock of cold from the walls keeping her just lucid enough to navigate—one hand on the wall, one hand on her, her back—fingers first then fully a palm between her shoulder blades as the sweat made her too slippery to simply touch, she had to be connected, more skin, as if the salted shell were a conspiracy to rid her of Gabrielle, to have her glide off like dust but I am not dust, she thinks, I’ve spoken to Gods, I am an Amazon queen, I am a bard, a storyteller, a chronicler, and I am your companion! but does the skin care what she is capable of? only if I am inside of it… as the passage ends her fingers leave the wall with a flick, throwing droplets of dew onto unknown, unseen ground, darkened, and a bath surrounded by candles in a void, and as the warrior moves out of reach to remove her armor, it smacks on the ground, surprising Gabrielle, who keeps forgetting she’s awake, in the haze, breathing, drops from the ceiling falling onto her lip, as the void, and not caring of the source she licks the lip dry again, absorbing as the ground, which the warrior catches in her turn back toward Gabrielle, who watches her undress in a lid-heavy gaze, licking her lips, does she even realize I’m looking right at her? thinks the warrior as she steps to the bath, needing to submerge for the missing palm from her back had chilled to ice, the missing fingers drip moisture from the three-pronged streak in the wall now crack knuckles to keep from feeling shy (if music fills the air then this may be like a scene in a play, scored dramatics, theater for mass consumption, love affair of archetypes, student and teacher, but without this song of bones it feels too real perhaps, or perhaps not real enough, like a dream, and is the stage less real than a dream, is it somewhere safe we can exist and have no names beyond who and what we are to each other (do I speak your name in my dreams?) thinks Gabrielle, but not really, more what the warrior imagines what Gabrielle is thinking—it’s hard not to think of her when she’s right in front of her eyes, it’s hard not to turn toward the internal when she sees her, or rather, when she sees her looking at her, but even still, even still the warrior thinks of hands, calloused hands gripping staves and sai, battle-worn but still tender when dragging across her bare flesh scratching that which she caresses and cares for like the sting in lye, the bites of leeches (cleansing her of her bloodied skin, the excess inside of her draining and draining making safe her choleric temperament), that roughened hand that says I am strong but I can always be gentle for you (if you want me to, Gabrielle might have thought, though the warrior never quite lets her take full control, and though she knows she is permitted to, she feels strange treating her lover with anything but softness, all the softness she can, anyway)), cracked knuckles echo and ring in the bathhouse like quick snaps of tin, metal rocks clacking, a fallen stone and then those hands move to herself and unbuckle and disrobe hardly looking away keeping the warrior in her internal state breathing in steam as though drinking in dreams, dreams of Gabrielle, hunched over tightening her abs, squeezing every gods-damned muscle in her body like an idol of ecstasy—never meant to feel relief always too much in that way that dreams can be, in that way cruelty can be, an idol of cruelty—never meant to feel relief, always too much in that way drama can be—and like a dream she wishes Gabrielle would sing to her, something light, and as though reading her mind, Gabrielle drops into the tub [HEAVENS TO THE VOID] with a hum in tune, a note in resonant frequency with the vibrations in the water, the vapor, the fire, the air, the earth which builds this house, the energy between them and this plane of the universe on this planet held up by Yggdrasil, in this year of the yuga in this, the yuga of chaos and strife—one note, then two in succession downwards matching her descent, notes submerging, drowning, dripping and like those three lines grazing the wall the echoes in the room form a chord in harmony, one unit greater than the sum of its constituent energies, if only because of its singleness [THE UNIVERSE EUPHONIC POETRY] and as the two meet closer in the water, soft touches, softening and blurring the boundaries (between me and you), between one moment and the next, between the events starting perhaps when she entered the room, one or the other, and did it start when I felt her touch/did it start with my hand on her back/did it start before we stepped into the house/the bath/when I finally caught her eye/did it start when I licked my lips dry? she thinks, licking her lips again, sweat now salting like blood, blood, cleaning her wound, her wound, maybe it started there, when things started feeling new and strange, when I’ve lost the plot/I feel sensitive/I feel broken, spongey flesh squeezing water into her, squishing pruned fingers into the other, trading fluids of the flesh, and though they kiss spit-strings attached to hard palate and tongue broken by inserted lip (glowing soft in the candlelight) the wound would not leave her mind, and Ares not hers, and well maybe sometimes Gabrielle forgets who is who when she is her best friend’s speaker, her companion, her chronicler, and when her tongue is in her mouth pressing down on teeth does not her mouth open and is it not her breath spilling out—has not this wound affected me? Misery strikes Gabrielle and things become far too clear, but not for clarity of events but rather too awake to continue in this haze, to continue in her embrace, not without having her back—understanding now fully the warrior’s maudlin demeanor (the warrior, herself, reacting to touches suddenly hard, thoughtless, mind elsewhere, feeling tired, out of it, cold, as the bath inevitably runs, filled with their mixed filth, and how bad of an idea might it have been anyway were we to…), Ares’ objections (why can’t she get him off the mind?), and as the warrior crouches naked rubbing the dirt off her leather, and the steam clears from the room, the house simply becomes a house, the bath a bath, and nothing they have is anything in this moment, and their eyes don’t meet, and everything simply stops.
“We should leave tonight,” the warrior says without looking up.
Exiting the bath, water hanging onto her as teardrop statues in relief, falling off crumbling as the great earthquake shivers the temple of her body, Gabrielle answers, “shouldn’t we get some good rest? We already got a room and…” forgetting briefly her name—or was it the curse she had forgotten?—“…and we need to let our clothes dry, I need new sandals!”
“I got you new sandals,” again without looking, “while you ran off with Ares.”
Struck briefly without an answer, she managed to eke out an obvious, embarrassed, “how did you…”
“I could feel it, hear him… hear you.” She finally looks up with a disapproving shake of the head, “Gabi why didn’t you tell me? You know how much I trust you; it took so much to not run in there and…” she stops momentarily, feeling silly in her response before ultimately deciding she wants the word she had been agonizing over spoken aloud like a spell: “protect you.”
Gabrielle wanted to feel her tenderness, her vulnerability she wanted to match with quiet and calm, but she said nothing and let the discomfort hang in the air—too frustrated that her moment with Ares couldn’t be private, couldn’t believe that after all this time she couldn’t be trusted alone. (Gabrielle had always reasoned that she couldn’t be overly sensitive about this, for it is not her helplessness that causes her companion’s protection but rather it is the warrior’s need to protect her beloved, a feeling that cannot be so easily waived away, muscle memory, as though Gabrielle were her own beating heart and any cut to her could suffocate her in bad blood almost instantly, but still, from the perspective of one who knew the nature of the conversation, the feeling of it, she couldn’t help but feel the words condescend.)
Cold sweat drops from her bellybutton, making a ravine of her hair, before filling her cunt.
The warrior, knowing now she will not feel validated in her concern, much as Gabrielle knew she would not be seen as someone who had grown, developed, changed and bettered, flicks her eyes away again, to break the curse of reflection, and relents, “we can rest on the way.” And another attempt to connect, “we sleep better in the dirt anyway.”
“It’s going to be muddy,” Gabrielle says, failing to hold back a delighted smile, their shared masochism a point of joy she had to give into.
“We can wash off in a cold creek,” she says, with the out of breath timbre of one holding back a laugh, “dry off with leaves, eat a small fish or two.”
Gabrielle giggles, “It’s good to know you’re still you, after all.” The warrior reacts with a grimace but the wound is only flesh-deep, her desire to connect too strong, too needed to psychologically absorb the playful mockery of her condition, her skin steel-tough for Gabrielle nearly always (sometimes for guilt, sometimes for love, sometimes for practicality for the two must endure each other’s presence, above all, and it is hard to be around anyone all the time, even your best friend), but Gabrielle catches her reaction nonetheless and immediately apologizes, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that… too soon.”
The warrior throws a prayer to Aidos to keep her shame free from vanity before uttering an “it’s okay” with a forced smile, cleaning the metal blade of her chakram, polishing it to where its cloudly haze dissipates and reveals a reflection, a sliver of her own face, nothing below her eyes, nothing above them, and the faintest ghost of Gabrielle’s naked torso, with the warrior thinking, wow, still in prayer to the Goddess of shame, when did she get so strong?