“I want to fill my mouth with your name.” — Pablo Neruda / “I’ll never leave this one alone.” — Nilüfer Yanya
♔
Everyone knows about Sylvie. At least, everyone thinks they know about Sylvie. But when you ask them what they know, they always fill their mouths with the name of a missing sister instead of the things that make her herself.
Loki, however, knew about Sylvie in a way that people who love other people did. Loki had grown up with Sylvie's grief growing inside of him as if his body was a greenhouse. It had taken root, like an invasive species. He sometimes felt like a house, the walls crumbling while the ivy smothered its face like a kiss.
If you were to look inside of Loki, you would subsequently be looking inside of Sylvia Laufeydottir too. And your eyes would grow wide at the sight of a six-foot-tall girl with white-blonde hair towering over a broken city with sparkling lights, a bigger and visceral vision of a final girl.
They had grown up together, in the shadows of the large mountains that loomed just left of their neighboring homes. He had been there when Sylvie lost her first tooth, and he had been there when Jacques left her younger sister in the lights of her rusting, silver truck.
♔
The small of her back is where she's most aware. That divot of her skin is always a bit darker than the rest of her, primarily because she wears backless clothing. The small of her back is where she's most aware, so that's where she feels it when her sister disappears.
She twists her mouth to the side as a flash of anger slams into the bones of her spine.
Her sister didn't disappear. It's a common misconception, maybe a way for her parents to cope with the loss. Sylvie knows the truth: Jacques left to make it big.
Not that Sylvie blames her. This town was liable to suck the marrow out of your bones, hold your head underwater and pretend that you weren't screaming. But she could have taken her with her, could have driven in a way that allowed Sylvie to see the opening road and not the back of her car.
A bee lands on the lower lip of her mouth, and she has the urge to close her teeth around it. It makes her shake her head sharply, look around her like someone was there, and looking inside the pink glass of her thoughts.
She lets the bee wander across her face, and looks out on the town from the roof of her home.
♔
She remembers the vigil they had, her sister's face blown up so largely, silver-blonde hair shaping the lines of her face. Her mother was inconsolable, her father shaking through the speech he had prepared.
Sylvie had wanted to scream out at all of them, yell that her sister was a vandal, that she had ruined the building of her own sister's body. But no one listened to the youngest anyway.
After, when her parents had realized that she couldn't be moved from her rigid state, they had left her in the darkening opera house.
Loki had come in, through the backdoor of the stage. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at her face in the audience. She had felt a flash of envy, tired of watching everyone but herself.
She stood, her limbs lithe and wilting, watered with nothing but her tears. Salt eroded. His eyes fell upon her black slip dress, the dripping pearl earrings she wore, the silver ring that slept on her index finger.
He smiled and his teeth were a gentle white, his cheekbones high and his mouth so full. She wondered what it would be like to bite into them; if they would break like ripe fruit, if nectar would slip from them and dribble along the lining of her own.
"You deserved better," he called out to her.
"She should have already been good," she called back.
He looked at her, in the way that he always did, like his eyes couldn't bear to look away. Like he would forget her if he stopped.
♔
When they're older, bones settled more firmly into skin and teeth no longer feeling too sharp for their mouths, Loki and Sylvie come to realize that life has small natural disasters as well as big ones.
They experience two together: the loss of contact between them and the rise of Sylvie in the modeling industry.
The loss of contact is on purpose, and so is Sylvie's rise. She's always been ambitious and cutthroat, allowing bees to sting her if that meant she could still reach the honey.
It's a small crime, Loki thinks, piling on top of the other things he most likely still holds against her.
He's walking into work when the advertisement catches his eye. The billboard is large and rectangular, her face smooth and angled, her eyes larger than life and he has the sudden perspective of Sylvie as that six-foot-tall visceral vision of a final girl again.
Her mouth is the darkest part of her, her hand reaching out to the other model on her left. His mouth twitches, as he thinks about how leaving was always her direction.
He calls Wanda and gives her something to do.
As he turns away, to finally walk inside of that door, he swears that Sylvie's eyes follow him. He feels like a butterfly underneath the glass, wings pinned into the wood, and body a brilliant, hot blue.
The billboard is black and white.
♔
She gets the call and screams, anger ripping through her like death by a thousand cuts. Anger, that is only grief, that is only guilt.
Her hair is long today, extensions added to make the high ponytail weighty and full. She's just gotten home, and her body feels lit up, sparks trailing down her spine and into the pink of her gums.
He wants her to be in his latest music video, he wants to serenade her where she can't escape, with her hair up or maybe down. She doesn't fucking care.
She's listened to everything he's put out. Almost obsessively, her therapist would say. But Mobius doesn't know anything ( or maybe he does because when he puts out the theory that she listens to his music to feel connected in a way that won't be confrontational, her face goes white and she bites her lip so hard that it bleeds ).
So, anyway, she's listened to everything he's put out. She used to tell people, like Ravonna, before she realized that they didn't care and that she was giving too much of herself to people who wanted her to disappear when she became too much.
( She hasn't texted Ravonna since their fight three years ago ).
Unlike most people, the songs are actually about her. He sings about her birthmark on her right thigh, and she cries because he had kissed it before she kicked him out and changed the locks.
It's the way you can't help but trust him, Mobius had said. It's the way he takes away control.
The songs are all about her, the way she hates her nose, and how he keeps eating the same things as her. He sings about feeling caught in another person, about feeling intertwined in the space between another's vertebrae, about feeling lost in the water of someone's throat.
And all of it makes her angry because who is he to feel so beautiful in his loss? She wilted, and now she stood, in the same cracked citadel of the city she had lost. And he got to leave the city, got to leave her with the most damage.
But he left you with yourself, her brain tells her.
"I am the damage," she cries.
It takes her a moment to realize that it was out loud. Her voice sounds tired, and her body is too. She lays down on the wood of her apartment floors, her towering ponytail splaying out behind her like blood, her legs bare, and her body covered in a black bodysuit.
There are still flower petals around her eyes, leftovers from the extravagant shoot makeup. They're the sharpest, most brilliant blue.
♔
He can't stop looking at her. Her hair is longer now, a little past her shoulders, and dyed a dark blonde. She looks tired, and her shoulders are thin.
Her mouth is full and the darkest part of her, the pink of her tongue coming forward to swipe at the bodies of her teeth.
They're at a coffee shop, and it's quiet. The color scheme is burnt orange and chocolate brown, dark and warm, and reminiscent of when things were better. Her hands are bare, two fingers kissed upon with rings.
Her mascara is green, her liner brown.
She's beautiful.
"Thank you. For coming. I know it was hard."
Her face snaps taut and then she nods.
"Well, it's a good proposition."
It goes quiet again, and awkwardness comes alight to settle along the shallow valleys of their clavicles. She looks on the verge of tears, and he realizes that he is too.
"Did you find her, Sylvie?"
Saying her name feels like a war, and the look she gives him feels like she's lost.
"Fine, I'll bite." Her lips purse together for a moment. "Who did I find, Loki?"
He smiles briefly at the familiar way she says his name, light on its beginning and hard on its end.
"Your sister."
Her face sours, and she's so fucking beautiful. His fingers itch to write about it.
"That's who you're doing it all for, right? That's what you told me before you left."
He knows it’s not smart, shooting all the bullets from his gun at the dawning of a battle, but he can't help the surge of resentment that rises at the sight of her.
"I did."
The answer surprises him.
"Didn't like her much anymore."
She leaves and he watches her from the alcove where they were once both sitting. The light changes, and she goes left.
♔
Her sister had become an actress, and their meeting had been another part to play. In some magazine article or another, Sylvie had read that Jacques would be attending the party being hosted by the same small artist they knew.
His name was James or something along those lines, and she knew him through a friend of a friend. He'd liked her well enough to invite her to his next party/showing, and she'd felt well enough to accept.
She'd gotten all dolled up too, beautiful with her luminous eyes outlined with white eyeliner and her skin dewy with finishing spray. She'd worn a simple corset top, her skort shot but tiered and spattered with tiny diamonds.
She felt show-stopping but in that quiet way she always had, in a way that wasn't immediate but happened as you continued to absorb her presence.
Needless to say, her sister had taken one look at her and paled, like a darling ghost. Sylvie would have laughed if she wasn't so full of color in comparison, her anger spiking throughout the building of her body, her skin flushing red, all hot and fast.
Jacques had gaped like a fish, hands flying out to first touch her face, then her chest, then Sylvie. Sylvie stepped back and the act cracked for a moment, hurt slashing across her sister's face like a wound.
Sylvie had smiled tremulously and held her hand out to her own blood.
"I'm Sylvie. You?"
Jacques's face crumpled, and she took her hand, gave her her name in return.
♔
The set of the music video is gorgeous. It's somewhere in the deepest recesses of Pakistan, practically gorged with mountains and lakes.
Like all of her lights are on, she feels a little lighter like she is no longer the dead man in the pool.
Her mouth is bitten pink, her mind a bit scattered with nerves. Loki sits beside her, hair curling at the nape of his neck, a pair of small gold hoops dangling from his ears.
Half of his face is away from hers, and she's grateful for the one reprieve.
( Half of her was turned away from him when his voice cracked, when she still chose to leave, and when she pulled over to cry and it was still in her head. )
"Did you listen to the song?"
"Yeah, of course."
Her hair is wet from a dip in the lake, dark and heavy with the pressure of moisture. He's completely dry in comparison, making her feel naked in her emerald-colored one piece.
"Um," she breathes out, "it's nice. Sure to be a sell-out."
He recognizes it for what it is: a peace offering. The small of her back is so aware of him next to her, and his eyes meet the side of her face.
She is very much refusing to look at him, to admit defeat.
He's smiling, she can feel it. There's a low hum and then he stands, hands hidden in the silk-lined pockets of his tailored pants.
"Wonderful. So you can do it then, I suppose."
Her head whips around so quickly that her hair flies and sticks to the front of her face, strands blurring her vision as she scowls.
"I could always do it."
He laughs.
"I know."
He's always sounded so British, for someone supposed to be from the farther north of Europe.
He turns and starts to walk back to the house, and she slips back into the water.
She's worn blue mascara today, and it's all fallen away under the water.
♔
She doesn't sing at all. Instead, she performs the part of the woman Loki is crooning about. They take wide shots of her, close-ups of her hands and her mouth, blurred takes of her visage.
Her face feels bare, but she knows she has makeup on. The song is a pop song, Loki's rough timbre shaking across the words as he asks why's his phantom lover has gone.
Except she's not a phantom, she's not a ghost. She's here, so real that it hurts, so real that her tongue tastes like blood even though it hasn't been bitten.
Her hair falls into her face as she bends forward to touch her toes easily, to pull her leg to a point beyond her head. Only he would remember that she was trained professionally in dance.
Her body moves to the music almost naturally, like a soft pulse steadily growing stronger. He aches for her in the lyrics and she aches for him now.
There's still a lot to talk about, and that scares her more than anything else. She doesn't like the talking, the hashing out, the confrontation.
But she's always had bravado, and maybe that will get her through.
They take a break, and her phone lights up. It's a notification from Instagram, and she almost ignores it. Until she sees the handle of the profile that's messaged her.
@shesjacques: I miss you. I'm so sorry. Can we talk when we get back?
She almost wonders how she knows she has gone from the country, but then remembers the promo that they've been posting from the minute the collaboration was announced.
She doesn't respond, but that brightness that emanates from her phone settles deep within her, falling to the depths of her stomach.
When Loki looks up and catches her gaze, she's struck with the sudden thought of the glow being so bright that it shines through the skin of her chest, like when you ate a watermelon when you were young and thought that something would start to grow.
♔
She tells him the full story of her sister the next day, while he eats breakfast. It's an intimate feeling, and he leans against her leg on the floor of their rented home.
It feels like forgiveness, but it’s not and she knows this. He does too. But it’s a start.
♔
He's always gravitating towards her. Wanda raises an eyebrow almost every day but says nothing, focusing herself on the perfection of this project.
He's now in his room, the walls bare and white, the room so spacious that it feels like he's inside the mouth of a gentle creature. He wants to go to her, but he's always been too easy.
At least that's what Ravonna had said before he found out what she'd done to Sylvie and cut her off.
He wondered if people understood how it was the more devastating type of loneliness when you knew the same people but were no longer allowed to know each other.
A friend of a friend was a comforting statement when said out loud, in passing at a dinner or a party. But it became almost suffocating when you were alone at night, scrolling through picture-perfect poses and wishing it were you kissing their cheek.
"I wanted to be devastating," her voice reveals as she steps into his room.
He's been speaking out loud he realizes, a habit he's picked up from when he has ideas for lyrics and doesn't want to forget to write them down.
He's so aware of her, can practically taste her skin if he looks hard enough, and she looks at him like she has always done: like he's left her, as if he's gone, as if he's translucent and something she continually hungers for.
Her dress is a slip dress, her toes painted a stark white, her eyeliner a dark tropical green.
Her hair is wet from water, and her lips—
"I wanted to be so devastating that I would block out my sister with the weight of me. But she still was loved, and I was this girl with so much anger and no one she loved."
She looks at him, her eyes so blue and framed by long lashes made longer by jet black mascara.
"I cut everything off to achieve the dream," she says, quiet and reflective. She's looking at that same bare wall.
But it's supposed to be your dream, not a dream , he thinks.
Her head snaps toward him, her eyes a dark blue like the act of drowning until you're so heavy that you become the water.
He's said that out loud too.
♔
They fly back privately, Sylvie is a soft shape against the face of the window. She’s fallen asleep, and Loki had learned long ago that this was the only time she let go of whatever it was that she was holding.
Or whatever it was that was holding her.
He feels a flash of sorrow as they land smoothly, but also a small facet of joy at the thought of her rest not being disturbed by the jolt of the wheels on the tarmac.
He raises himself out of his seat and leans over her. His fingers brush the bare skin of her shoulder and he feels electric.
"Darling, wake up."
Her eyes flutter open and something crosses over her face, a fleeting emotion that seems to last forever for both of them.
"We're home."
And it is only then that he realizes he's whispering.
He gathers their luggage and exits first, feet touching the metal of the stairs until they meet earth instead. She comes out after him, a lithe figure framed against the deep color of the sky.
She looks at him then, eyebrows bending till they change her face, hair unstyled and curled at the tops of her shoulders.
He misses her already. She comes down the stairs, the plane emitting light from the open entrance. She's a bit taller than him ( he'll never admit it, really ) and kisses the pale column of her throat.
"Please don't disappear again."
She bends her head till it rests on his, her hand settling in his hair, stroking the path of his scalp, centering them.
"I won't. I can't give it all up anymore."
She pulls away and presses her forehead against his.
"I'm tired," she whispers, her voice cracking.
But he sees it for what it is: an apology.
"I know."
I accept, he tells her later, but you have to be better.
"You have to rest," he says now, out loud.
Her lips are so dark. He thinks if he wasn’t holding her, she’d collapse, a building that finally gave way, that had finally been leveled.
♔
@silverstarsylvie: i know you are, but it isn't enough right now. maybe at some point, we'll work up to coffee, or a simple walk together, but i can't right now.
@silverstarsylvie: i'm not in any sort of terrible rage over you now, but i'm tired. you left me and left divots in me, sharp visible things, like horrible dimples.
@silverstarsylvie: you'll always be my sister, but i'm not sure if i'm ready to be yours. i hope you understand and give me time.
@shesjacques: Ofc. I love you, that never changed. I hope you're well.
( seen just now ).
♔
His lips do not burst like fruit when they touch hers, but she still imagines it inside of her head.
She's almost always in her head, she realizes, has been, and has coped through it all that way.
She pictures his lips as a pomegranate, sparkling red with juice and so full, so desirable. She imagines that their kiss is the instance in which the pomegranate is tossed against the wall, breaking into more than what it started as, red juice as the shrapnel and sticky as it dries.
Her eyes are closed so tightly when she pulls away, so she can keep the image painted against the black of her eyelids.
She's inside of her head, and his lips against her palm pull her back out.
Her eyeliner is a dark orange which she thinks should be the color of trust.
It makes her eyes that hot, bright, brilliant blue.