Everyday Love: Entries 1 and 2

Entry 1, three days after Silk Talons: Chapter 8

From Ginal's Journal:

In the last few moths, my life has been moving faster than it ever has.  My mind and heart are constantly racing with thoughts and feelings that are growing more difficult to sort through, so maybe writing them down here will help me make sense of everything.

I've spent my life fantasizing about finding someone who would accept me and love me, and now that I finally have Selah, I can admit to something I never thought I'd need to.  I'm really damn scared.

On the one hand, Selah's shown me a consistent patience and understanding for my shortcomings and insecurities that make me more grateful by the day that I've met her.  I also have no doubt that she loves me and wants to be with me.  I see it in her eyes, I hear it in her voice, I feel it when she takes my hand.

But there's a hesitancy there, sometimes.  An uncertainty, maybe?  It's as though she's holding something back, or is unsure of us.  Or me?

I wish I knew why this was, but there's still so much she's not told me about her life before me.  I remember what she said about her family throwing her out of their home, just because they found her with a woman.  I guess an Ishgardian wedding is out.  Miounne had mentioned something about how Selah was never as invested in her past lovers as she is in me, and Ywain will only tell me to "be patient, for she'll tell you in time."

I know you've been through something hard, Selah.  Is that why you hold back?  I pray you can find the trust in me to tell me.  I pray you know I'm here for you.

I'm also feeling conflicted about our love making.  Don't get me wrong, I love the sex I have with Selah.  It truly does feel as good as I used to fantasize it would, and there's an intimacy beyond the physical that makes me feel drunk.  Selah's been a wonderful teacher as I'm learning how to touch and explore her, and no matter how long we go or how often we're intimate, I crave more and more of her.

Then she starts wanting to include my male parts, and sometimes I can't shake the discomfort it brings me.  Maybe I should be grateful, since she's very clearly accepting of and enthusiastic about all of my body.  But for some reason, sometimes, if she seems too eager or too attentive about that part of me, I start to feel like less of a woman.  Does she see me as not quite a woman, or is she just trying to show me how much she loves and accepts me?  I don't know how to tell, but for now I'll keep trying to direct her back to my female areas.  A little time is all I'm asking for, Selah.

I never had any idea that love, sex and intimacy could be so confusing or frightening, but I still believe it's worth trying for.  She's my soul mate, and I know we'll grow into something amazing.

From Selah's journal:

She feels so comfortable to me. We are already finishing each other’s sentences. Like an old married couple — the mythic “happy couple” of my imagination, since I have never known one in life. Because every couple, all of them that I have known, has been unhappy, each in its own peculiar way. I have long since stopped believing in happy marriages. But there is something about her that makes me hope I am mistaken.

I worry about her. I worry about her and me. Worry that I am being selfish, keeping her for my own happiness. Because she gives me that — a peaceful joy, as if I had always known her. As if we were children together once, long ago.  As if we are children still, playing innocently in life’s shallows.  Innocent even when we are in bed together, playing adult games of touching and exploring, of joining bodies.  She is so painfully grateful for my love.  And so I worry — is my acceptance of her love, and her gratitude, a selfish thing, an exploitation of her trust for my own pleasure?  Would she have been better off loving someone else?

Nobody has ever loved her before. Or so she says. Certainly, no one has has given her this intimate trust, this adult love of blissfully merging bodies. She has never dared to expose herself to others. Or, when she did, they rejected her in horrible way.  And so she stopped trying.  Am I so unusual, that I can love her?  Or has she just been unlucky in those she trusted?

And when I am with her, I also feel that trust.  With her, I can even accept that standard kind of love — the male on top, the intimate penetration.  I thought I had escaped all that.  I thought I never again would need to be subjected.  And yet with her, it feels safe, or at least not totally a disaster.  Can it be because she is, undeniably, a woman, even though she embodies both genders?  What is a man, I wonder, and what is a woman, if it is not simply having these particular parts?  And what is it like for her, knowing she is a woman, and yet being… mixed, peculiar (in the original sense of the word.) Unique.

There are myths in which the gods created people as hermaphrodites, each one complete in their own two-natured body. But, being complete, there was no need to couple.  And so the gods split them apart, male and female, so each person would have the need to love, to join.  To find their other half and, finding them, to again become complete.

In her, I feel I have found my other half.  But is it fair to her?  Am I also her other half, her long-lost soul-mate?  Or am I just the best approximation that has come along?  I lie awake and ponder, as I ache to hold her in my arms.

Entry 2, seven days after Silk Talons: Chapter 8

From Ginal's journal:

The Twin Adder hired Doom to delve into the Tamrara Deepcroft to try to put the dead back to sleep, and once again, Timothy decided he wanted me to lead the team.

At first I was excited, and determined to show that I learned from my nearly fatal mistake with the poachers.  I wasn't going to mess up this second chance.  Selah, however, was insistent on joining us, even shirking some something-or-another books she had been looking forward to.  I didn't ask her to come, anyway.  I'm not helpless.

Make no mistake, dear journal, I was grateful for her presence, as Selah and I have come to fight with the same natural synchronization that we love with, but things could have gone better.   For one, she very obviously was trying to protect me.  She constantly went out of her way to point out threats she thought I didn't see, seemingly forgetting that I can hear, smell and see in the dark better than she can.  And those moments where she threw herself in front of me to shield me from attacks I could have easily evaded were more aggravating than anything. 

The one thing that truly hurt, though, was when I tried to make a call on how to tackle a particularly nasty ghoul.  When she disagreed, she used her status as a famous primal-slayer to take over and direct my comrades.  My authority was informal at best, and she undermined and embarrassed me.  This had damn well better been a misguided attempt to protect me, because if she truly thinks I'm so weak or incompetent, then I wonder why in the hells she's even here.

She can't do that to me again.  I can forgive her, but I won't be treated like this by anyone.   Not even Selah.  But how can I explain to Selah that she was wrong in the Deepcroft, while still making sure she understands I need her support?  I truly feel like she owes me an apology, because that really damn hurt.

Or should I just stay quiet and accept her actions?  She is, after all, the one who's slain primals and dragons, so maybe she did know better.  Which one of us is in the wrong, here?

When we returned to Gridania, we lounged in the Canopy to celebrate a job well done.  After a couple of beers, I was just about to pull her aside to talk things over.

Then that little tart of a barmaid interrupted, practically throwing herself on Selah.  Selah's mine, and I won't sit idle while some half dressed bar wench solicits my woman.  I had nearly committed to the thought of standing up and decking the tart, when Selah pulled me close and gave the most passionate, tongue nearly down my throat, hot and heavy kiss she's ever mustered.

I don't know if she was getting drunk, or what else it could have been, but the message was quite clear.  So I said goodnight to my comrades for the both of us and she dragged me by the hand up to the room she's currently renting.

I'm watching her sleep as I write this, and I can admit something to myself.  I was irrational where that barmaid was concerned.  Selah chose me, and I need to learn to respect that.  With Nophica as my witness, I'll never be so insanely jealous again.



From Selah's journal:

There are times I think she's more trouble than she's worth.  Like last night, when I was ready to settle in with a good dinner, a glass of wine and and evening relaxing on the sofa with Silver Rose's "Legends of Eastern La Noscea", in two volumes.  And Ginal dropped in to change into her better suit of armor (which she had left in my armoire for reasons too obvious to mention here) because Tim had asked her to lead a party into the Deepcroft and she wanted to be ready for demons.

"Have fun," I said.  "Tell me about it when you get back."  Every now and then, the dead of the Deepcroft stir and rise and need to be put back to sleep.  It is a dangerous, but simple enough task, and Ginal could handle it with her eyes closed.  Unless, of course, she decided to showboat again, like she did with the Ziz.  Or get over-ambitious, like I heard she did with those poachers.  But with me not there, she wouldn't have any reason to show off.  And it had been a couple of years since I had read Silver Rose.

"You're coming with me," said Ginal.  "We're a team, right?"  She pulled my boots from the armoire and tossed them on the bed.

And so the dinner got dumped half-eaten, the wine was barely tasted, and Silver Rose remained unopened.  And there we were in the darkness with things with fangs and things with claws, and things with wings and things with bones, and above all, things belching evil voidsent fire, and all of them trying to kill us.  And I swear if I hadn't been there with my lance, my pretty little miq'ote would have ended up maimed or worse, and the best she could say at the end of it was, "Really, Selah, I could have handled that one by myself.  It's not like I need a nursemaid.  Give me some credit!"  Or, if she didn't say precisely that, I could tell that she meant it, from the angry twitch of her tail.

We ended up with the Free Company at the Carline Canopy, standing drinks for anyone who dropped in to celebrate our grand victory.  And Lissabeth, the pretty little Hyur barmaid, the one with whom I'd been trading mildly dirty jokes before Ginal and I got serious - Lissabeth came over with a tray of flagons, and leaned over me so I could have stuck my nose in her cleavage, and asked if we'd be needing anything else, in a tone that implied she was taking more than beverage orders.  And Ginal was steaming so hard you could almost hear it hissing out of her ears.  (And such pretty ears they are, so soft and furry… but don't get me started!) And I figured I had to do something or we would be having a literal cat-fight, so I grabbed Ginal with both hands and pulled her close, and planted a big wet sloppy kiss directly on her astonished lips, in front of the whole Free Company.

Which cooled her off a bit, or at least distracted her and convinced her I was drunk.  And it definitely sent the message to Lissabeth, who straightened up, backed off, and gave me a grin and a double thumbs-up, as well as a farewell bosom-bounce, which Ginal didn't see because she was facing the opposite direction, licking her lips and blinking.

But it all had a happy ending, because that kiss, though meant as a distraction, was interpreted as an invitation.  And so Ginal's best armor ended up back in my armoire (only slightly more singed and dented) beside my boots, and Ginal spent the night in my bed, and I never did get back to that wine, or the charming stories of Silver Rose.

Not that I mind, really. There will be other nights for reading. But she does cause complications.