Fleur

Far Off Unhappy Things: Boys and Girls of the Reflective Age

Chapter 2: Fleur

By Renko Chazakiël Rodenburg

Trapped in a prism, in a prism of light
Alone in the darkness, darkness of white
We fell in love, alone on a stage
In the reflective age

– James Joyce

Fleur measured her pills out on her hand one by one. Her unusual physiology meant she had to take a surprising amount before they worked. Five now, five later. She washed them down with beer. Listed online as ‘dangerous interaction, do not mix.’ She put the remaining five pills back in their little plastic canister and rifled through her pockets looking for a small plastic bag containing colourful squares of paper. She put two of those under her tongue, and stashed everything back in the pockets of her pants, or at least, in what passed for pants tonight. The four pockets accounted for ninety percent of the shorts’ material.

“Hey,” the bartender said, gesturing vaguely in her direction. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“Are you okay? You’re taking a lot of pills. What is that, MDMA?”

“I’m okay,” she said. “I know what I’m doing. I have a tolerance.”

“If you say so.”

“Can I have another beer?”

“Girl, I just saw you swallow a lethal dose of MDMA. I really don’t think you should be drinking.”

“Boy, your job is bartender, not general practitioner,” she answered, stressing ‘boy.’

“Part of being a bartender is knowing when someone has had enough,” the man said. “And I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I’m old enough to be your father,” she repeated in a nasally tone before turning around and walking into the crowd. The stroboscopic lights flickered just fast enough to destroy any coherent sense of direction and space. The music was loud enough she couldn’t make out any individual chords. Around her the world blurred into a violent mix of light, noise and bodies. Bodies freaking out on drugs, bodies losing themselves into a trance where the overstimulating hell slowly morphed into festivities, bodies sweaty and gross and here and there bleeding. It took ten minutes before she started to feel the effects of the stuff in her bloodstream and the world around her started making sense. Slowly her reason dissolved and unreason won out, the unreason of dancing. They’d been doing this for thousands of years, she realized. They’d been banging on rocks around a blazing fire while taking Atropa Belladonna, they’d been singing and blowing on horns while taking Datura Stramonium. Light, noise, poison. Taking a bludgeon to the ego and letting the body free. The body that underneath the logical, reasonable faculties of the modern man wanted to do nothing but drink, dance and fuck.

They didn’t let you fuck in clubs though, she thought as a young man started dancing right in front of her, struggling to make eye contact with her as his eyes kept drifting down to what was barely covered by fishnets. They didn’t let you fuck in clubs. The music, the lights and the drugs had all drastically increased in potency, but that was the one thing the Lands Lost had over the modern world.

“Where’d you get your ears done,” her piss-drunk admirer slurred with a German accent.

“I didn’t, they’re all natural.”

“That’s your real hair colour too?”

“Hmhm,” she said.

“Crazy shit man. Galadriel at the fucking club. You do coke?”

She was pretty sure Galadriel’s hair wasn’t blue, but despite having spent months in the modern day as of recently she still hadn’t found time to watch Lord of the Rings. “No, I’m already on something,” she answered.

“You wanna go somewhere later?” The man asked, no longer making an effort to look anywhere but her chest.

“Maybe,” she answered, “it’s still too early to know.” She stepped back, she stepped left, she weaved into the crowd and he was gone. The noise around her suddenly reminded her of the ocean, the music washing over in waves. Flickering multicoloured lights took on patterns, phasing from the geometrical to organic and back. All life had come from the ocean, she thought. Where she’d grown up, even the stars had. Sensations washing over her and the hair on her back standing upright she realized the drugs had started to properly work. Bit by bit the whole world turned into a blur of liquid light. She had no idea how long she’d been letting the sounds and sensations carry her body along when things started to make sense again, but her legs hurt and she’d somehow chewed the lining of her cheeks to bits. Completely dazed, she walked back to the bar, and ordered ‘whatever, really,’ doing her best not to slur her speech or to drool too much blood out of her mouth.

“What the fuck?” A girl next to her said, staring at her.

“It’s the euh, the entactogen,” she replied while gesturing at the blood around her mouth. “The drug. I bit my cheeks.”

“No,” the girl said. “I mean what the fuck are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in the Lands Lost? Cooped up somewhere in Autumn?”

Fleur stared at her. There was no way she knew about the Lands Lost- she was just trying to rattle her. Trying to get her to flinch. If she acted like she knew what the girl was talking about, she’d give away the game. Wait. That made no sense. The girl clearly already knew about the lands lost. Maybe she’d told her at some point? But she’d never seen her before. She was pretty attractive, too. Short, jet black hair. Defined but not overtly muscular arms. Tight-fitting black t-shirt with the odd inscription “Welcome ❤️ Hell,” too short to cover her stomach. Low cut black jeans widening into bell bottoms. “Hiiiii,” she slurred. “I don’t know what you’re on about but we can kiss maybe and then talk about it?”

“What? What are you on?”

“A lot.”

“How’d you get out?” The girl asked her. “There is no way in Hell the gatekeeper would let you out.”

“I have a backdoor,” Fleur said, the words leaving her mouth before she could think through the consequences of what she was revealing. Ah well. She’d have forgotten it in the morning anyway, with everything in her bloodstream. Wait, was that right? Did it even matter? “Who are you? I’m Fleur,” she said, stretching her hand out towards the girl. She’d initially wanted to shake her hand but got confused halfway through and ended up kind of awkwardly brushing and groping around her face, instead.

“I’m Morana,” Morana answered. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m having fun.”

“I- yeah. Sure. I’m glad. I’m having fun too. What are you up to after this?”

“Hooohooo. I don’t quite know, why? Suggestions?”

“We can euh, we can go kiss somewhere and talk? Like you said?”

This girl was not smooth at all, Fleur thought. Probably anxiety. In a way it was kind of cute.

“Sure,” she said. “My legs are about to give out anyway. Your place or mine?”

“I live right across the street,” Morana said. “Or I’m crashing there, really.”

“That’s great. Let me pay my tab. Bartender, bartender! I wanna pay.”

“I was just about to make your ‘whatever,’ you still want that or nah?”

“No, no. I just want to pay and go home at this point.”

“Okay, card here please,” the bartender said as he pointed at the wireless card reader.

“You have a fucking debit card?” Morana asked in surprise as Fleur swiped her card along the device.

“What? Why wouldn’t I?”

“Gods,” Morana cursed.

Together they stumbled outside. It was cold, and it rained ever so slightly. The substances in her blood were wearing off, and the cold bit into her barely-covered body. “I should have brought a coat,” Fleur yammered.

“You should be glad I live right across the street because I would not want to walk around dressed like that at four in the night,” Morana laughed.

“Bwuah,” Fleur said while shrugging. “If someone is annoying I can just kill them.”

“Good gods,” Morana cursed again. “Woman with an estimated remaining lifespan of six months,” as she dragged Fleur along towards her apartment.

Morana lived in a large, four room apartment on the thirteenth floor. This was a rather expensive neighborhood squat in the middle of the new financial district colloquially known as the ‘south axis,’ so that couldn’t have been cheap. It was brightly lit, with white modernist furniture and a lot of wide open spaces. A combination of anime merchandise, artwork of tarot cards and oil portraits lined the walls. The only things really out of place were a cloak, a lantern, and a mirror hanging from the coat rack that appeared to be high end props straight out of a fantasy show, with only subtle clues betraying their supernatural origins.

“You are not from the Lands Lost,” Fleur said while messing around with the lantern, careful to avoid looking in the wearable mirror.

“No,” Morana said. “And stop touching that stuff, it’s mine.”

“Sorry,” Fleur muttered. “Is that nephrite glass in your lantern?”

“Yes, now stop playing around with it and stop asking questions.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Fleur said again while following Morana into the living room.

“Want a drink?” Morana asked while grabbing glasses and bottles from a mini-bar in the middle of her living room.

“Yeah, I’ll have whatever, as long as it contains alcohol.”

“Hmhm. Feel free to sit down anywhere.”

Fleur picked a green beanbag in the corner, across from a TV. “Oh, you have a Nintendo,” she said, gesturing at the devices plugged into the TV.

“It’s a fucking playstation,” Morana said as she handed Fleur a cocktail glass with a bright orange concoction in it.

“I know that, I’m messing with you,” Fleur lied. “Orange juice?”

“Tequila Sunrise, yeah.” Morana sat down on the floor next to Fleur with her own glass, and sighed. “You are still completely zooted out of your mind, I figure?”

“I sober up frustratingly fast,” Fleur answered. “My physiology is not very responsive to external stimuli. I have to take lethal doses of things to feel something.”

“Ah. Well, then I’ll feel less bad for interrogating you. Though maybe it’d have been better if you were still intoxicated, more willing to overshare.”

“What’s this then? Interrogate me?” Fleur looked at Morana, cross-legged on the floor.

“Hmhm. You have to understand it was quite the surprise to run into someone so, that- that obviously doesn’t belong,” Morana stumbled over her words. “Those ears, those sharp facial features, that too perfect skin and the faint smell of linseed oil in the air when you bleed, I could be blind and I would still instantly recognize you. You are a character of note, a chess piece worth considerable points. That you have left your world behind to play party animal on earth- it is stunning. It is confounding. How can I not investigate? They would hang me, back home, for dereliction of duty.”

“Who are you, Morana?” Fleur asked, suddenly overcome by an icy feeling, as if an imperceptible breeze had swept right through her and took what little warmth her alien body could hold onto straight out of her.

“I am a lampade, and I am in the service of the The Men in High Places. You are potentially violating the Consensus Treaty, Fleur.”

“Autumn,” Fleur cursed. “What even is that? You’re some kind of cop?”

“I, no,” Morana stammered. “Not exactly? I guard a balance, of sorts. And I take threats to this balance very seriously. If you have abandoned your role or fate in that autumn world of yours, or if you are threatening the stability of this world- then I will have to act.”

Fleur shook her head. “I have no fate, no duty. I was lost in that world, if you can call it that. It is the remnant of a world. A false world, a memory. Nothing is lost by me leaving there, and I- I am nothing. I am a reflection of a reflection, a copy of a copy. I pose no threat to this world’s stability or to any kind of consensus. My hair and ears I have explained as cosmetic surgery. I have a job, a social security number, and I do not practice my magic anymore.”

Morana looked at her with tears welling up in her eyes. “That is sad,” she said. “Why would you do that to yourself?”

“Do what?” Fleur asked. “This world is better than that fantasy in every regard. Here, everyone is lost. Here everyone is a nobody. A world of plastic and artificial light whose sciences have proven that there is no inherent meaning to anything, a world where the educated understand that there is no reason to smile or love or laugh. A world where all that remains is to throw yourself into these rituals, these raves, where flesh can finally be honest that it is flesh. I commanded magics of glassmaking and of mirrors, Morana, but never could I have made such things as CD players and lasers and microscopes or telescopes so large they could see alien worlds. You were at the rave today. You know what I am talking about. This is an age of reflections, of simulacra, of false connection and false meaning spoken about through ever evolving mediums of communication. What, I should return to a dusty Autumn heath ruled by men that subsist on human flesh and rape their lessers? Do you presume that I am some fairy tale creature ripped from her world, a tragedienne, a sad and forlorn being longing for her world of fantasy? You are wrong, Morana.” She didn’t know why, but tears were streaming down her face, too. It was more than she had intended to say. After the first few sentences they had just kept coming, associative thinking, an avalanche of words surfing on the last waves of lysergic acid surging through her brain.

“Gods,” Morana said, getting up and suddenly placing herself on Fleur’s lap. “Do you still, you know, before in the morning we are both sober and sane and perhaps find ourselves on different sides of a conflict-”

“Yeah,” Fleur said, pulling her close and groping at her breast through her t-shirt. “What’s that T-shirt from?”

“Touhou,” Morana said. “It’s very funny if you know the lore.”

“Oh, I know of it but I haven’t watched it yet,” Fleur said, now moving her hands under Morana’s shirt, gently squeezing hardening nipples as Morana started tracing her hands along Fleur’s own breasts, covered by so little fishnet she might as well have been naked.

“It’s not an anime, it’s a game, you fucking secondary-” Morana swore as Fleur suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace and kissed her on the mouth.