DAEVEN ▲ where the spirit meets the bones

As soon as she stepped out from Daisy’s place, the daydreaming started for Daesyn. It had been a whirlwind of colour, of texture, flashes and glamour, glitter and gold. All that she loved most and held dearest. She’d spent a beautiful morning with the two sisters, with the knowledge that on top of that, she was being useful. She had danced around in the dresses, the shawls and the sequin pants. She had played around with the blue eyeliner and the purple lipstick. For a while she had felt exactly like herself, like she was digging through her own identity, unapologetically whimsical and psychedelic. The world stopped turning only when she’d seen the pictures at the very end – and saw Daisy’s face staring right back at her. She usually took pride in the fact that she was painting her body with the most beautiful colours, dressing her up with the most fantasy fabrics. It felt like an homage, like giving her something she could never achieve herself, too wrapped up in destruction, chaos and utter darkness. But she wasn’t used to seeing her face in pictures, and it suddenly felt like fraud, like theft. Like she’d stolen something that wasn’t hers and completely betrayed its spirit. The feeling of being torn hadn’t left her since. She had put on a good face and thanked the girls profusely – there was no way she would let her own drama interfere with their take of the event, they had been nothing but kind and talented. This was on her, and the brutal realization that somehow, despite all the efforts and the journey towards self-acceptation that she’d been on, her body still didn’t feel quite like hers.

Daesyn hoped the feeling would fade. She remembered the difficulty that she’d had at first, wanting to touch Morgan when she’d first seen them again. Wanting to bury herself in them, kissing and biting and feeling their hands all over her. But this body hadn’t been hers long enough to truly belong to her, and it felt like a betrayal of Daisy’s spirit all over again. The young woman had asked her. She had consented to this, she knew what would happen and she begged for it. For release, for peace, knowing that her spirit would be gone but her body would live on with Daesyn. The djinn could only imagine what that must have felt like. She knew, deep down, that Daisy didn’t even consider this flesh envelope to be hers at all – it had been robbed, abused, torn into, ripped and defiled. Maybe that’s why the idea of having somebody else wear it had been so appealing. Daesyn tried not to think about it if she could avoid it – maybe that was why she insisted on covering it up with pretty things and bright and vibrant shades, to overpower the daunting sadness and bruises and trauma that still inhabited it.

She was still wearing the last makeup look that she’d put on for the last pictures, as well as the sequin jacket and bright blue pants – she looked straight pulled from a magazine or a Fashion Week runway. The image of Daisy in shades of grey and cotton sweatpants was still in her mind when she suddenly collided with a hard surface. Daesyn let out a gasp of surprise and stumbled a little. The pack of polaroids from the photoshoot that she was holding tightly in her hand escaped her grasp and spilled out on the pavement. “Damn it” she let out under her breath. When she crouched down to pick them up, she realized the surface she’d hit without realizing it was an actual person. Her eyes widened. “Oh I’m so sorry, I completely spaced out. I hope I didn’t hurt you” she asked straight away, her voice higher than usual due to the residual emotion from her daydreaming and the stress of the situation. She picked up a few photographs, which mainly showed herself in different extravagant outfits, laughing with either Daisy or Ofelie behind the scenes of the shoot, but her eyes remained focus on the young woman’s face opposite her. Her beauty was striking, her face chiselled and cold. She wore a look of shock like she’d just seen a ghost, she seemed petrified as Daesyn was gathering the remaining the polaroids, the stranger’s eyes looking back and forth between her face and the photographs.

The djinn considered. Given, her attire was unconventional for Seattle especially at this time of year, but she was being stared at in the strangest manner. There seemed to be more to the story than disbelief at people’s sense of fashion – many emotions shone through her eyes, like Daesyn reminded her of someone she knew.

Her heart stopped.

Maybe she did know her, indeed.

Just not her, per se.  
 
   

CODAGE PAR AMATIS
   

The young woman stared at her with a sense of urgency that she couldn’t quite decipher. They seemed frozen in time, photographs in hand and hung up in each other’s eyes. Hours could have passed without either of them noticing, until Daesyn finally heard the hangman’s sentence. “Daisy?” Even though she knew in her heart it was coming, it still skipped a beat. She was in no condition to pretend; she already didn’t feel like herself. Daisy still inhabited too many of her thoughts, too much of her guilt and stubbornness to do the right thing. The thought of impersonating her felt supremely wrong, especially today, especially now, when she was painted with colours that she never would have worn, carrying pictures she never would have allowed anybody to take. It was an unusual situation, Daesyn didn’t need to take Daisy’s identity on a daily basis. It had been an agreement between them that she wouldn’t do that, that as far as the world was concerned and even though somebody else was wearing her face, she was gone. In peace, finally. In the midst of the tragedy, she was lucky that the young woman had had few people she still talked to and even fewer close friends. Tragically, it had made announcing her death much easier than anticipated. When you have no one, nobody cares that you’re dead.

But the stranger she’d bumped into seemed like she would care.

Daesyn wasn’t always brave and she wasn’t always strong. Especially when she came to Daisy. Maybe it was too difficult to mourn her friend as she still felt very much alive, seeping underneath her fingernails, lingering in her thoughts, on her lips, in her voice. She couldn’t bear to go through all of this with someone else – she wouldn’t even know what to say. She thought that Daisy had told her about everything, but she’d never mentioned her, never met her. Getting in the middle of that was too risky, too much, too soon. So she did the selfish thing, and smiled. “Sorry” she said apologetically. “My name is Stella” The name had come instantly, the name of a character she’d recently seen on a tv show. It was ridiculous really, that she couldn’t even use her real name to deliver the lie because their names sounded just so goddamn similar. They’d joked about it, said it was only fitting that Daesyn should take on her body, they were already very much alike. And it was true, even in how deeply they felt things, how vulnerable they could be. Daisy could have been Daesyn as a child in Greece, fighting for the love of a mother who could not see her as anything else than a reminder of her trauma. Daesyn was older now, she’d seen too much, loved too fiercely. It had made her wrong, made her determined. She had learned from three hundred years’ worth of mistakes, whereas Daisy just had those twenty some years, and so many of them had been drowned up in pain.

That was what had driven Daesyn to do it all. The blood, the sweat, the tears. She had known the price of ‘the right thing’, she had felt the loss, what it had cost her to sabotage her last connection to a human, to be separated from Morgan. She had vowed never to do it again. That was the difference between them. Daisy hadn’t had the chance to know that kind of love. The one that makes you fight, that makes you keep holding on, that makes you hope. By the end, it was so clear that she knew it was hopeless, that she was so broken beyond damage that she would never be able to open up like that. For love was cruel too – it required you to lose yourself because you got anything at all. “I guess I just have one of those faces” she added after a short pause and a casual laugh, slightly strangled, like it was something that she heard every other day and was used to. But she was the only one laughing, and the sound got lost in the air. She cleared her throat. “Well, if you’re okay, I’ll just be on my way then. Sorry again.” She knew her extra niceness and fake cheer wouldn’t have fooled anybody who knew her – she just had to hope it was enough for the stranger who didn’t. She kept compelling her body to move, to turn away but she couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s face. When her heels finally turned, it was like they were made of stone and she was Atlas rolling them around. She was like a statue, petrified by this one woman’s gaze.

How do you run away from something when your heart is as heavy as lead?
 
   

CODAGE PAR AMATIS
   

She could’ve gotten away. She should’ve gotten away, while there was still time. Should’ve taken advantage of the stillness, the paralysis, the shock on the woman’s face. Shouldn’t have wasted time trying to lie, to smile her way out of it, to fool someone who had such unyielding eyes. It felt like the colours were fading. As the rage in her face was growing, everything around them seemed to shrink. Daesyn tried to step back but it was already too late – she wasn’t quick enough. Shoved against the wall, the cement ringing the back of her head, the djinn winced. The eyes of her attacker were shining with tears of rage, of loss – they were full of ghosts. “Who the fuck do you think you are” Daesyn’s heart stopped – sure that her little trick hadn’t fooled anyone, that it was too obvious from the colours and the clothes and the photographs that she wasn’t Daisy, but an entirely different person. She opened her mouth, but the woman kept going. “…To pretend you don’t even KNOW ME? Then she understood. She hadn’t recognized the imposture at all – this was the pain of a woman scorned, ignored, broken. “After all these years” She finally let go of her, but Daesyn still felt her imprint on her clothes, on her skin. A ruffle in the shape of hurt. The djinn wanted to understand, she would’ve given anything to be able to play the role, to give this woman what she wanted. To give her closure, somehow. To allow peace. But she didn’t know, she didn’t understand – because Daisy hadn’t told her.

She could try to lie again. She could play the innocent victim, but she’d seen through her already, one way or another. She could pretend to be Daisy, though she knew nothing about them except that whoever this woman was, she’d be hurt, she had cared. It seemed so strange that Daisy hadn’t mentioned her, hadn’t even thought to tell her about someone who seemed to harbour such intense feelings for her. It was too dangerous; they’d been too close. And Daesyn had told her one lie already – she wasn’t sure the deadly brunette would let her get away with a second one. She considered using her powers to escape the situation altogether. It would be so simple, so easy to put up an illusion, a mirage in order to disappear. She would never have to see her again, to feel these desperate hands on her again. But she couldn’t go. She couldn’t move. She yielded. “I’m not her” she said, her voice hoarse. Daesyn had always loved humans, their flaws, their battles, their feelings. She’d loved how complete they were, how vulnerable, how deceptive sometimes. She’d been a guide, all these years, it had been her purpose to help them find a way to go through life without breaking for good. To find meaning to all of this. Ever since Daisy, she’d lost sight of this – but seeing the loss in the young woman’s eyes, it flooded her all over again. She couldn’t leave her without an explanation, even such a painful one. “I did know her, but I’m not Daisy” She averted her eyes, unable to hold the woman’s piercing gaze. It was all such a whirlwind, there was no guarantee she would even believe her.

Daesyn cleared her throat and stepped away from the wall, just a little, to regain movement. She felt so sorry for her – it was painfully obvious that she knew nothing about what had happened to her friend, of whatever they had been. The djinn resented Daisy for that, for the way she had begged her to go without saying goodbye to anyone, leaving her the hard task of letting people know – while wearing her damn face. “This is her body but she’s gone. I wouldn’t even know where to start to tell you what happened but, I swear I’m telling you the truth.” Would the woman even know what she was talking about if she said she was a djinn? How well versed was she in the supernatural world? Daesyn prayed that she wouldn’t have to go through the whole story – she was afraid she couldn’t bear to tell her what happened, from the way Daisy had been hurt by those boys up to the point where Daesyn held her in her arms as she died, “She died a few months ago. I’m truly sorry you have to find out like this.” She hoped it would be enough, but deep down, she knew better. Had it been she who had come face to face with the doppelganger of her dead friend, bearing the bad news, she never would’ve let go of the messenger. And in the woman’s eyes, the djinn could see that she wasn’t above killing it either.
 
   

CODAGE PAR AMATIS