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Noelle has always thought that if she could want less, she would be easier to love.
If she needed less from her parents in the months, the years, the lifetime that followed Dess’s disappearance, they wouldn’t have to worry about her.
They were already stressed. They were already upset. Noelle didn’t want to add to that.
She’s a girl that doesn’t cry. A girl that doesn’t uselessly wish for things to get better. That’s what kids do, and Noelle knows better than that. She’s too old for that now.
She’s Noelle. And doing Noelle things means walking through the sweltering afternoon sun alone. Muting out the agony, diluting it until it becomes nothing.
Moving through the motions, watching herself smile, laugh, brush off the flurry of wrongness constantly carving at her body.
Curtailing the space she takes up. Making herself as little, as quiet as possible.
Noelle has to follow her path. Her preordained life, dictated and set up for her neatly. She’ll pass her highschool exams with flying colours. Enter a prestigious university. Major in something noble to please her parents, and graduate in a clean, three years. Marry whoever her mother deems as acceptable, pump out some children, bow her head at the dining table before every meal and pray to the Angel.
All with a sweet, placid smile.
But now, she’s with Kris, the new Kris— the one who chiselled out a new pathway for her. One where she feels in control, for once in her life. One where she can actually want things, without the guilt eating away at her.
Here, in this moment, she doesn’t feel so little anymore. She feels the same feeling she felt when she would spread her arms, wide enough until her muscles stung, over the snowy asphalt with Dess.
The water is blisteringly cold, and she can barely keep moving her legs. Kris’s warm hands, almost searing her fur with their heat, ground her in the present. Kris, covering her upturned palms with their own, is the only one that can guide her.
Noelle feels a bed of leaves at her thighs, stockings clinging to her fur. She sees them scattered across the surface of the water like fallen rubies.
“The water’s nice… isn’t it, Kris?” She murmurs with a smile that doesn’t meet her eyes.
(She remembers when they were kids, sitting on the shore. Kris would lie there against her for hours, and she could claw her fingers around their wrist. Feel for a pulse, make sure they’re still alive.)
Noelle holds them by the waist now. They look like two dancers, waltzing across the lake. Movements perfectly coordinated, never once stepping over each other. Their chests rise and fall like a metronome, accompanying the song of Kris’s voice.
Proceed. Proceed. Proceed.
Their own little choir. Their own ballroom. A mellow ceremony, just for the two of them.
“Please… Kris. Don’t hesitate.” She intertwines their fingers, woven tight into a fine tapestry of skin and fur.
“Don’t let go of my hands.”
The willowed trees and their ginger leaves are silent witnesses to their dance. In the vague, hazy veil of her periphery, she sees heavy fruit hang from their branches.
Noelle immediately thinks of her front yard, how she used to pick citrus, persimmon, and strawberries together with Kris after the festival. Take all the colours of the setting sun and place them neatly in their picnic basket. Run as fast as their little legs could carry them back to the lake and wash them against the gelid stream.
They held each fruit up against the sky, marvelled at the way their sweet little bodies fused into the light. How the sun, the real, glistening sun above them, bled into the stagnant water below them. They chased each other until they collapsed into the bed of grass, until the pallid moon rose over their small shoulders. Basking in its celestial glow, yet still looking at each other with gentle eyes.
The fruit in this forest has ripened to the point of rot, stem and leaf wilting into a grey rind.
When they were children, the shape of their bodies seemed to be forever imprinted onto the grass. They left their mark here, a place sequestered away from the rest of Hometown. A place only they went to together, kept secured and secret in their hearts.
Now it’s been mowed over, grown anew, forever washed away.
Their bodies begin to submerge into the lake’s ebony water, tinged with the light of dusk.
Two instruments of desire, two angels growing wings, ready to fly.
She can imagine Kris now, the intricate framework of their arteries antlered out like lightning, cold water flowing through the channels. All connected to one beating, delicate heart.
Noelle’s fingers find themselves under their sweater, carding over soft, warm skin, the blood pulsing under epidermis. She traces over that hollowed dip of their waistbone, the juncture of their hips. They quiver under her touch, voice trembling, growing weaker.
Proceed. Proceed. Proceed.
A euphony that paves the gateway she’s been looking for her entire life. Two syllables that carry all the strength she needs to do it.
A reminder that she was never just Noelle, but a girl capable of doing things. Big, meaningful things. That all the neglect, the repression, the loneliness all meant something.
She feels like she can’t come back down from her body. When the water rises to her waist, she feels it all the shame, the guilt, melt away into the water. Feels like Kris and her are the only two people left in the world.
Noelle is the daughter that’s easy to love. The daughter that doesn’t need to be taken care of.
Because for the longest time, Noelle has cleaved out the part of her that desires things for herself; a fine, clean cut. Charred, discoloured skin under fur, sweet carmine flowing down her wrists in globulets.
Some sick, clinical part of her would let Kris lap it up, drag their incisors upward across her jugular, take more and more from her if it meant she could be freed.
She watches Kris’s face. Gazes over their sallow complexion, the dark pigment around their eyelids.
There’s a sanguine colour forming at their cheekbones. Noelle thinks of how it all works together, how their blood collects under their skin and makes them look so beautiful. A sweet apple to be bitten.
Their quiet, mumbling voice gets louder, more erratic as they drown together.
She leans in to kiss their tears away. Feels her own roll down, melding with the lake water below them. Kris cups her face, nails digging little moons into her jawbone as they try to lift her head above the water.
But they sink. They capsize. The water is clouded here, almost opaque. It tastes like copper, earthy and thick. But she can still see bubbles of their breath float, rising to the surface. Their last breaths, shared only with each other.
She screams their name, burnt into her throat as the water clogs her airways. They hold her so tight that she can feel her veins sever under their grip.
Kris could never be nice to Noelle. Never even complimented her once. Just teased her, chased her, scared her. Held her, apologised when she cried and punched at them. Wanted to see her smile, her laugh through it all.
They’ve always wanted to say it. I love you. More than any girl I've ever known. Plain and sweet, no pranks, nothing cruel attached to it. But by the time it arrives on their tongue, it comes out twisted, sardonic, barbed like the stem of a rose. Makes the inside of their throat bleed.
She knew this well and true, settling in her heart like a sore tumour.
So Noelle whispers it for them, distorted and muddled by the water, now barely covering her antlers.
I love you, Kris.
You’re the only one who can help me.
They cross the barrier together. A sweet farewell, just for them, never to be bothered by anyone.
Spinning around, around, like the twinkle of a merry-go-round. Languidly mixing together below the sky.
They peel back the layer to find ivory, white as snow.