The Raven Virgin

August 1

Odd. I woke up this morning and found - 

No. I must begin with yesterday. Strictly speaking, it wasn't yesterday anymore, for it was after midnight when I came up from the sea. All alone on the Island, I took a swim naked under the clear sky. The water was so warm I could stay in for an hour. Sadly, you can't see the stars from below the surface, but the full moon was rather amazing. Came back to the house full of the universe. 

I brewed a large cup of jasmine tea and sat down by candlelight to draw something. I remember hovering over the paper with the pencil, feeling like a duelist in guard stance. Then… nothing. 

So I just woke up in bed, not remembering how I got there. The candles were snuffed, so I can't have just passed out. Donned my robe, stretched, yawned and froze. Because the sketchpad wasn't empty. I drew something tonight without remembering.

Here's what I found. 

Looking out from the paper there’s a figure more lifelike than I know how to draw. Long, raven hair, fair skin. She is young and… No, not beautiful. Well, she is, but the word is too mundane. Ethereal. Ensorcelling. 

She is naked, legs tucked underneath, leaning on her left arm, gripping it at the elbow with her right hand. Yes, you see her revealed in all her splendour. No, I can't describe her that way. When I say she looks out from the paper, I mean it. Her eyes are serious and a little quizzical, as if she wonders what I think when I watch her. And I don't want her to know, because I feel so dirty observing her that intimately but I can't resist ogling. (Well, she is hot. There, I wrote it. Happy?) 

It must have been me creating her after all, because it's my handwriting underneath, telling her name. 

The Raven Virgin. 

I don't think I’ll show this to anyone. They won't believe I drew it anyway. 

August 31

Back at Uni, business as usual. Lectures daytime, party nighttime. Hiding my loneliness in plain sight of the merry crowd, drowning it in liquid forgetfulness. Except last night was different.

Don’t know where she came from, she was suddenly just there. Caught my breath when I saw her. “A beer for your thoughts?” she asked. An offer I couldn’t refuse.

Apparently she spotted me gazing out the window with this look on my face. She seems discerning. And how we talked! Science, philosophy, art, poetry, politics, life, universe, everything… She has me hooked.

Somehow I hooked her enough to follow me home. We talked endlessly. I showed her my drawings, too. Even - and this is what I thought I never would, mind you - even the Raven Virgin. Seems I trusted her instinctively. I don’t usually trust my instincts, but something compelled me to, last night. I hope it wasn't a bad move.

She said she wished she were that beautiful. That’s when I told her that her eyes shine like underwater moonlight, her skin is as dulce de leche sprinkled with caramel (those lovely freckles!) and her hair is like rippling ruby gold. She called me a drunken, shameless flatterer and said she needs to hear it when I’m sober to believe it. So I snuck away and wrote it down for reference.

She ended up staying the night in my bed, in all innocence. I added that she smells like elderflower mead. She tried to tickle me for it but, alas, it doesn’t work on me. Works on her, though. She left early for morning lectures, but she also left her number.

Her name’s Angeline. She might be my angel.

September 1

Called my newfound angel as soon as I got home from lectures. As soon as she answered, I recited my “drunken” description of her, verbatim. She called me a punk and invited herself over for dinner. I never knew regular pasta with canned tomato sauce could taste so heavenly.

We spent some time studying together. She music, I biology, we tried to make our theories match. They did, though I doubt our conclusions would hold up to scientific scrutiny.

We spent more time studying each other, this time in less than innocence. It was… euphoria. She spent the night in my bed again.

I had the most lucid dream just before waking. I woke up to find beside me not my angel, but the Raven Virgin. I could feel the heat of her skin, the silk of her hair, the flutter of her eyelids. I could see the page of the sketchbook where I drew her. It was empty. I could see her eyes, delving into mine. They were full… but of what?

I asked what she was doing in my bed. She told me - and it gave me shivers - that she was there for a purpose. I asked her what it was. She said I’d know if I did to her what I had done to Angeline.

I could never do that and so I told her. Then when I blinked, she was gone and Angeline was there, woken up by my spoken words. I told her I’d been dreaming. I guess I was.

It’s just that it didn’t feel one bit like waking up.

September 8

Tonight, my angel will be back from her week-long field trip. Tomorrow I’ll see her again. I’m afraid.

Love was never kind to me. First laughing me in the face, the nerd, the loser. After I grew up, sending me into the arms of naught but short-lived passions. I don’t know what those saw in me in the first place, but I guess they all saw through me in the end. The weird one. The misfit. Undeserving.

I’m just wondering how long it will take this angel of mine to see through me, and I’m afraid she’s already come to her senses. Met someone on the trip. Someone cool. With every failure, I fear the hope more. Just waiting for it to be dashed, the sweet cup torn from my lips.

But this time, I’m also afraid that she will bring back the Raven Virgin. My creation has made no more appearance in lucid dreaming since then. Just haunting my ordinarily weird dreams at night.

I can’t forget those eyes. I can’t help but study them every day - back on the paper where they belong - searching for their secret. It seems to me that they’ve taken on a new expression. More knowing, almost accusing. After all, I spurned her. I’m sure it’s all in my mind though.

Lately, I’ve come to think that what they’re full of is void. Not emptiness. A void full of something which is not there. Paradox, I know. Makes sense.

Now I’m wondering if I’m also full of something which isn’t there. Tomorrow might bring respite from that worry, when I meet her.

I’m afraid.

September 9

Joy! She’s missed me! Must get back to kissing now.

September 10

One fear stifled, the other vindicated. With the angel, the Raven returned. Not at night this time. We were just closely entwined in my sofa, quite still, immersed in the nearness of each other. I must have nodded off when out of the blue she asked me why I couldn’t.

Eyes shut, it took me a moment to understand who was asking. The Raven Virgin. Not my angel. Then I countered by asking why she couldn’t just tell me her purpose.

She said she didn’t want to scare me into erasing her. I told her I’ve never erased one of my creations, even ones I’m not happy with.

Then she laughed and said that I hadn’t created her, but captured her in form.

I shivered enough at that to wake both myself and Angeline. Soon, the chill that caught me in lucid dreaming thawed away from the fiery kisses of the waking. But every time I think of those words, I shiver anew.

You have only captured me.

What have I captured? How?

September 12

I don't know if these fears go hand in hand. The Raven Virgin has invaded my life. What if she comes between me and my angel? What if I’m not lucid dreaming, but psychotic? What will Angeline say if she finds out?

As if that weren’t enough, I fear when she will find out whatever drove those other women away from. That she’ll see I’m really just a clever mind barely masking a social miscarriage.

Maybe I ought to come clean, tell her who I really am. Give her fair warning and shorten the pain of waiting for the inevitable. Maybe she’ll stay anyway, maybe even not out of pity.

Maybe I ought to come clean with the Raven Virgin as well, if she shows up again. Try to explain why I can’t make love to her like I did to Angeline. I’ll just have to figure out why for myself first.

I took out the drawing again to make sense of my feelings towards her. Got distracted by the emptiness around her and tried to picture a surrounding for her. I could see her sitting on a rock in a stream. Like Lorelei of the fairytales. I don’t think I can draw it well enough to match that perfect shape of hers. She’d just look pasted in.

September 15

I’m prepared for come what may. Dug out some old pictures of myself as a child. Painful memories from those days. Tonight, I’ll tell my angel about who I am. Or who I think I am. Or, perhaps, who I think I seem to remember that I was.

I’m actually not quite sure who I am, as of right now. RV hasn’t shown up since she told me I’d not created but captured her. Don’t know if that’s a good or a bad sign, but I’m prepared to tell her whenever she visits me next. I don’t know if she’ll understand, though, why it seems sacrilegious just thinking about having sex with her.

I’m not in the mood for thinking about it with Angeline, either. Might have been for the last time. She’ll be here soon. Stay tuned for full report tomorrow.

Well. That didn’t go quite as I thought. I’m not sure if she didn’t understand what I told her, or if I’m the one who doesn't understand. I painted a picture of myself as an utter misfit and she just wouldn’t agree with it. She was sorry for my rotten school years, she said, but didn’t see why that should define me. But I just can’t differentiate between me then and me now, I’m the same. So I asked her to describe me and she started talking about someone that I largely couldn’t relate to. I told her she was talking about my façade and she got impatient and took a walk. She’d be back, she said. Told me to think about it. I’ve thought about it, but…

I think I hear her coming back now.

September 16

Reconciliation, I guess. She thinks I’m stuck in the past and need to move on. I think I’m stuck in the present and get moved along willy-nilly. Perhaps I left myself behind somewhere. Perhaps I’m just improvising who I am. I’m sick of this confusion.

Perhaps the Raven Virgin has something to do with it. Perhaps she’s the one who captured me. She hasn’t turned up yet. I thought she would have.

Angeline spent the night, in all… well, I guess innocence is of the past, but we didn’t make love. Just making peace was hard enough. But we woke up as usual this morning, no sign of RV. Talked about mundane things over breakfast, said goodbye. Before she left, she told me we’d work it out together. She smiled. I wept once she was gone.

I hope I deserve her.

September 17

I dreamt of RV tonight. She wasn’t in my arms this time, perhaps because Angeline wasn’t. Found her on a rock in a stream. Figures.

I had forgotten all about why I can’t make love to her and she didn’t ask. Instead, I asked her who she is. She said she doesn’t know. Makes two of us. I told her that, told her I think I’m her prisoner as much as she is mine. She broke down crying at that. I felt like a churl.

She likes the shape I gave her, she says. It’s just not her. (I can relate to that as well.) She has memories of something before, some sort of freedom, a sense of direction. That’s why she wants me to make love to her. She thinks she’ll be free again then. But I just can’t.

Last thing I remember is us just looking at each other, frozen numb, silent.

September 24

I’ve been busy doing nothing. That is, lectures and parties I have attended, meals I have had, life has been lived. I just haven’t had any part in it. My mind is still prisoner on a rock in a stream. I see the world like a mirage in the clear water rushing me by. And all the time, hovering over my shoulder, seeing but unseen, is my Raven Virgin, my gaoler.

And so she watched that final row I had with Angeline, my departed angel. She got fed up waiting for me to make up my mind. Told me not to call her before I’ve decided to quit moping and patch myself together.

I guess I was hoping she could patch me up. I suppose I haven’t given her any pieces to work with. Can’t find them myself so how could she ever.

I see myself kneeling on the floor, the drawing of the Raven Virgin before me, my diary beside me. I straighten my back, I slow my breathing, I unfocus.

I turn around and face her.

Out of time

She takes me by the hand and leads me along the stream, down from the mountains and into the plains. It is my kingdom she shows me. The ruins of myself. 

There was so much war on my borders and I had no army, my land left open to pillagers. Those monarchs, the bullies of my school days, begrudged me the bounty of my fertile land and despoiled it, trampling and ravaging. I gave up trying to make things grow there. Left it fallow in the hope that they would leave me alone. Forsaking prosperity to escape war.

This kingdom, the home of my memories, my passions. I fled to the mountains and let them stagnate and starve. Lived off what could be found in the fringe. Sustaining myself without building for the future.

She shows me the emaciated carcass of a beautiful dragon. It is what’s left of the Us of me and my lost angel. Little beasts of shame scavenge on it. It’s easy to see how it died, starved from the lack of sustenance in my neglected lands. 

I look at my Raven. In her eyes, I see a promise that I can make my realm flourish again, bring back the dragon. I resolve to honour that promise.

She leads me to the capital of my heartland. It is a ramshackle heap of dwellings, with untended hopes and abandoned aspirations scrabbling in the dirt for something to keep them alive. As I pass by, they stop and shamble after me, heading for the palace. They amount to a crowd by the time I get there. I face them, tell them I am back.

There is no jubilation.

I walk through echoing hallways, following a doddering old man to the throne room. My steward, running my inner kingdom as best he could while I’ve been looking for something beyond the mountains. He asks me if he has run it according to my will. I guess he has, which is to say letting it crumble. I have had no will but to stay away from myself.

I think of the dragon and vow to forge myself a new will.

All this while, my Raven Virgin has been walking silently beside me. I rise from the throne, take her hands. Today only, she is my queen. It is time.

She is everything I ever dreamed of and yet never enough. Her passion and mine envelop, turning about each other in a maelstrom of imagined ecstasy. Time is meaningless in this eternal instant. I only know that it’s over when I see her eyes. She knows who she is now and so do I.

She is that unfulfilled yearning which sends people on quests for something they don’t know, only that they need it. The dream of the unattainable. And as such, having her is losing her. So I have lost her, too, now.

She shakes her head at that. Not lost, she tells me. I just can’t afford to walk in her shadow any longer. I need to set my heart to rebuilding my kingdom. Establishing my borders, patiently growing food for my starving aspirations. Reclaiming my throne.

But she will always be there for me. There beyond the mountains. Near in the distance.

And she is gone.

September 26

I have no memory of writing the above. And I can’t find the drawing of the Raven Virgin. As far as I know, I was here in my room all along. I just can’t remember.

I do remember visiting my kingdom with her as my guide, as in a lucid dream. Must have been in some sort of trance. Either that, or it was real.

But of course it can’t have been.

What is real is my new resolve. I owe her that. I owe them both, my flown Raven and my lost Angel. I have to find the latter again.

I just have to find the lost pieces of myself first.

At least now I know where to look.