Elemental Passion

They say that this kind of passion is doomed to a death most swift.

The kind of passion that burns, incandescent, hot, even in air thick with tension. It is electrifying. It is the way the air feels in the scant moments before a truly terrifying storm, part of it generated from what you know, the knowledge that causes an immediate shiver to radiate to the tip of your very being. While you, nonchalant, feign ignorance, your world is rocked, tilted off its axis and thrown off control though you seem to maintain masterful composure.

It is a passion of many facets. It is a passion of Fire, which you are constantly and intimately familiar with. The heat of contact, first kindled by the bright glimmer in eyes (his eyes...) so often opaque and unreadable, now darkened by, from what you surmise, the exact same feeling you are experiencing. One that grows as the tension heightens, that grows in you (and in him, you can see), despite your apparent refusal for further contact. Until it is a pyre, burning you (burning him), and as you are engulfed by the wings of flame you are reborn, and lost. You yield, a lack of restraint characteristic of Fire, which is what he is, inherently. Fire bright and red and hot, and you lose yourself in it, in him, as he sends you spinning, spiralling through the very sensation that is him. You lose yourself as he does that, just so, and you gasp and he smiles as he plays you like a skilful master while all you can do is hang on for dear life and moan as wave after wave of the feeling assails you, and just before the world as you know it explodes with white-hot sensation you catch his whisper, "You are my rara avis, darling cousin. " He smiles, a smile so primal and destructive. The smile of Fire.

It is a passion unpredictable, changeable. It is a passion which brings with it the Metallic, coppery tang of blood, your own blood, drawn as you are drawn (to him) as as you resist. The bittersweet triumph of having hurt, and knowing thus, and the shock as you feel the bite of his Blade. The pain, exquisite even as your mind fills with rage, anger, and the deep blood-red threatens to tear your ever-present mask of illusions off your face and leave you bare. It is what he wants, because it is how he is, and he understands not the need for pretenses (defenses...), at least not for him. The red is almost black, so dark is it, tainted at first by little streaks, veins of darkness that spread, threatening to engulf one's very soul. The Darkness, the electrifying Danger you know all too well. Whispering dark words, encouraging you to be lost, to be one with the Darkness, and on the surface you yield. But you know very well the only person you will ever join with, fuse so completely, molten and red-hot-heat, is him. Quicksilver, it changes, ever so swift, one minute fiery, the next cold, dark, impenetrable, its shine mocking you as you stare blankly at your reflection. Yet in your mouth you can still taste the blood (his...or yours?), and it is the taste of Metal.

Still, there is a purity within it. It is a passion that is free, unrestrained, ever-so-constant, the nature of Earth. The memory of days spent in idle childhood activities, when you were not yet a woman, and he not yet a man. In your Garden of Eden, the five children frolicked with childish abandon, three girls and two boys, and one's boyish features contorted with jealousy and darkness at a certain pair, for even then there was always the...potential..of something clearly earth-shaking. He knew, even if they were too blind. They cared not about others, or what others thought, what others did. "Others" were not important in their world, and as the Earth embraced them gently all they knew was each other, and they were content. All they knew was that it was oh-so-natural, for them to laugh, play, sing, their voices pure and high, as they followed the song of the birds in the trees, the chill wind rustling through the leaves. And he would sing, but his gaze would not be skyward, but towards the two, his sad, sad eyes dark in the knowledge that soon, he would be one of the "Others" too, and the rage and jealousy that ensued, so strong in one so young, as even then he began thinking of ways to break the peace of Earth. As the Earth sighed, wondering when he would realise it is impossible to break the Earth, only to break yourself against the Earth. And the children felt the regret in the wind that gusted past, though they bore no heed to it, and you dreamed on (with him..), marveling at the texture of the ancient bark, a blade of grass, having not learnt the art of restraint. To those who knew, they heard it all in each breath the Earth took.

But now, when you feel the regret yourself, you know that it is the passion of pain. It is a passion that is, itself, Ice. Not water, not its flowing counterpart that is so much a vital part of Earth, but Ice. What first developed, you know, was not the Fire-passion, but the Ice-passion, born as you grew up and started on a different path. The cold, hard denial the tone of arguments took, and most probably the one on which you based your character, erecting walls higher and higher of pure white ice crystals. It didn't matter that he burned through them so easily with his Fire; it didn't matter that despite all you did, he affected you so. Desire, but also an equal hate for it, for him, for revealing your greatest weakness and even relishing doing so. As you became a woman you learned that it was dangerous to feel too much, and sought solace in your sanctuary of bright, heartless Ice. Yet he reminded you of your weakness, and you hated him, and hated him, and hated him for the intensity of the many emotions you felt for him, so much so that it became a great suffering to be around him, to feel as you were so unaccustomed to feel. And in an ironic way, the archaic meaning for passion is suffering, and the word has its roots in Latin: pati, to suffer. So, to everyone else but to him, your maintained an Icy exterior. To anyone else but to him, your kiss was the kiss of Ice.

But more often than not, "their" veracity is in doubt.