2024-03-11: Only For Us
- Log: Only For Us
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Elisa Kafim
- Where: Atop The Eiffel Tower, Paris
- Date: 2024-03-11 (ICly November 24 0098)
- Summary: The Kafims celebrate their anniversary in Paris, dancing atop the Eiffel Tower. Yuliana is madly in love with her wife, and Elisa wants to give her wife everything to fill her heart. Isn't eternal devotion so romantic?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
All through Yuliana's treatment, in November, she's been saying to anyone who will listen -- "We were married in November, you know. Our anniversary's coming up! Oh, I'm so excited! My Elisa's been so sweet, you know..." Alectros Armet, the diversional therapist, has been enabling Yuliana's outpouring of love... by helping her with strategies to identify her emotions and how things make her feel, and what effect that has on her.
Surely that's only enabling her; Yuliana doesn't see any threat in it.
So too has Yuliana's excitement carried through the many phone calls she makes to her wife each day: "I want to go somewhere romantic!", she'd say. "... oh, but don't tell me! I want it to be a surprise!"
And of course she's finished up with her Photonic Neuromodulation Therapy in time to bustle back home for her anniversary, plus a few days to deal with the jetlag and settle in. On the 24th, she takes her time dressing up -- an elegant black evening dress with a low, curved neckline and sheer green fabric at its shoulders and across its chest, shining emerald beads and tassels hanging about its midsection. Her shoes are still flats, naturally. (She never got the hang of heels.) Her short hair is pinned back with black ornaments, and despite all the scars across her skin, she's striking.
"Mhmhmhm~", she chuckles, when a blindfold is tied about her eyes. "It really is a surprise...!" Of course, that means she has to hold fast to her wife's arm, as they're teleported away from their hearth. ... perhaps that's a benefit.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa has been more... alive, of late. It is the best word for it; she has been engaged in the world more often, engaged with Yuliana more often. It is since before that conversation about 'hunger', but more noticeable since.
She does notice the way they are helping Yuliana with these strategies. Elisa keeps her own counsel as to how she feels about that. But not about 'surprises'. No, she has prepared...
Elisa is in an imperious gown of green, with many black accents, and ruffles about the skirt. Her shoes are heels, but thick, chunkier things that demand attention from the ground.
"Of course," Elisa says. "And on we go..."
The darkness parts. They are Moved.
"Here," Elisa says, "Just a moment..."
She looks around, to ensure all is in readiness, and then removes the blindfold.
Yuliana will see a small table with champagne in an icy bucket, but no one around to serve it apparently; here is a beautiful night, however, with iron scaffolding about that she may recognize, or may not, because the inside of the Eiffel Tower is somewhat different from the outside.
The stars stretch out forever above; Paris sweeps below them, bustling as ever but distant in the night.
"Welcome to Paris, my darling." She smiles. "...We can have dinner shortly; I have arranged a seating below." With a chef!
A pause, "But first, a private moment, only for us."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana calls it sweet. Yuliana has a particular perspective on Elisa's engagement which the rest of the world may not quite share.
(If there's some motive to the strategies she's learning, she can't see it.)
She sways closer to her wife as the darkness parts, head dipping, demure, in the presence of a Gaze she cannot be blinded to. But then they are in this world properly again, and Yuliana hums, as she tilts her chin up to regard her wife.
Of course, the first thing she sees is her beautiful wife, and she smiles to see her. The second thing she sees, looking out from her, is that lovely little seating -- and the empty iron-wrought expanses of the upper Eiffel Tower. "Oh!" Yuliana exclaims, taking a few steps out to look over the edge of the top floor of the massive structure. "That's the Arc de Triomphe! Are we--?!" She turns, with a bright expression, just in time for Elisa to introduce their setting. "Magnifique, amoureuse! Je t'aime!" Of course she expresses her love for her lover's magnificent gesture in French; they're in Paris.
And naturally she rushes right back over to her, to embrace her once and once again, arms about her and tentacles weaving in about her waist. "I'm so happy!" She shifts back to Indonesian easily; it is one of her default languages, when she doesn't have to mind outsiders. "Elya, I want to dance up here...!"
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
But this is not about the rest of the world.
Elisa smiles back widely, her eyes only on Yuliana. This is a Gaze she can see well. But when Yuliana looks around... She sees it! They are. Elisa of course knows French; she knows exactly what Yuliana just said to her.
And her smile is still wide. "Oui," she answers.
She embraces Yuliana, and switches languages with her, "I am pleased that you are pleased. And of course!"
She reaches out, and snaps her fingers; there is a spray of green light like a firework, and from not so far away, a band begins to play. Of course she would not rely on mere recordings for such a thing.
She takes Yuliana's hands. "Then let us dance."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Elisa always seems to know the languages Yuliana speaks, even though she speaks so many. Surely it's just because she's paid such keen attention to Yuliana's lessons; surely it's just because Elisa herself is well-travelled.
Surely.
"Ah...!" Yuliana gasps in delight at that thing like a firework, and the sound of music swelling from below. (Are they in one of the lifts...? That hardly matters.) She can tell it's not a recording, and that means -- "Elya, you arranged everything!" She exclaims, in delight, as she slips her hands into her wife's. Elisa could tell she'd want to dance on their anniversary... she's wonderful!
And right now, it's ballroom dancing; it's a Western style, but Yuliana is still quite fond of it, and particularly fond of how close it lets her be with her wife. She spins out in a circle, before draping back into her arms, springing back up a moment later. "Oh, Elya... we've been married two years, now." As she twirls, she declares: "I'm so happy...!"
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
It could be that.
They're probably in one of the lifts. It's assuredly uncomfortable, but this is not about that, either. Besides, they're well-paid.
"You wonder why I am so busy today?" she says with a pleased look. Of course she could tell such a plain desire. It is not hard for her to anticipate what Yuliana could want...
Ballroom dancing, and how close they are; Yuliana circles out, and Elisa takes her back. "Yes, my Yuliana," she says. "Two wonderful years. And there is nothing that I wish more than to be with you longer still."
"I love you, my darling. All this, this music, this evening, this city..."
"I would give it to you, to hear you say you are happy."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
That explains why no one can come up here to bother them, right now. The lifts are quite occupied.
"You're so industrious!" Yuliana is full of praise for Elisa, who spent all day getting ready. Of course Elisa anticipates Yuliana's desires; she's always been concerned with her wife, one way or another. (And Yuliana does so want to be the centre of attention. If that means Elisa takes up all her attention, then...)
Yuliana's cheeks colour with affection, to hear Elisa claim her. "Ma douce," she invokes Elisa's sweetness, "let's be together forever... I want to be with you always! Even if it's a hundred years from now, I couldn't bear to leave you." She circles about her wife, and when she dips, one of those scarred legs extends far into the air.
"I love your gifts," she murmurs, gaze lidding. "You've always given me so much, zhenushka... my heart is so full."
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Besides. It's an important day. A day sanctified in blood, at that church, where Elisa took the bullet for her wife. But today there is no such horror. Not that kind, anyway.
"Forever," Elisa agrees. "One hundred years is but a beginning of the commitment I have made." She dips her down, and kisses her, at that statement, holding her with loving strength.
Then, she pulls back, her hair draping over Yuliana's face until she rights them both again.
"And I will give you more. That is what I wish to hear, a heart full..."
A smile. The music will not stop until she tells it to stop.
As it should be.
"Always."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana would have died, that day, if not for Elisa's sacrifice. She thinks of it, sometimes, the way she would have had no chance without the protective vests she usually wore in public. In her wedding dress, she was vulnerable... but Elisa made sure no one could exploit her fragility. Thanks to her wife, she was allowed to be gentle, without the consequences catching up to her. Thanks to her wife, who deployed in her Spinatia to fight for Yuliana directly... oh, isn't it romantic?
Yuliana tilts her head allowingly, overjoyed at the effort. Elisa's purple hair is so much like a veil, shielding the two of them from the world outside, and Yuliana's frills brush at them as they curl and fan behind her ears. In the privacy of that closeness, it is plain just how much she cherishes her wife.
"You make me so happy," she sighs, as she steps to the side and back again, spinning out only to press her back into her wife. "Sputnica zhizni," she calls Elisa her sole companion for life, "with you beside me, I can do anything..."
She can even dance.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa would do anything to shield Yuliana and her gentleness. To ensure that no one can exploit that fragility.
Yes, it is plain. Elisa is not warm, but she warms with the feeling, the knowledge. This world is so alive, in the moment; the stars far above and away, the chill of the wrought iron, the music of the band...
And the city, far below.
"You can," Elisa says as she catches her again. "And I will tolerate no limits on you."
"But there are none tonight. Tonight, there is only you and I..."