Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

A Meeting at the Marquee: Part Three

Ysanne

They made love until the sun came up, and then they collapsed in each others arms, exhausted. Isabeau fell asleep first, lying on her side, her face turned towards Ysanne.

Ysanne stayed awake a little longer, watching the woman who had come into her life so abruptly, like a blaze of sunshine.

"Ma belle," she whispered, twining one chestnut curl around her finger.

It did seem crazy that they could feel so strongly for each other after just one night, and Ysanne knew that, but there was something here. She could feel it, even if she couldn't quite explain it.

Isabeau's hand lay between them, long, pale fingers that had spent hours learning Ysanne's body, and Ysanne took it, lacing their fingers together.

When she finally fell asleep, it was the most peaceful sleep she'd had in a long time.

She was woken by the pressure of someone squeezing her hand. Isabeau shuddered next to her, legs restlessly moving, her beautiful face creased in a frown. A pained whimper slipped from her mouth.

"Isabeau?" Ysanne whispered.

Isabeau just squeezed her hand again. Ysanne gently touched her shoulder, her face.

"Isabeau, wake up. Wake up, ma belle."

Isabeau's eyes flew open, clouded with fear and confusion. She looked around the room with jerky, disoriented movements, her whole body still trembling.

"It was a dream. Nothing but a dream," Ysanne said, stroking her hair.

Isabeau hadn't needed to breathe in hundreds of years, but she let out a shuddery breath anyway, perhaps trying to expel whatever was plaguing her. Ysanne moved closer behind her, coaxing Isabeau into her lap.

"You're alright," she whispered, her hands still gentle on Isabeau's hair until Isabeau stopped trembling.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ysanne asked, when Isabeau had been quiet and still for a while.

"The Blitz," Isabeau whispered. "Sometimes I dream about the Blitz."

"You lived through it?" By the time World War Two broke out, Ysanne had been living in England for a very long time, but her home had been on the outskirts of a rural northern village, far away from the cities. Away from the bombings.

Isabeau nodded, her curls rustling against Ysanne's thighs. "I was living in the city at the time. I didn't isolate myself until after the war had ended."

Ysanne ran her hand up and down Isabeau's back, soothing her.

"I thought about training as a nurse once," Isabeau said. "I'd lost people that I'd loved, and I thought that I could help others avoid that same grief. In 1860, I moved here to London so I could attend the Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses." She shook her head. "But it was too hard to maintain the charade of being human. I had to leave. When the shadow of the Great War fell over Europe, I wanted to help, but I couldn't do it as a nurse, so I worked in the factories as a munitionette. And it felt so good to know that I was doing my part, that I was helping."

That flicker of guilt ate at Ysanne again. She had not helped during the Great War. She had seen two lovers go to the trenches, never to return, and she had only concerned herself with her own grief, her own loss.