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And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second-time. Coming events cast their shadows before.James Joyce, Ulysses , Episode 8: Lestrygonians The end.The death of your beloved. (It is nothing but a way to pass the time, she will tell herself, much later.)How would it feel, as the last breath leaves their lips?Because you must feel something, oh lord. You must feel the cutting of the string. It only makes sense; should you love someone so desperately, so hard that your very soul trembles at the whisper of their touch against your skin, surely, surely the love becomes a bond, tie, a silky rope looped around your soul, and when it snaps?Surely you must feel it. These are her thoughts. She's wondered often, through the years. Melancholy musings during endless hours she spends waiting for the sun to set from the comfort of their home, the two-storied mansion with labyrinthian corridors and dark-wood finishings. And not a mote of dust, because Elena has nothing but time, time and books (and him. At night.)These musings are silly, of course, because of who - of what - her beloved is. A true immortal, an Original never-tempted by the sweet bosom of Death. But Elena Gilbert, the vampire, was once nothing but a ravenous girl. A girl with a fluttering heart, who had devoured every novel she could find in her small town. She had spent her short childhood flying on paper planes made out of their pages, and in turn the books had filled her head, with endless curiosity.And so she wonders. In her hours of solitude, she imagines it happen. Her, Penelope, weaving a bitter-sweet shroud of death. Maybe it would feel like a sudden ache in her heart. How can her heart keep beating if his is forever stilled (again)? Maybe it would feel like his warm hand, cradling the back of her neck one final time (his good girl). Or perhaps his death wouldn’t be a feeling at all. Perhaps it would be a sound. Nature herself weeping, a chorus of mourning in the wind (the screams of a thousand souls ringing in ghoulish joy at the death of their killer). Perhaps it would be a vision. His soul would fly to her, an owl, a hummingbird (a bird of prey. He's always been a bird of prey, wrapped in the finest cotton and silk). And so Elena waits for her beloved, as the sun makes its way across its heavenly dome, weaving a shroud of doom. She prods at the swelling of her love with barbed curiosity, like a child would worry a loose tooth. If only to feel the sparks of sorrow warming her cool chest. Because perhaps, Elena the One who Grieves, is so unused to the easy happiness, the safety she's found in him, that she feels compelled to imagine his death, to keep herself grounded.And so Elena weaves her web of sorrow, only for it to unspool as the sunset drows nearer.For that’s when her beloved would return, dispelling all sorrows. With his ever cocksure footsteps, that echoes through the gates, she lets the worries go. He approaches her, his posture perfect, his suit sharp. Nary a hair in his perfect head out of place and she loves him like this, wary and arrogant and hers.(She loves him better later still, love-drunk and sweaty chasing his pleasure in her deeps.)Every night, unfailingly, he’ll find her. In her study, in their bedroom, in the library. His mouth will find hers, before a single word has the chance to break free.‘My love,’ he’ll whisper against her kiss-worried lips. ‘My love,’ he’ll tattoo the words against the crown of her head, his steadfast presence melting the ghosts of her worries away. ‘Elena’.‘I missed you,’ she’ll confess in the glory of his presence. Her fingers will seek the lapels of his coat, taking pleasure in the strain of the over-priced fabric. And in return, the flowers of desire will bloom where his hands will hold her, keep her, metal-firm against the suppleness of her waist, her thighs. And how she wants to flower for him under the tender cloak of their nights.For the nights belong to them. They exist for his words in her ear, his touch on her flesh, the stern line of his lips under her kisses, the chasm of something that threatens to swallow them both as the darkness of their eyes meets.He’ll come to her, every night, and every night, she’ll come for him. And the tangled web of pervasive worries will be exorcised time and again, upon the softness of their bed, their altar. Till the morning light will come, and his other life, his other family, the monstrosity of his eternal vow, will steal him away once more.And her, Penelope herself, will be left behind once more. Left, alone, to count the threads of her shroud, to count the heartbeats to nightfall.And so she is left. Wondering, once more, how it would feel, if her beloved was to die. If the stolen life in his body was to end before the night came, before he found his way back, his way home to her. Elena weaves, and wonders.But in the end, she is not prepared.She should have known; no musings, no novels, no poems. Nothing could have prepared her for the moment when Elena has to wonder no more. (It is a Monday, she will later realize. It all ended on a Monday afternoon in March.) It is not an ache. It's not a touch, it's not a sound, it's not a vision.
He
It is the tenterhooks of years and years of compulsion lifting. It is the cataclysm of memories, twisted and tweaked, it is new-old pathways caving wide-open, searing through her brain.It is the horror of a new-old reality revealing itself, pulling Elena under.
He is
No. Not under. The horror bubbles, it pulls her up, forces her out of her safe cocoon, until she is left exposed, a single exposed nerve, shivering and kicking, an unholy birth, an expulsion from the safety of the womb of what was.
He is d
The cup she was washing slips her loose grasp, shatters on the marble flooring.
He is de
Elena gasps like a newborn. In a new world, a world free from his softly spoken instructions - and how they flood her frontal cortex, a cataclysm she can’t stop remember my love. We had a deal. I honoured it. In the end, I saved you from Niklaus. Remember how I was there for you? When you were scared, hopeless, angry, the night of the ritual? I chose you, my love. I killed for you, my love. Why won't you trust me ?
He is dea
Elena remembers, languidly at first and then all at once and that’s when she knows.
He is dead
Elijah Mikaelson, the love of her life, the serpent in her garden, is dead. Belatedly, she hears the sound of the cup breaking, underfoot. An errand shard slices her naked calf, but she can’t feel the ache.Because how could a little ache break through the agony of Elena’s unmaking?The cup breaks but the sound it makes gets lost, because Elena is screaming. She is screaming until there is no more air in her lungs to scream, and then she gasps and screams again.The memories keep flashing through her mind’s eyes, a relentless kaleidoscope of a life-unlived.Elena died, in the lake that had claimed her everything. And then she woke up, to the furrowing of his eyebrows. And now, fifteen years later, Elijah is dead, god-knows-where. Everything in between shifts and then settles into a jagged fun-house mirror of their so-called life. (Someone is laughing, someone is screaming. Someone has died.) When the stream of old-new memories slows down, Elena finds herself on her hands and knees, in the midst of their once spotless kitchen, the heart of the home - no, her jail, oh lord, it is a jail isn’t it? - that he built for her. There is something wet, trickling from her lips, running down the side of her neck. She brings her hand to her lips, wiping her mouth on her cashmere sleeve. She stares at the pinkish foam, feeling the tatters of her throat trying to pull themselves back together.The soft halogen light of her luxurious kitchen makes the bloody foam sparkle, like the ring on her finger.Her engagement ring.(The only ring she owns, Elena knows.)Elijah gave her such a beautiful ring - princess cut, twenty-four carats, every little girl’s dream. Elena’s dream. Only she can’t remember dreaming that dream.But she remembers that on the day Elijah proposed, she was so happy, so grateful, that she gave him her day-ring in return. (The rotten motherfucker compelled her to give him her day-ring.) Elena looks around the room with wild eyes. Heavy curtains cover every window. Soft lights mimic the yellow glow of daylight, teasing her, teasing her with the sun she was made to give up.With trembling fingers, she takes the princess-cut diamond ring off. She forces it through her spittle-soaked lips, past her tattered throat, and swallows it deep inside the void that’s now spreading inside of her.There.Gone.Penelope no more. Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear? Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events.James Joyce, Ulysses , Episode 17: Ithaca He comes to her at nights.Before the echo of her screams has had the chance to die, before she has had the chance to will her shaking limbs to move, he shows up at her door.His knocking is a violent drum, scaring away the drowsy stillness that was threatening to settle upon her wary bones. ‘Won’t you open the door for me, sweetheart?’ Klaus Mikaelson slurs his words. (Elena would have accepted him as a brother in law. Elijah fucked her head so bad, Elena would have accepted her killer, with open arms, as her brother. In the place of her brother. Curse them. Curse them all.)She doesn’t move. She isn’t sure she can. ‘Please. Do you wish me to beg? I will beg, I will debase myself, because the bastard - he made me promise. I promised him, love. I will deliver his words to you, and you will hear them. This is all I am asking of you. Hear me, and then do as you will. Why won’t you let me in?’The monster at her door is sobbing.Elena does not move. ‘Open the door you bloody wench!’ Klaus screams, and the sound of glass smashing against the door makes what’s left of her heart jump. ‘If you do not open the door this very instant, I shall make you burn. I shall find every sorry excuse of a creature you’ve ever loved, I shall drag them here, to your very doorstep and I shall tear them limb to limb so you can enjoy the melody of their screams and maybe then, Elena, maybe then you will pay attention!’There is no one left for her to lose, Elena realises. Elijah’s words, so gentle. So insidious, her love. ‘It is better this way, my love. Let them go. Have they not made you suffer again, with their fumbling, nerveless attentions. And you, in return, your very existence, Elena, puts their lives at risk. Is it worth it?’
It wasn’t. It wasn’t worth it, Elena had agreed, her foolish plans of going to college, her neediness, none of that was worth watching her friends suffer with every new enemy her cursed lineage dragged to their doorstep.
‘And you? Would you be alright, if I was to stay with you?’
Elijah had smiled.
‘Nothing can kill me, Elena’.
Her perfect knight. Undying, noble, refined. And so funny, when it was just the two of them. Catering to her every need.
On her twentieth birthday, he built her a sprawling library - the knowledge of a thousand years, and her, in its midst. He placed the world at her feet - if only she agreed to stay within the confines of his protection. And who needs college when you have the man who taught in Oxford for a hundred years kneeling at your feet, stealing glances at you with half-lidded eyes. Eager to share the riches of his mind. So eager to please.
They christened the library, celebrating her thirst for knowledge, his mouth hungry on her.
His eyes were so alive that night.
‘He is dead, Elena,’ Klaus’ voice is breathless, a whisper that she has to strain to hear through the walls. Elena knows. She remains kneeling on the kitchen floor, staring at the shattered cup.‘Just open the door, Elena,’ and this time his voice is just tired. ‘I will burn the house down if I have to. Don’t make me’. Klaus can’t get in, she realises. Elijah, damn him, damn his tender foresight, Elijah must have made the deed of the house such that no one but the two of them could enter.(Only one of them now. Elena. Singular.) And so Klaus stays outside of her door, until the morning sun rises.She doesn’t need to check that he has left. The absence of his soft sobs is deafening.(It is not like she could open a window and look. Without her stolen ring, the sun would burn her.)Elena remains in her kitchen, alone.And for the first time, her mind is blessedly free of weaving the shroud of what-ifs. She has the answers now. How does it feel when the love of your life dies?It feels like waking up from a fifteen-year-long lie.It feels like death.Elena gets up, limbs aching from being on her knees for hours. She starts picking the shards off the floor.What else is there to do? I should probably try to leave, Elena thinks, as she throws the remnants of the cup in a fresh trash bag.How? It's morning. She has no daylight-ring. There are no phones in the house. No neighbours for miles. No computers, no laptops.His phone. He let her use his phone - and then he took it with him every morning.The morning. Last morning.His image is burned through her eyelids, the image of him putting on his coat. Fresh from the shower. Well-muscled forearms moving under the thin layer of his shirt, slipping his phone in his inner pocket. His eyes on her, his dark eyes, narrowing to take the shape of her in, naked and loose in their bed.His siren, he called her, as the night bled into dawn.He was celebrating in those moments, Elena realizes. He was taking her in, celebrating his conquest, before turning to leave her behind, safe for him to enjoy, come nightfall.Only he would not. Elijah took her in, and then turned and walked away from her for the final time.Elena blinks and curses. She hates the very memory of him, the shape of his body as he passed through the threshold of their bedroom. The width of his back. The familiarity of him.(She hates that’s the last memory of him she’ll ever carry.) He comes to her at nights.As if Elijah’s spirit refuses to let go of her, and has compelled his monster of a brother to be her jailor in his stead. He comes to her with a bottle of booze every night. He settles, she can hear, with his back against her front door. Sometimes he says nothing all night, bar his ever-present demand - open the bloody door, Elena. Let me give you his final words. Let us both be free. The passage of time feels wrong, at first. Some days fly by in the blink of an eye, and others linger, it seems, forever. There was a routine, once, the passage of time measured in his comings and goings. And now he’s coming no more, and Elena has to learn how to navigate the endless days afresh. She does very little at first. Every room is full of him. Moving from the kitchen to the living room is a punch to the chest, for she can feel his presence on every surface. His cufflinks, on a tray by the drinking cabinet. His favourite armchair, the unwashed glasses of wine. The dining table he fucked her over, more times than she could count. The first time she walks into the living room, she does nothing but replay their last night together through her head. Maybe he left her clues. Maybe in their brief exchange he let her know what he was planning to do, somewhere in the wide astral plane of the past, in the spaces between familiar words and even more touches. In the meaningful glances over their red wine, purpled with blood.Maybe she should have said something to stop him.Maybe she should have torn his lying face to stripes, using nothing but her carefully manicured nails. It takes her long days to reclaim the living room. But he does not belong here any more. He is dead. Reclaiming the library takes even longer. And then one morning, Elena starts reading again. Nothing in particular. Without realising, she picks up a book that’s left open on the reading desk. It is a thick tome, in German, and she brings it closer to her face.That’s when his smell hits her.He was reading this book, before he died. The oil of his fingertips has been soaked through the aged pages of the book. Molecules of him left behind, fading, fading with every passing moment.She drops the book.It catches against the corner of the wooden desk. It lands with a thud, a gush on the soft cover. Blurry through her tears. (He cared for her so deeply, he filled the library with every book she’s ever read. He never compelled her to tell him. Elena shared her love for the written word freely. He was the fertile ground and her words were seeds. She wrote so much, in these past fifteen years. He kept all her manuscripts, she seen him running his fingers tenderly over the pages when he thought she wasn’t looking. He cared for her so deeply, he kept the pantry perpetually stocked. There are dozens of blood bags for her. Only he’s gone now, and she won’t open the door. So she starts drinking less blood, if only to make the time stretch.) It takes her days before she can find her way into the library again.This time she picks up a book that’s too modern, too new. It’s about architecture and Elena does not care much about buildings but at least she can’t feel part of his essence leak out with every turn of the page.It becomes easier after that, picking up the next book. ‘He loved you,’ the monster at her door pleads, voice rough.She wonders if he ever speaks to anyone but her.‘So what?’ Elena finds herself saying.The words are a croak. Her first words since the end, and they are so meaningless, she wants to laugh.Klaus couldn’t have heard the croak of her, she reasons. In any case, Klaus says no more, and Elena is left to her silence.She spends the night leafing through another travel guide, this time of South East Asia.
‘When we get married, I reckon we should travel the world. There is so very much I wish to share with you,’ he had said.
‘The whole entire world?’ she had asked, nipping at his wrist with blunt, human teeth.
‘Nothing less for you, Elena’.
‘It will take a long time,’ she had smiled at him, with a falsely demure glance.
‘We have nothing but time, my love,’ Elijah had smiled back, slipping his thumb past her lips.
(They never did set a wedding date. There were so many things Elijah had to do, first. So many times he had to save his family. And Elena was told, my love, don’t mind.)
Elena doesn’t know if she would have minded. She was never given the choice.
the sun shines for you he saidthe day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hatthe day I got him to propose to me yesfirst I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yeshe said was a flower of the mountain yesso we are flowers all a womans body yesthat was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yesthat was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman isand I knew I could always get round himand I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yesand I wouldn't answer first only looked out over the sea and the skyI was thinking of so many things he didn’t know of James Joyce, Ulysses , Episode 18: Penelope Whenever she grows too tired to stand, she lies on the sofa. Sleep happens between the unspooling of barbed memories. Elena was never a methodical person. That was Care, and then, him. She lets her mind wander. To that first date. She goes through every fact of their relationship, random moments, middle, end, beginning. She compares the memory to the truth, letting the pain wash over her. As if the agony of his deceit will answer the questions. As if, by submerging herself in the betrayal, she will find the way forward. That night, she welcomes his arrival. She’s cried so long her head feels heavy with it. ‘Are you still with us, Elena?’ Klaus mocks. She stomps around the kitchen, if only to be contrary. ‘You must be running out of blood, sweetheart. Even through the door, I can smell the rot in that mausoleum of yours, the impending dessication. Why don’t you open the bloody door Elena, while your limbs still move?’ She knows why.He knows why. He doesn’t speak much later, nothing but muttered words between sips, muttered curses. And Elena, skin paper thin and flakey already, finds herself drawn closer and closer to the accursed door.What for? She wonders.Maybe even used, hollowed out things get lonely, sometimes. Elena wonders why no one speaks of the Princess in the Towers. Why no one ever speaks of their loneliness, after their dragon dies. ‘It is my fault,’ Klaus laughs. He snorts, and Elena can hear the shaking in his voice. ‘No, it is his bloody fault, for I told him, yes, sweetheart, I told him not to’. The monster at her door is disrobing his soul. Her killer, the child-murderer, he is attempted to cut himself open on the edge of her doorsteps, bleed his pain on her doorway and Elena does not. No. She will not.He does not deserve the catharsis of her listening ear.‘Elijah, the fool, the noble fool, he thought he was trying to protect me’.Her lips tremble. No.Neither brother deserves her sorrow. She will not mourn him a hero. She will not allow Klaus his unburdening.She might not have a daylight-ring, a phone, a life, but Elena Gilbert has a stereo, she remembers.
‘This is what you want, my love, for your twenty-fifth birthday?’ He’d laughed at the absurd simplicity of her request. She had nodded, and then she took him in her mouth, cruelly, so he was laughing at her no more.
Elena runs upstairs.She clicks the play button, turns the knob as far as it goes.It’s Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, the cassette she’d put in ages, ages ago.The melody is so loud it hurts her ears.She can barely hear Klaus’ rage, his scream, ‘damn you, Elena’.Fleetwood Mac plays, and Elena spins, she shoves all furniture away and she spins.Can you see me now?As much as he nurtured her writing, he always found her taste in music lacking.Fuck him, fuck both of them.She loses her top, she loses her jeans, and Elena spins and spins until she becomes the Gold Dust Woman, until she feels the tingle of the sun rising, somewhere outside her prison walls, until she can hear Klaus no more. By the time Elena dares enter the sanctuary of their bedroom, the sheets no longer smell of him. Time has drained his presence, as it has drained the moisture of her skin. The smell of him has faded, not a whiff remains in the shirt he had carefully removed, placing it on the back of a chair for Elena to wash, later. Later. Never, now.No. She’s kept the windows shut. She can no longer smell him, because his scent has permeated every inch of the two-storied mansion. It’s not gone. It’s become part of her, indistinguishable from her.(Maybe like this, she exacted her revenge on him. She keeps the remnants of him prisoners, weaving his molecules with hers. In, through her breath, out, with every exhale. Since he no longer is, she can shape any leftover material into whatever she wishes.The way he shaped her.)Elena stands too long on the doorway, cursing herself for making the bed that last morning. For shifting the covers, for straightening the pillow so it no longer holds the shape of his head. She’s taken to waiting for him.The less blood she drinks, the more she finds her way to the plentiful drink cabinet, and later, the cellar.She brings her own bottles now. As she feels the sun set, the shadows growing longer in the world that still exists outside the confines of her once-spotless prison, she makes her way to the living room, to the hall, stepping over the wreckage of the furniture. She sits, with her back against the door that’s still locked, and waits for the footsteps to approach. ‘Elena,’ he greets.Elena drinks.And maybe he is feeling daring, maybe the moon reigns supreme in the heavens loosening his tongue.(Elijah called her his moon, once. And she was. She is. She gets the night. She gave Klaus the moon. She is left with nothing. He was the pharaoh, and she is the tomb.)‘He never meant for it to end like this,’ Klaus says, and he sounds sober, the most sober he’s sounded in weeks. ‘When you died with Damon’s blood inside of you, he was the one he found you’.Elena remembers. She remembers the fear. The certainty. It was the end. She wouldn’t turn. Rebekah had killed her. The Mikaelsons had killed her, the lake her killed her and maybe it was ok. Maybe that was how it was always meant to end.And then she had looked into his eyes. She remembers his furrowed brows.‘You wouldn’t drink blood, he told me. He couldn’t convince you, and you were fading. And he had promised to protect you. He had promised to protect every one of you, Elena. He went a little mad. He compelled you, then. To turn’.Elena remembers.‘And then, he found out you were sired to Damon. A little more than a ragdoll, bound to your vampire nature, bound to your so-called morals, bound to the words of a reckless vampire. He compelled you to be free. And then,’ Klaus loses steam then.Elena remembers. Elena remembers everything now. That’s where the excuses end, and the indulgence begins.‘He didn’t stop compelling me,’ she says, and her voice is a wound.‘I know, sweetheart,’ Klaus says. She hears his fingers, caressing the wood of the door. ‘I’m sorry’.‘Why didn’t he stop?’ It is choking her, suddenly. She told herself it doesn’t matter. Because she should hate him.Because she hates him.‘My foolish brother,’ Klaus says, and it is a sob, deep, she thinks she hears the slippery muscle of his heart splitting in two. ‘He said - he had to take the grief from your eyes. And every time he tried it worked, but only for a while.’ He cackles, bitter spit. ‘The old fool. He should have known better’.Elena’s chest is ice. Ice and cracking flesh.‘It’s a shame,’ she says. Her eyes are fixed on a spot, where one of the lightbulbs is now flickering. ‘I would have loved him’.She would. With all her heart. But there is no space for woulds and coulds inside her little jail.She burns all of her suits that night. And if he smells the smoke, Klaus says nothing. There is only one blood bag left. She can make it last longer, if she mixes a few drops within her wine.She toasts the walls.The walls remain unmoved, and the sun, the sun, it burns, somewhere above her. ‘All I need you to do, Elena, is open this door. Read the letter he wrote you. And then you can move on’.‘Why can’t you? Move on?’‘I gave him my word’.Elena tries to laugh. It tickles.‘Klaus, you’ve done nothing but break your word, for your entire lives. Surely, he never expected you to keep it’.She hears him swallow. She can only imagine how he looks. Beard grown-out. Eyes hollow, sad.‘It was a werewolf bite. Something stronger, meaner than a werewolf. I couldn’t do anything. It was… a handful of hours. Madness, pain. In his few moment of lucidity he wrote you this letter, Elena. And made me swear to give it to you. Watch you read it’.‘I don’t want to’.‘Didn’t you care for him? At all? He did you wrong, yes. But he loved you, Elena, with all his heart’.Elena chokes. (You are my heart, he told her one night. You are the only goodness in me, Elena. I can't let, damn me, I can't let the gift that is your heart ever, ever grow quiet. The curtains were open and the silver of the moon was making him a statue of old. They moved together as one, and he cried as he drunk her kisses, and she held him, she let herself be held, falling for him, over and over again, until her physical form was a trembling shell and her soul soared, and she saw the face of God.)‘Aw, did I care for him? He was my life, Klaus. He made himself my life. How is a letter going to make it all better?’‘I don’t know. Just bloody read it, and then curse his soul, if you must. Let this end, Elena’.She forces her lips to move.‘No! I am asking you. Elijah forced his way into my life. He stole me away from my life. And then he became my whole world. How am I supposed to go on living without him?’ A silence. ‘I don’t know, sweetheart. I wish I knew’. She hears Klaus get up, walk away.(It’s not the sunrise yet, but Elena doesn’t open the door. She doesn’t know what any of this means any more.) He doesn’t come the next night. Elena waits by the door, heart beating weakly in her shrivelled chest.By the time the sun’s about to break through the faraway hills (a sensory knowledge, a tickle on her drying skin,) she braces herself.Her fingers creak as she turns the key in the lock.The door opens with a click.On the doorstep, a letter. And on top of it, lapis lazuli glittering. Her daylight-ring.Elena takes a step, and then another. She reaches out. (She can’t smell her beloved on the envelope, no. By now the smell of Klaus, of cheap bourbon, it has permeated the thick paper.) Elena Gilbert, in his very familiar handwriting. Only it’s shaky. Flaked with microscopic droplets of blood. His dying breath. His dying words.The sun heats up her skin, until it is unbearable.Elena looks up, her eyes blinded by the all-encompassing glow of the light that had been denied from her, for so very long.She looks up, daylight-ring held so tight in her palm she feels the edges digging through her flesh.And then her hands catch on fire, Elijah’s words burning brightly. A transmutation - life into paper into ash, and it hurts, bright and hot and clarifying, and Elena screams so that her voice can be heard all the way to heavens. I was a Flower of the mountain yeswhen I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yesand how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as anotherand then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yesand then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flowerand first I put my arms around him yesand drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yesand his heart was going like mad and yesI said yesI willYes.James Joyce, Ulysses , Episode 18: Penelope