perpetual sunset [zhenya]

...is rather an unsettling thing
june 2003

Last year he’d gotten bored during Sigilmancy and carved his name (STURM, all capitals) into his desk at the back of the room with a penknife. Obviously he’d been in a heap of trouble as soon as it was found out, and it wasn’t the sort of thing he could deny, as it had his name on it, but there had been names and dates and swear words and all kinds of bullshit carved into the old desks, at the old school, and Conrad had thought it a tradition worth keeping, an archive of teenage boredom and spite.

Now there were a few other names carved under his – not seven classes’ worth of names, yet, but he’d been right in assuming that the people who sat in the desks furthest from the professor were people willing to vandalise school property – and two swear words. He hadn’t done either of the swear words (though he’d gotten blamed for one, since he said it all the time) but he felt pretty proud of it anyway.

This was what he was thinking about, as he slung rocks over the sea (he wasn’t good enough at skipping rocks to want to skip them, so he was just going for brute force) – he was thinking about how he was proud of himself, not because he had anything at all to be proud of, not because defiance had paid off, but because – even if it hadn’t – he hadn’t compromised. It was the same fucked-up way he was proud of himself when he misbehaved, the same fucked-up way he was proud of himself even when he was punished for it. ‘Do your worst’ proud.

Which was really confusing, honestly.

Zhenya, as she wasn’t on the precipice of graduation, was not thinking of anything remotely as fucked-up or confusing as Conrad, so he’d let her do all the talking on today’s meander. He wasn’t listening – he wasn’t ignoring her, or anything, just wasn’t really paying attention beyond keeping a general idea of what she’d just said, so he could zone back in if she asked him a question. She’d been complaining about Krylova for a while, maybe just because she knew he wasn’t going to disagree.

“If you’re bad enough at it,” he said sagely, weighing a stone in his hand, “eventually she’ll stop trying.” This had served him well, at least – maybe he just had less potential than Zhenya, or a worse attitude. He threw the stone overhand; it plopped into the water with a neat splash. 

@Zhenya Shishkina

“I don’t know why Galina Viktorovna doesn’t just leave me alone. I mean, I suck at Alchemy! Why can’t she accept that? Why does she keep bothering me with extra homework and such? Does she think I’ll do better in her class if I don’t find any time to sleep anymore?” Zhenya had been venting for a while now and shook her head at her boyfriend’s comment.

“I wish!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air dramatically. “I really hope she’ll give up on me. Honestly, I don’t care about the grades. A day only has so many hours. I need to set priorities.”

She knew she didn’t have to tell Conrad this. He knew her probably better than she knew herself. He could look at her life from the outside and he actually had time to sit down and just let his thoughts drift off. Zhenya on the other hand was busy as a bee. She barely had five minutes per day to be lazy.

Conrad was throwing stones into the water and a part of Zhenya wanted to do the same or, well, try to skip stones instead. However, she refrained and just watched her boyfriend. She liked that they finally had some time together. The school year was almost over, both had exams to prepare for but they had decided that they should walk into Döttrar Vik today and just hang out together - away from the school and people who’d watch them.

Zhenya stepped closer to Conrad. “You know what?” she whispered into his ear, “I looked around and there’s no one from school anywhere near.” She looked into his eyes and reached for his free hand, pulling him a little towards herself. Kissing him out here felt like a thrilling prospect. They could be seen by some sailors or villagers but that did not matter to Zhenya now. She didn’t think any of these people would pay them a lot of attention anyway.

Conrad stooped over to collect another handful of stones, and discarded a couple of smaller ones through his fingers, and threw another one as far over the water as he could. I suck at Alchemy, Zhenya was saying. He was still only half paying attention; he threw another two stones over the water.

What did he have to be proud of? He wasn’t graduating because his perseverance or determination had seen him through; he probably owed that to the same disastrous stew of fear, spite, and apathy that had made it so difficult. That was kind of fucked up – should he still be proud of it? Should he be ashamed?

“Just drop it after you take the O.W.L.,” he said. He threw the last stone from this handful and wiped his hand on his robes. He’d come to Döttrar Vik mostly to burn off his energy but was still maddeningly restless; he scuffed the toe of his shoe through the sand, half burying it, then shook the sediment off, and returned to prodding through the beach for more stones.

He wasn’t sure why Zhenya had come with him; she wasn’t throwing anything or kicking anything or sulking or really doing any of the things Conrad did when he went to the village. Probably she just wanted company; that was probably the reason for all the complaining. Complaining was the easiest conversation Conrad could make.

He hadn’t unearthed anything more than a frightened crab and a broken seashell when Zhenya appeared to grow tired of complaining – she got into his face (he stepped off) and took his hand (he almost twisted it away, but managed at the last second not to.) She said there was nobody around, but he took the opportunity to look around too (she was always looking him right in the eye and it made him nervous even when he wasn’t lying to her) before he said, “Yeah,” and forced himself to meet her gaze again.

She probably wanted to kiss (she always wanted to kiss) so he wet his lips, and let that be his consent – five months together and she was still initiating pretty much anything they ever did, which he knew he should be ashamed of, but which he didn’t actually mind. It wasn’t like he cared what they did, so it was a good thing she did.

“Yeah,” Zhenya agreed, “I think I will. I will probably have to anyway.” She didn’t expect to get a passing grade in her Alchemy O.W.L anyway and would thus not be allowed to continue with it anyway.

Sometimes Zhenya wondered why they were together. Whenever she approached Conrad for some intimacy he seemed reluctant to accept that. Was he just her boyfriend because it had been easier to accept that they were a couple than to fight it?

Conrad seemed to look around suspiciously now as though anybody would come and arrest them if they kissed out here. It was irritating and Zhenya wondered if she should cast an illusion behind which they could hide when they kissed but, well, she couldn’t as she wasn’t quite skilled enough for that. All she could do was to drag him behind a nearby building or something like that but, truth be told, Zhenya didn’t want that. She wanted to be free to kiss her boyfriend where- and whenever she wanted to.

He looked at her again but she could not see any longing desire in his eyes. He wet his lips which Zhenya took as something like ‘if you must, you can kiss me’. She sighed, thinking that it would be nice to have a boyfriend who was actually eager to get some physical affection. However, she was in a relationship with Conrad and not with some overly eager boy. Usually she liked this about him, having a boyfriend who actually made demands would be a lot worse - she wouldn’t be able to fit such a guy into her busy schedule at all.

She stepped closer to Conrad and flung her arms around his neck. “It’s nice to be out of school for a bit, don’t you think?” she asked quietly as she already leaned in to place her lips on his, not giving him a real chance to respond.

“I wish I dropped it already,” said Conrad, still staring down at the foot he was dragging around in the sand, arms outstretched a little to compensate for his imbalance. “If I fool around and waste my last year, my father says he’ll break my wand, so.” He was sure it was an idle threat, but not sure enough to risk it, so here he was in Alchemy again, probably making Galina Viktorovna tear her hair out every time she had to read his essays.

If he got sand in his shoes he’d have to take them off, so he made himself stop.

Her eyes were lighter than his, but he thought somehow they were harder to read – he could never tell what she was thinking. Sometimes he wondered if she was trying to read his mind, which made him even less comfortable with eye contact than he already was. Now she sighed, like he’d done something wrong. He wet his lips again, more nervously now – if she kissed him now they would get chapped.

Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to tell him – she put her arms around him, and practically mumbled into his mouth. Even if he’d had the chance he wouldn’t have had anything worthwhile to reply (not that it mattered – he was sure it’d been rhetorical. They both knew that they both hated school.)

His lips were getting chapped; after a moment he pulled back. He didn’t like having her arms around him like this, by his neck, but thought he would hurt her feelings if he shrugged her off, so he put his hands on her waist – he didn’t like her touching his neck and definitely wouldn’t like her touching his waist, but she’d never seemed to mind – and kissed her again, more fleetingly. It made him think again about how she’d sighed at him; he lifted his head again and said, “What are you thinking?”

“I doubt he’d do that,” Zhenya said but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t know Conrad’s father and even if she did she couldn’t be sure either. “I doubt my parents would mind if I dropped Alchemy,” she mused. They expected her to graduate but they didn’t expect any great academic achievements from her. If only she managed some N.E.W.T.s in the end they’d be okay with that. However, to get there she needed to pass some O.W.L.s this year and in order to do that she knew she still had to work hard.

They kissed and it was like it usually was. Nice, but not more than that. Zhenya liked kissing. She liked him to hug her. She liked having him close but with Conrad intimacy was hard to get. She had to be pleased with very little.

After their first kiss Conrad initiated another one, a fleeting kiss that lacked passion just like their whole relationship did. Zhenya still wanted it to work, though. She liked Conrad’s company, liked that his life was different from hers and that he offered her a different perspective. However, she was longing for more anyway. Maybe she just needed to push him more.

Then he asked her what she was thinking and Zhenya smiled thoughtfully and shrugged. “Nothing much,” she said. Then, after a brief pause she decided to say a little more. “I’d just like you to be a bit more active, that’s all,” she explained before she pulled him closer and kissed him again, trying to steal a more passionate kiss from him now than they had exchanged so far.

“Yeah,” said Conrad moodily. Even if his father wouldn’t do it, he made sure Conrad knew he could. “He jokes around.” She spoke again, and Conrad glanced over at Zhenya again, eyebrows tucking down slightly – of course her parents wouldn’t mind if she dropped Alchemy; it seemed to be her main obstacle to artistic flying during every waking moment of every day. “I guess you don’t need to know Alchemy to fly,” he said.

She said, nothing much, which was both probably untrue and a pointless thing to say. He was trying to decide between accusing her of lying and just letting it go (he’d said ‘nothing’ to so many questions in his life and he hated when he didn’t get away with it) when she explained: she wanted him to be more active. More active? He was much less active than Zhenya and he knew it, but he’d never thought it bothered her. It had always seemed convenient that he had this much free time – wouldn’t it be harder to spend time together if he was as busy as she was?

He said, “Huh?” but she was going for another kiss, like they hadn’t already done two. He accepted it – it was a little more aggressive than usual and she had her arms around him already anyway – but only for a few seconds before he broke away again, just to have a breath, and to give her an honestly confused frown. “So what, you think I slack off in school too?”

This was a stupid question – he did slack off in school, and they both knew it – but he’d never thought she was bothered by it. The first time they’d spoken to each other, he’d told her that schoolwork didn’t matter in the long run, and at the time she had seemed glad to hear it. In any case it was a little late to do anything about it – he wasn’t about to start putting effort in now.

“Yeah…” Zhenya said. She didn’t need Alchemy to fly. She wasn’t interested in Alchemy either. However, sometimes she felt that it was a shame that she was so bad at school. Sure, she’d have a career in the sport for a few years after her graduation and would keep working at the artistic flying school once she wasn’t a professional athlete anymore. However, sometimes she wondered how it would be to actually get to choose what she wanted to do. Was it better or worse to have her whole life outlined already?

“What?” Confused, Zhenya looked at Conrad before she realised that she hadn’t made it clear what she meant. “No, that’s not what I meant,” she said, shaking her head and smiling a little.

“What I actually meant was that I wish you’d be more active in our relationship.” She felt how her cheeks reddened and she smiled sheepishly. “I mean… you know… I would love it if you took the initiative sometimes, that’s all.”

Well, she had more thoughts on the matter but she felt that it was better not to voice any more of her thoughts. She enjoyed every moment with Conrad and didn’t even mind that they were also arguing a lot. He gave her life a different perspective that she wouldn’t have without him. She felt that he had her back even if they didn’t always agree on things.

“Oh,” said Conrad. He had been in the earliest stage of a temper at the prospect of having to defend his work ethic, but it deflated so quickly that it left him in an absurdly elevated mood, feeling faintly unbalanced.

Usually Conrad didn’t struggle to take initiative. He hadn’t gotten a delinquent reputation because he waited for permission when he got a dumb impulse. The problem was that he wasn’t getting dumb impulses in this context – no animal urges like his cousins joked about and certainly no wild, romantic passions, just his usual dumb impulses. He shrugged, let go of her waist and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I figured you wouldn’t like if I just told you what to do all the time.”

Of course, given her level of comfort telling him what to do, this had been stupid. She probably just wanted him to kiss her more often, but he honestly didn’t even want to kiss as much as they already did – there was so much touching involved, and they had to breathe into each other’s faces, and his lips always got chapped. He assumed girls naturally got more out of kissing than boys; probably it was because they could wear lip gloss – it seemed to help with the chapping.

In the spirit of taking initiative, and the spirit of being in a good enough mood not to think through what he was saying, he said, “I want to keep throwing rocks.”

Frowning, Zhenya looked at Conrad. Had she just suggested that he should tell her what to do? She thought she hadn’t but, apparently, she hadn’t made herself quite clear again. She clearly didn’t want Conrad to tell her what to do. She wanted him to initiate a kiss sometimes, to grab her hand, to pull her into a hug, to suggest they could meet somewhere in private.

“That’s not what I meant,” Zhenya said faintly but refrained from trying to explain herself more.

He said he wanted to keep throwing rocks.

Zhenya stared at her boyfriend, quite lost for anything to respond to that. Her lips were pressed together tightly as she nodded. “Sure,” she said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice but not succeeding altogether.

“Would you like to grab a cup of tea or coffee later?” she asked, hoping that Conrad would like the idea and agree to go to a café with her. It was not that she wanted to sit inside as much as she just didn’t want to keep watching him throwing stones, especially because he wasn’t even good at it. She was tempted to tell him that he had to throw them from a different angle but refrained, thinking that he would not appreciate her advice.

That wasn’t what Zhenya meant, again, but she didn’t try to explain, so he figured he had to be at least most of the way there. Either that or she thought it wasn’t worth the bother, and didn’t mind if he wanted to throw rocks, so he nodded, then ducked out from under her arms and stooped over to collect another small handful of sizable stones. He hurled the first one out over the water; he’d lost his momentum having to stop and kiss her, so it didn’t make it far before it plunked down.

(Obviously he suspected that she did mind that he wanted to throw rocks, but if she gave him permission to do it, obviously he was going to do it.)

“Yeah, okay,” he said, chucking a stone overhand and watching it arc over the sea (this one went further). This was a sneaky tactic to get him to stop throwing rocks, and he recognised it as such, but he was willing to cave just this once, as he liked coffee. And Zhenya had made the rookie mistake of adding ‘later’, so Conrad figured he had leave to throw rocks until he was actually told to stop. In the meantime – well – if she wasn’t going to throw rocks with him, he felt like he should at least keep her company.

If he asked what she was thinking again, he’d probably get more nonsense about taking initiative, so instead he told her what he was thinking – “At home I’ll throw stuff at the trains when they’re heading out. It’s so noisy there, you can’t even hear if you hit it. You can’t think. It almost makes me glad that Durmstrang is somewhere in nowhere.” Then, “I wonder how far we are from Finland. I bet I can throw a stone like – a tenth of the way.”

Conrad continued to throw stones and Zhenya chewed on her lip, her eyes narrowing a little. Sure, she had not told him that she wanted him to stop - why should she have done so anyway? It would not have improved the atmosphere between them. Besides, it wasn’t as though she had a lot of other things she wanted to do. She didn’t even feel like kissing him anymore now. She was just frustrated with the way their day was passing. It wasn’t like she had a lot of time to spare for doing nothing but watch Conrad throw stones into the water. This was pointless and a waste of time.

At least he agreed that they could have coffee - later. Zhenya suppressed a sigh and stared out on the water. The soft waves looked like glitter and the girl thought that she might want a waterblue catsuit with some light sequins for her new free program outfit. Just that the water here was not of a beautiful blue colour - it looked rather dark and dirty.

Conrad spoke about home and Zhenya looked back at him. It didn’t sound like his home was a pleasant place. The girl wondered if she’d ever get to visit him there, if she would like it, and assumed that she wouldn’t. It made much more sense for him to visit her anyway. She loved her home and she was busy there.

“Finland?” Zhenya asked. She knew that Sweden had a border with Finland and roughly knew where it was but her knowledge of geography and her sense for distances that were longer than an artistic flying arena was limited. “I don’t know. Do you really think we’re that close to Finland?” She suddenly felt strangely lost. When the school had still been in Russia she had felt better about it all. Now that they were in a country where a different language was spoken, she felt like home was just way too far away.

“Ja, Finland,” said Conrad, with a shrug; geography wasn’t his strong suit either. In his first ever Nautica class, he’d asked if they could sail to Antarctica from Novaya Zemlya and been laughed at, and then his cousin Olaf had related the story at Christmas and he’d been laughed at again. (He knew now where Antarctica was.) He waved his hand out over the water, at the landforms he could see on the horizon, and added after a moment of thought, “Those are probably just islands, actually.”

The sun was so bright off the waves that he had to squint to see; it pulled his face into a grimace. “I wonder if they could stop me if I just sailed across the gulf,” he said. He’d have given his wand up to run away, when he was twelve. He threw the last rocks of his handful all at once, to hear them splash in synchrony, but Zhenya was too obviously irritated with him for this to be fun anymore. She wasn’t even giving him one of those indulgent smiles anymore, and he swore he’d heard her sigh.

Half of him was tempted to see just how long she would be able to tolerate this – how long she could stand him – but he suspected he’d get frustrated with her attitude before she lost her patience with him, and he didn’t want an argument when he was having a good day. Or at least a quiet one.

He poked the toe of his shoe through the sand again and stooped to pick up an almost intact seashell, a spiked spiral about the size of a walnut. Holding it out for Zhenya to see (girls liked pretty things, right?) he said, “Seashell,” then, “Do you want it? Otherwise I’ll just throw it.” He figured a sea creature ought to be buried at sea.

Zhenya couldn't agree or contradict, given that she really had no clue where Finland was and how far away it was from where they were standing. She nodded along, though, when Conrad added that the landforms that they could see were actually just islands. That, to her, seemed quite plausible. However, she didn't know that for sure and it made her feel small and insignificant. She really knew very little about the world although she had travelled a fair bit for her competitions.

"It sounds like an adventure," Zhenya responded to his idea to sail across the gulf. Sometimes the girl wished she could have dreams like that. However, she felt she couldn't even allow herself to dream of anything like it. Her path was quite clear. She'd finish school (somehow) and then she'd dedicate her whole life to artistic flying - first as a professional senior athlete and then in some position at the artistic flying school. She wasn't sure what part was suitable for her. Given her experience with the artistic flying club at Durmstrang it seemed likely to become a coach but if that wasn't an option then, maybe, she'd end up as a waitress or salesperson either at the café or the fanshop - neither seemed to be an alluring prospect.

Conrad picked up a seashell from the ground and held it up to her. For a moment Zhenya was actually pleased, flattered, almost happy about it but then Conrad spoke and spoiled it all. Nonetheless she took the seashell out of his hand, an appreciative smile spreading across her face.

"It's lovely," she said softly, glancing down between their feet and hoping to spot more beautiful things instead of just stones and sand. "I'll keep it as a lucky charm," Zhenya said quietly and slid it into her pocket. Conrad could have sold it to her better but even so, Zhenya appreciated being given something by him and was surely going to keep it safe.