Vodka Shots with Scheisser

She clicked the cold neck of the bottle back and forth between her teeth, admiring the sound it made and fearing, with wonder, that it would chip them. The heat slid down her throat in waves, settling, spreading, and finally burning inside of her.

Ten thousand staring eyes burst into flames around her, reminding her of the pools o flight in Petersburg, flashing with laughter and gently causing the glass to rock back and forth, rolling softly on her tongue.

In streams of color, she allowed her hand to slide down his leg. Rushed by the urgency of gravity, it awkwardly met the wooden floor. Slapped and reddened, her palm stung in ripples of laughter. Everything seemed to be in ribbons, she thought. And she could feel so me ancient nationalist wind playing with her hair, sounding like a flute and lighting his eyes brightly, like canons.

She pulled herself up on tho him, spilling herself into his smile that silently tugged at her. Her own voice echoed cavernously, unreachable, becoming the magnificent mixed voice of the crowd, as she stepped proudly onto the palace balcony, tossing petals carelessly to the swarming beetles below. But it was his voice that filled her, breaking the empty tin of her inaudible cry. And his tone was half amused, falling from his lips onto hers.

Soft pockets of air spun and floated under her eyes and spiraled through her head. Her cheeks brushed against the strictness of the cloth and she thought of the miners and their dreams, and she loved the way that it scraped her. She imagined their wrinkled hands sifting through icy streams, and 400 gold columns in her castle.

And then the vision was gone and her laughter bubbled up again, muffled and drowned in the inevitable sinking of her head which her neck was not strong enough to hold. This collapse into the folds delighted her, though, because the world disappeared-- vanished into the merriment of courtly velvet dances and she could taste the sea and floated on waves of freedom, lost where others had drowned and staring straight into the heavens.