NATURE'S FIRST GREEN IS GOLD, HER HARDEST HUE TO HOLD. HER EARLY LEAF'S A FLOWER; BUT ONLY SO AN HOUR. THEN LEAF SUBSIDES TO LEAF.

The only way Orestes can ground himself is observing, with an analytic eye, the natural beauty that surrounds them. Autumn has fallen heavily upon Amare Creek. In the later edge of day, the forest still brims with the sounds of light and the deciduous leaves are alight with nearly unimaginable colour. The entire forest is a fire of reds, oranges, yellows. The autumn leaves cushion their footfalls, and spiral lazily down the creek’s current. They are bright flashes through the mist that otherwise obscures the details of the creek and, with that elusive mist, Orestes discovers the entire area subdued with a kind of magic, a kind of quiet intent. 

His thoughts stream as the creek does; endless; misted over, as if in a dream. First there is the self doubt, the eternal nagging of you should be with your Court now, at this time, not here, with yourself—

And yet Marisol is the one pleasure Orestes has allowed himself in Novus; she is the one thing in his life that strays from rigid duty, despite duty ironically being what brought them together. He steels glances at her through the trees, though they travel at a trot and not quite together. Orestes has not done this intentionally; no, instead the journey along the creek had become a sort of game, a dogged race between the two. At times Orestes dart’s closer to brush his lips against her neck, her flank, or to nip softly at an ear. Then he is away again, rushed with colour and noise, until—

There is a clamorous waterfall and the sun has shrouded itself in the hands of twilight. The colours, which had been so vibrant moments before, seem more subdued as Orestes comes to a walk; the waterfall obscures the sound of his breathing; it obscures, too, his thoughts. It is here Orestes closes the distance between them, tentatively, step by step. His eyes are upon her with a sudden intensity, one he has not felt before and likely will never feel again. His stomach is gnarled and he feels, suddenly, as if this is the only life he has ever lived.

He is silent for an extended moment; long enough that his breath begins to still, and his heart begins to slow, and whatever worries or fears he has are carried away with the sound of the water as it falls into itself. He stays a stride away from her and says, quietly,  “‘I am too alone in this world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy.’” The poem returns to him and this time, this time Orestes knows his timing is right. It is there, in the way his heart beats so loud it rushes in his ears like the creek.  "’I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive.” It is now the world’s golden hour; and around them the mist swirls, lit the sun’s dying rays. Orestes does not think too long or hard on how they are surrounded by the seasonal death of trees; or the way his heartbeat, so loud and firm, is a reminder of his own fragile mortality. No, he presses closer and when he does so it is to extend his lips to the hem of her wing and run them up the soft feathers. He has never touched her there before and while not exactly sensual, the gesture has more intimacy in it than perhaps any he has shared with her before.

  “‘I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will as it goes toward action; and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things… or else alone.’” As he speaks, in a voice belonging to bedrooms, and sunlit corridors, and the rustle of the paper in his study it becomes increasingly clear the secret things of which he speaks.  “‘I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.’” Orestes moves from the feathers of her wing to the almost delicate spots beneath it; for those within his reach, Orestes’s brushes his lips against them and then turns inward, toward her ear. At the small of it, he continues:   “‘And I want my grasp of things to be true before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother. Like a ship, that carried me through the wildest storm of all.” 

Perhaps the poem is impersonal, written by another man. But for Orestes’ it says all he is too inelegant to express. It shares the simple fact that for him, a foreigner, Marisol’s kindness and intimacy had grounded him from the first time she sent him a letter. The sea tells me that she knows you, she had said. And: If there is a day you need to come home, Terrastella’s shores are open. 

All along, that promise had stood: all along, Orestes had found comfort in the shared burden of leadership, of knowing what he had felt in it, he did not feel alone. And that after, after all that had transpired and would transpire, there was a place waiting for him, a home, a person who for some reason (and oh, there are many reasons) his Soul reconciled with. And somewhere, the promise had transformed from an assurance to a desire. Somewhere, Orestes had folded back the layers of an impenetrable wall; he had seen the warmth of her grey eyes and come to understand the pain, and sorrow, and fear that could govern her. There is a part of him, now, that wells with the desire to be a salve to these things: to show her not the self she sees, self-deprecating and always punished, but the Marisol he knows. The beauty and grace with which she exists; the tenacity and steel that has allowed her to sacrifice, and sacrifice again, for her people.

And that is where they are Bound, he thinks. That is the crux at which Orestes will become a martyr, to show her her sacrifices are worthy, and beautiful, and so is she. 

  “Marisol.” He says her name like a prayer. He is so close he can see the way his breath disturbs the fine hairs at her ear, upon her cheek.   “I pledge myself to you. Beneath the moment where our gods touch, where the sun sets and twilight embraces him, I pledge myself to you. It is the first pledge in all my lives made not of duty, but of love. I am yours.” 

What he does not say, because he does not believe it adequate: And you are mine.

The reason he has grown to love her as she is, despite her sense of duty, despite her fears and anxieties, Marisol belongs more solely to herself than anyone he has ever known. But Orestes does not want to belong to himself, no.

There is not enough time in his last lifetime for that.

  “I am yours,” he repeats, and the sun blinks out on the horizon. The sky turns the colour of indigo silk and Arabian dreams, and Orestes’s voice becomes the trees, the waterfall, the wind.

I am yours. 

  “speaking" || @Marisol

NATURE'S FIRST GREEN IS GOLD, HER HARDEST HUE TO HOLD. HER EARLY LEAF'S A FLOWER; BUT ONLY SO AN HOUR. THEN LEAF SUBSIDES TO LEAF.

He has never felt so mortal, so on the precipice of the void. When the sun sets, there is a chill kept at bay only by Marisol’s presence; and that presence captivates him with all the gravity of a planet, of something larger than himself. While she struggles to look, he cannot look away; he cannot keep his breath from catching; in true mortal folly he cannot keep the naked emotion from his face when he truly looks at her. He is more a man now than he has ever been; he is more present, more flesh and blood, than any moment before now. And when the sun sets, his tattoo catch ablaze with the sentiment of his heart. He cannot help the warm, radiant light that pours from him; that illuminates them in soft golden light. 

They are both trembling. In all of his loves, he had never learned the true nature of a storm: and he thinks this is it, he thinks this is what it must feel like to rest within the tempest’s eye. 

She does not need to speak, he thinks. He sees the emotions and the way they break through her as waves do upon land; and perhaps that, that is their fate. Perhaps they are the sea and the land, opposites but Bound, breaking over the weight of their own connection. I did not understand the stories until now, she says. She presses her forehead into him; she says the words like a prayer. But her touch—and her affirmation—ignites something within him, something smouldering, something even greater. Orestes wants; he groans, low in his throat,   “Then make me yours,” he asks, he pleads. He will not assume what she wants; he will not demand. No, he is asking, as one asks a goddess. His breath against her. 

Orestes thinks of her emboldened; he remembers her as Commander; as Sovereign; fierce and soft, beneath. She, too, is a creature of dualities. His eyes are closed when he runs his mouth from her cheek to her shoulder, when he breaths in nothing but her scent.  “Then write the rest of the story with me.” But it is Orestes who draws back; it is Orestes who trembles with all a mortal man’s desires. It is Orestes who says, "Do not be afraid, Marisol. If you touch me, I will not become dust. I will not change you.” It is a promise, more raw than the last. 

  “speaking" || @Marisol

NATURE'S FIRST GREEN IS GOLD, HER HARDEST HUE TO HOLD. HER EARLY LEAF'S A FLOWER; BUT ONLY SO AN HOUR. THEN LEAF SUBSIDES TO LEAF.

Her mouth is salvation. 

  “Almost,” he says, in the voice of a wild thing. He cranes his mouth to her ear—his eyes are bright, more like the blue in fire then the sea.   “There’s only one thing left.” 

He supposes it is bold, to say; but he hopes the earnestness of his tone conveys not a demand, an ultimatum, but a desire. His voice comes out heady with it. And while she opens space, he steps forward to close it, delighted in the predatory glint to her eyes; the soft edge of their love is hardening, as steel does in fire, folded again and again over itself. He laughs. It is less nervous; it is more breathless. 

  “You can start,” he says, quietly.   “By learning each of my tattoos, and I will kiss each feather of your wings and make constellations of  the freckles beneath them—“

The rejection of that festival night seems to belong to another man. He is bold, now; nearly brazen. His tattoos, which typically glow metallic silver when the sun sets, continue to rage gold, gold, gold. The dark colour of her skin reflects it; absorbs it; and the light creates an alcove utterly private, beyond even the creek, and the birds, and the forest.

Perhaps they are both gods.

Orestes steps beside her, flanking; he runs his mouth along the arc of her neck, and then the slope of her shoulder. He admires her one white sock; the slight lightening of the black of her coat to rich, reddish brown. He noses her feathers, gestures her wing up.

   “This, here,” he says, tracing the distinctive patterning of freckles against the white.   “Looks like Cassiopeia. And this—like Orion. There, too, is Lyra, for the eagle carrying the lyre.” His voice drops.   “But this one—“ and Orestes’s nose presses against a unique patterning, jagged, broken.   “Looks like a Commander.” 

Orestes has always been poetic, ornate; his words have been the closest way he can share his soul. Too often, however, Marisol has made him wordless. So that when he draws away it is to smile, shyly now, and say, in the words of Neruda,    “Marisol—“ a pause.   “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” As if it wasn't already implied.  

  “speaking" || @Marisol

NATURE'S FIRST GREEN IS GOLD, HER HARDEST HUE TO HOLD. HER EARLY LEAF'S A FLOWER; BUT ONLY SO AN HOUR. THEN LEAF SUBSIDES TO LEAF.

Perhaps it is that he has never had a chance to love, that the only thing he can find to give voice to it is poetry, and pledges, and the monumental expressions of… more, more, more. He had been raised up humble; humility had always been his virtue of choice and, with that, the penance of eating last at a meal, of taking the least, of ensuring everyone’s needs came before his own. Now, he reigns over a people who value pride and sometimes avarice and Orestes thinks, for the first time in his life, that is why his people had died.

They had refused to take things for themselves.

When foreigners came under the guise of helplessness, his people had extended all their possessions and knowledge. When those foreigners took that knowledge and wielded it against them like a weapon, they were nearly helpless. Despite their magic blood and their amorphous shapes, they had been too weak to keep what was theirs.

But… 

Orestes is tired of that memory.

He is tired of that sorry life.

(He nearly hates himself for it; he nearly hates himself for the way happiness is bursting, insurmountable, within his chest.)

And so Orestes moves on; he refuses to feel the survivor’s guilt any longer. He refuses not to learn the penance of extreme humility, of softness, is also tragedy. Now, he will not shy away from choosing his own happiness. Tonight, beneath the stars that begins to burn upon the dark expanse of sky, he will not turn from joy as if it is martyrdom to do so.

Her mouth grounds him to the moment even more surely. As she presses her lips against the tattoo on his shoulder, Orestes inhales sharply; it is nearly unbearable in the best way. They are both breathless then. They are both little more than stars in orbit. 
What spring does with the cherry trees, she repeats, trembling beneath his touch as the aspens do beneath the wind.

So—you want to make me blush. Well. You’re getting there. 

He smiles and when she presses the tip of her wing against his cheek, he closes his eyes. 

“More than that.” 

When Orestes opens them again, there is no ambiguity in the suggestion; there is no ambiguity in the raw way he looks at her, vulnerable, full of want and history and the promise of tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

In all his lives, 

he has never felt new. But here, he is. And he hopes he can return the sentiment fractionally; he hopes that in offering himself as he does, he opens a new door for her as well. Orestes offers not only himself, but the certainty of all that he is; the unwavering faith, the dogged determination to make the most of everything he is given, to better it. 

But, even if she does not know it, she has been doing that to him all along. Somewhere from her first letter to the drunken festival to his admission beneath Terrastella’s cliffsides, Orestes has learned how to be something he has never been before:

Simply, a man. Not a Prince, or a Prisoner, or a Sovereign. Just a man, in love, with a woman. And perhaps, for just a moment (stolen, quietly, between the trees) he can help her become something other than Commander, Sovereign, Queen.

Perhaps they can simply be. That is his thought, when he closes the distance a final time. Orestes has no more words; no more poetry; he only has his heartbeat, and hers.


“speaking" || @Marisol