Am I, I wonder, wise beyond my years? In another life, I would have agreed readily, and that would have shown my ignorance. But Bondike and I had once discussed at length the level of our maturity, how it had sprung up when we were children. That is what happens, I know, when one must care for their parent as if they are the child instead of the natural order. That is what must happen in a land where girls are sent to play with their dolls and drink tea and the boys, from infancy, are taken into war rooms and held over battle plans. From the moment I was born, my only purpose had been tool. My parents did not think of it in that way, of course--but that is what a firstborn son is meant to be. Lineage. Weapon. Successor. 

Yes, from infancy much was expected of me. .And these expectations grew into “wisdom,” into self-reflection. There are those who naturally succeed in life and it is easy to mistake me as one of them. But I wasn’t. I studied, and practiced, and simply wanted it all more. As a child, my father had allowed us a family dog; I had gone to choose it, and the mongrel I wanted was white and tan. He said, No. Choose the one closest to the mother’s front legs. The milk is better there; the pup that suckles from that teet is the strongest. 

I had hated that dog mostly, I think, because it's ruthlessness reminded me of myself.

I am tired of this conversation. I am tired of it in a way that seeps into my bones, and it does make me feel old. Does she not see, flitting beneath the surface, that the complexities don’t matter? It isn’t an insecurity, it is a fucking fact. 

I don’t deserve anyone, good or bad, and I know it. I know it, and cannot prevent myself from wanting to suck the whole damn world dry. My loneliness is greater than my tragedies. My want is more important than the sacrifices it takes to get there. I am the fucking mongrel pup at the mother’s first teet, indifferent to if the runt lives or dies. 

“It doesn’t matter,” I say at last, steadily. It is my first lie of the night, to myself and to her. I roll my shoulders, as if the entire concept of the prince no longer endears me. He could be anyone and the story would remain the same. (But would it, I ask myself. Would it? There is something about Adonai that makes me believe I am being, perhaps, a little more cruel than usual). 

In a way. Well, the only one she needs as a father knows. 

I almost smile, but don’t. The amusement is ironic and nothing more. I can see it--the overlap to this story and my own, the way even a small lie is insurmountable. She will hate you one day, I think, with a strange certainty. She will hate you for this lie. 

It is too much like Boudika’s story. A lie that had lasted a lifetime. A lie everything else had been built around, and rotted. “How do you know?” I ask, because the question is an important one. How can you assure yourself he does not want her? I feel cruel in asking, but our “deal” never required softness. “It isn’t my place, but in all my wisdom I do know that lies like that have a way of finding the light.” 

In a way that some things were never meant to.