I'm sorry there's so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I tried to put some of the good things in, as well. Flowers, for instance. Because where would we be without them?
I do not understand dreamers.
I do not understand the way they paint their skins or bejewel themselves; I do not understand their dances or their poetry or their magic.
Most of all, I do not understand the raw exuberance of their lives; the way they allow joy and pain and love to color their expressions in equal measures, as they come, in waves of pleasure or agony. I have always watched them from afar with a bemused expression; I have always humored them.
(What I cannot admit to, ever, is the way I read most voraciously the stories of dreamers. My bookshelves are lined with poetry; with romances; with escapades and adventure tales, of lands I will never visit in anything save for imaginative words).
The Festival unfolds before me in brilliant fire; the colors might have astounded me if I were a dreamer. But already, as I have said, I am not, and instead I find the entire affair a waste of resources. On a political level, I understand the practicality of a festival between Delumine and Denocte—I understand the benefit of merging our cities, our cultures, of letting bonfires lick the sky.
But why, I wonder, must it be under the guise of night? Why must it be with children’s laughter rising high and bright in the spring air, like the unfurling of so many wings?
I know Prigovora should not accompany me to such an event; and yet he is there at my shoulder, a nightmare slicing through the knee-high grass. He does not turn to look at me but stares out through the flames, his irises glowing as all good predator’s do in the darkness, in the glinting light: bright and wide as saucers.
I am here, he thinks, through our Bond. I have known him for an eternity and I will never grow accustomed to the sound of his voice, grating, nails against stone or metal against metal. To keep the dreamers at bay.
I turn away from him but he trails my shadow. I do not know if it is my haste to get away or if it is my simple preoccupation with my thoughts, but the abrupt pivot to the side and beyond has me colliding with something else—
It takes me a moment to recognize, with the sound of air leaving their chest, it is not a something but a someone—
“Excuse me—I apologize. Are you… alright?” My head is ringing, and I realize that is what I had hit. His head.
He is bathed in bright blue firelight; in the thought of stars; in a night that is fresh and new, and not the dead thing that it feels like in my chest.
here is a world, yes there is a world, that Alecto thinks of that is full of beautiful creatures who wear their horns as crowns and their bodies as tapestries to be decorated with a story that should (that would) be purified and raised and honored as something new, something sacred, something beautiful if they are so lucky to be chosen. In this world, his world, Alecto knows and dreams of a time when he would stand and watch as the parades came through as a boy. His father had been so proud to have him, to know him, to present his son to the world. Alecto is no longer the son of that monster, disowned, uncaring, a stranger in his own home.
All of the old men there are monsters. Too busy stuck in the past, in their days of glory and attempting to relive their youth, rather than willing to look towards a future. And no father, least of all his, especially not his, would ever want a crook for a son. Or what is assumed to be a crook. But Alecto is no crook.
He is a dreamer, he is a mover, he is a shaker. He is a galaxy on a collision path heading straight for the future and he will not stop nor slow down. He does not know how.
So when the bodies press near and move as he moves, it is only natural that he should move with them and walk as they walk. A chameleon given freedom to pass where it may, he is invisible in the crowds as anyone but one from Denocte. Even with his glittering accent that is a bit rugged and his voice that is a bit rough and entirely too smooth and charming to belong to any one many alone, it is easy to push him into a court of darkness and mystery and dreams. It is easy to pin him among their masses and say that this is where he belongs.
So he does not argue.
Alecto merely dances where they dance and enamours young maids that stray too close. They are lovesick before the night is through on their journey and he is gone before they ever learn of the little snake that is in their midst.
An enigma. A mystery. These are the things that Alecto is.
He is not a commitment.
He is not permanent.
Nothing, to him, is ever permanent.
Perhaps, he thinks with a sardonic grin, that thought should change, for the concussion he surely has would likely have rather permanent effects on his well being from the man that just about ran him over and took his life. Pale lips are moving by the time golden eyes look up to meet them and they are stammering as a newborn babe.
An apology! Alecto’s grin grows only mildly, entirely contributing to the fact that he might come off as bonkers or completely off his rocker, but if it’s due to previous trauma or the current trauma is entirely unknown. “I’m quite certain I should report you and your...friend...to some authority for bodily harm against a guest.” Soft, so soft are his words of spider-silk and dreams. His mouth sets into a serious line as he looks them both over with a huff, a nod. “Yes, that would be the reasonable thing to do, but I think you’re too lovely to throw in a cell and let rot, so you’ll have to keep me company instead.” And there is no room for an argument when he chuckles low and dark, a challenge, an invitation, a living flame growing before poor Pravda’s very eyes.
Alecto lives for this attention, this focus, this waking dream.
✦
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you
That I might chisel a statue, line on line, out of a marble’s chaste severities
I’m quite certain I should report you and… your friend… to some authority for bodily harm against a guest.
Pravda is taken aback by the man’s commentary. He is so taken aback by it, in fact, that he begins to speak before the other is entirely finished— “Sir, truly, I apologize—I meant no harm by it. Please, don’t do that. We both seem like reasonable individuals—“
He realizes too late, and with far too much embarrassment, the other had been joking. Pravda stops speaking and a slow, vibrant blush colors his pale cheeks. He is thankful for the darkness, for the firelight, for anything that might hide the heat from his face. Prigovora’s thoughts waft through their Bond. M-meat?
A constant undercurrent of predatory hunger. Pravda swallows, and mentally shoos his bonded away. The raptor does not oblige, but settles back onto his haunches to observe the pair. Pravda clears his throat awkwardly, and shifts his weight. I think you’re too lovely to throw in a cell and let rot, so you’ll have to keep me company instead.
“Errr… well, thank you. Very much.” The other does not seem to leave much room for debate on the matter, but his compliment is as awkwardly received as his joke. “I am not sure how good of company I will be,” Pravda warns, rather lamely.
But the other’s vibrant, brazen, curiosity has piqued his interest. He smiles belatedly and studies the other with a stare that lasts a little too long to be anything but awkward. “I’m Pravda.”
ow like ripe, fat fruit on Pravda’s lips apologies are! Stripped from his tongue as linens from a bed and Alecto has not been more amused in a great many days as he is in those moments before Pravda and Prigovora. The raptor, he will admit, is unsettling, but nothing more fearsome than a dragon by which he was raised near his whole life. Both are predators, ancient kin. Neither scale or tooth nor claw unnerve the man from a different land.
As realization dawns on his companion’s face, Alecto cannot help the laughter that falls like rain from his throat. It is pulled as the strings on a harpsichord - artfully, smoothly, achingly haunting and soft. Like satin sliding against Pravda’s skin, Alecto’s voice is honey when sick. ”You think a complete stranger quite reasonable?” he pushes, holding back laughter on the edges of his smile.
With a shake of his head, the unicorn does not tell the other of the truth or folly of this statement. It rests between them as a casket opening, flowers stuffed into their mouths and sweets lain out as offerings.
And there is something incredibly sweet about Alecto when he runs his eyes over the curve of Pravda’s throat and slowly returns to the other’s gaze.
The shifting of skin has Privagora seated beside them both. One, terribly flustered. The other, horribly amused.
There is no room to let the mood drop, not as dark lips part not to decline, only to warn Alecto of the poor choice he’s making. At that, a single dark brow raises along with the right corner of his mouth. ”Is that so, Pravda” His name is a purr, and Alecto cannot help but to tease.
He moves nearer, daring to brush their cheeks side by side so that he whispers so near the other’s ear, ”I would so like to prove you wrong tonight, if you’d let me?”
No thought of if it is wrong or right. No ulterior motives nor suggestion. Simply one comment in exchange for another. And, if he’s completely honest as he rarely is, Alecto would tell you it is simply too fun seeing Pravda squirm as he does: as a fish caught on a hook, Alecto is not ready to let him loose.
So he does not.
He holds tight to the hook within his little fish’s mouth and watches that beautiful blush spread softly over the whole of his face. Beautiful. Alecto so rarely sees something so beautiful and untainted as that right there and he longs to devour it for all time - that single moment, that simplest of memories.
✦
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you
That I might chisel a statue, line on line, out of a marble’s chaste severities
Pravda cannot remember the last time he met someone who smiled so readily, and laughed so easily. It unsettles him, a man accustomed to austerity. He nearly withdraws; steps back as the man steps forward; turns his face away. But something about the other’s honey-sweet voice, the way his humor seems barbed but not so barbed as to be painful. You think a complete stranger quite reasonable? he asks, and it takes Pravda too long to recognize he is joking.
“I would hope,” Pravda replies, attempting humor. His delivery of it, however, is far too dry, and his expression does not soften with anything aside from bewilderment.
Is that so, Pravda? He cannot remember anyone ever saying his name in such a way; and Pravda stills as Alecto draws nearer, nearer, until their cheeks brush and the other man’s lips are at his ear. I would so like to prove you wrong tonight, if you’d let me?
Prigovora seizes the moment to withdraw from them. Pravda’s attention is caught between his raptor’s sudden departure and Alecto’s sudden proximity; it makes him uncomfortable; and what makes him even more uncomfortable is the hot flush of warmth spreading from his stomach to his chest to his cheeks. He clears his throat. “And how do you intend to do that?” Pravda asks. He attempts to maintain a cool level of rationality, but his body betrays him yet again. His voice cracks.
Pravda, however, would be a liar if there was not some curiosity attached to his nervousness. If he did not want to know. This, as much as anything, is a part of his studies. How to simply be.
