[P] golden child; lion boy

[Vercingtorix]

tell me what it's like to conquer

Vercingtorix hears the man he stole the Soul of rules this city.

He cannot help but wonder what it must be like, being reigned by a Sovereign missing a fundamental piece of himself. They have done studies, in Oresziah, on the effects of Binding. The way the memory begins to fade; on the island it is slower, a transgression of years. He can imagine, however, without the magic tie to the island that Orestes must already be gone.

Now, he must be a golden shadow of who he had once been. A ghost.

Vercingtorix, surprisingly, does not find much pleasure in the thought. Nor, however, does he find guilt. He, as a foreigner, watches the going-ons of the marketplace and eventually passes through the center of the town into a region beyond. The lot is clearly owned by someone, but they must have enough land this particular parcel is of little concern. There are overgrown gimlet eucalypts and fierce understory of blue bush daisy.

He walks among the blue bush daisy until he finds a well. And once there, he hauls the water to the surface and begins to drink from it. A bead of sweat tracks it way down his neck, and the midday sun glares like a celestial eye. 

What it must be like, he wonders, to be in a place so unlike home? Solterra is like nothing he has ever seen before, and, somehow, it speaks to him. 

“speech” || @Adonai || setting inspired by this image

❂ | ❂

[Adonai]

A D O N A I



—

T

here is a grove of eucalyptus trees that stains the backwaters of our lands red every summer. The bloom is not visible from the house; most Ieshan children do not know that our lands encroach quite so far into the Mors.

The land where the eucalyptus reign had always been too dry to farm. Mother had tried, I think, until Zolin grew from the flesh of Solterra like a particularly nasty ulcer, and the peasants no longer kissed the sand when our carriages carved golden paths through their markets.

Suddenly no gardener could be spared from the tending of the rose trellises, that fragrant white labyrinth cushioning the main estate from the grime and beady-eyed spies of the inner city.

We were not fools, like the dead Hajakhan royals.

So the eucalyptus were left to the barren sands, and, bereft of my mother's smothering attention, they flourished.

It is not the season for the bloom, but I am so sick of the house and the company it keeps that after I am washed and dressed (a thin linen robe, one that I will drop at a gardener's hooves) I sweep out the doors with instructions for no one to follow.

The sun is already at an apex in the sky when the sands begin to harden beneath my hooves. I am only a little out of breath, my linen robe long discarded; and before I had left my room I had checked: only the faintest shadow of blue-black dulled the gold beneath my eyes.

I am afraid to call it progress.

There had been an old well dug between the roots of two bowing eucalyptus saplings that Mernatius had found. We had drank from it indulgently, thrilled as all desert-borne are by the presence of water in unexpected places. But the grove has aged since then, and I find no saplings as I wander between shade and searing sun. A trace of gold glints from between the trunks.

I blink when I realise that the gold is in the form of a stallion, and that the stallion is drinking from the well.

An unfortunate consequence of an eternity spent in the company of none but maids and traitorous brothers is that it has left me starved—half-mad—for someone else.

"You must not be from around here," I say, smiling brilliantly into the sun as I approach the well. "To not know that the well water is cursed."

How I have missed the sound of my voice like this: mocking, sweet, and just a little bit cruel.





In the summer haze:
Behind magnolias,
Faint sheets of lightning.

« r » | @Vercingtorix

[Vercingtorix]

fearless child, broken boy, tell me what it's like to burn

The young man approaches with no attempt to guise his steps through the underbrush. But then again, why would he? 

It’s his land.

Vercingtorix, however, does not know this. He merely raises his eyes in surprise to see the gilded prince approach. He is Solterran, through and through, and everything Torix knows thus far of the Mors. Radiant, shining, gold. 

Hot.

The last thought comes, almost unbidden. But Vercingtorix has always liked the look of soft things; and he knows nothing softer than princes, then things that look rich.

So he smiles as radiantly as Adonai. “Guilty as charged. You people sure find ways to point out foreigners.”

To not know that the well water is cursed. 

Oh, sweet boy. Oh, innocent prince. 

He is already cursed. But Torix only smiles a little wider. “I don’t believe in such wives’ tales.” There is something thick—like bedroom poetry, like waking up to hair disheveled—in his voice, when he adds: “Do you?”

Unceremoniously, he tosses the bucket of water over his head. 

If it’s cursed, he might as well perform a baptism in it. The water drips from him, and steals the heat, and Torix stands in a bed of blue daisy.

He nearly looks chaste, when he turns his dripping lashes back to Adonai and offers, 
"Want some?" 


“speech” || @Adonai || setting inspired by this image

❂ | ❂

[Adonai]

A D O N A I



—

T

here is so much of him to look at—the gazelle-like black horns; the brilliant gold to brilliant white; the lion's tail; the fact that he is taller, much taller—that when I reach the well I look to the bucket first, teetering with water on the well's lip, before angling my eyes towards his. 

They are a brilliant blue, almost green, like the sea. Or how I imagine the sea would look: is it anything different than an oasis? 

The poets seem to think so.

“We're not known for our tolerance," I shrug, and I do not bother to hide how I am surveying him, my eyes dark beneath my white lashes, like I am surveying a sculpture with its leg chiseled elegantly off. Every fracture beloved. Dozens of them are hidden jealously, white marble bodies, in our halls.

Scars litter his skin like puckered stars, and I am suddenly aware of how smooth my own is. How misleading. The damage is all inside. 

“Though it seems the trend as of late for foreigners to sit upon our thrones. Perhaps," and again I smile, though this time it is wan, “you too have been lured by our golden crown?"

I am joking, I think. 

I think he knows that I am a prince.

“I don’t believe in such wives’ tales. Do you?” And it is the way he says it: do you?—like there is a trap buried deep in the question, though not of the sort that would hurt—that ghosts the lightest of tremors down my spine. My eyes narrow.

I ought to feel irritation in how little choice he has allowed me in my answer. 

(Say yes, and dub yourself: believer of wives tales. The horror of boys groomed to be kings. It reminds me of the games of truth or dare I played with Pilate as a boy. To pick truth was to confess: I am afraid of your dare. Wave a white flag before you are dead.)

Instead, I laugh. “I don't." We are all going to die anyway. It is not a comforting thought until it is.

He tosses the water over himself indulgently, and droplets sizzle against my skin. He stands in a bed of tiny blue flowers, his shadow a tower, and I move closer to see their petals. Daisies.

I stare when he asks me if I want any, the cursed well water, until I catch myself and angle my brow just so. “Sure." Yet I stand there dumbly, unsure of the extent of his offer. Is he getting it for me? I could get it myself, but I will not be able to lift the bucket. The thought is tormenting.

I sweep my hair back against my neck, and amble forwards until daisies brush my ankles. “If you get it for me." 

So I make it a dare.





In the summer haze:
Behind magnolias,
Faint sheets of lightning.

« r » | @Vercingtorix

[Vercingtorix]

fearless child, broken boy, tell me what it's like to burn

We’re not known for our tolerance. Vercingtorix’s favorite subject has always been history. He nearly says, instinctively and upon principle, that’s probably because you don’t have enough resources to support foreigners.

And yet, they have enough resources to support the rich.

It is not that Torix intimately knows the culture of Solterra; it is simply that he had never seen silks or fine jewellery before visiting the center of the city, the festival, until he had walked among those descended from a monarchy long dead. He is too much a foreigner to recognise the telltale signs of a royal family; even so, he recognises fine breeding, the fine indigo eyes, a face as well-boned as a sculptures. 

So Torix only smiles.

Nor is he, he supposes, known for his tolerance. At the mention of Orestes’s, Torix’s smile widens just so. “You’ve discovered my entire motive. The plot’s ruined.” 

Of course, he is only joking. If Vercingtorix had wanted to be anything like a “Sovereign” he would have stayed in his homeland to become a general, and then a senator. 

That had once been his destiny, anyways.

Now it isn’t. Now he stands across from a handsome blond. His smile is gone by the time Adonai rises to his challenge; but Torix’s eyes are no less mischievous. I don’t. “Good. It’d ruin your charm.” His tone is a bit too serious to be teasing, and slightly too light to be deprecating. Sure. If you get it for me. It is in the pause that Torix appraises him a little more closely; his shuffling gait; the way his eyes belong to a dream.

“Very well, Fair Prince.” Vercingtorix lowers the bucket and refills it; the thing squeaks rustily when he draws the now-full pail back to the top of the well. Torix unhooks the bucket and draws near. He goes so far as to even lift it to the Prince’s lips with the fair patience of a man who is accustomed to caring for others.

He had enough friends hurt in the war to know how to let one drink without spilling.

“Though, if you haven’t heard,” he adds, as he lowers the pail and returns it to the wail. “When you are given a drink from a well by a stranger, you owe that stranger your name.” Torix’s eyes are alight; are cool teal fire. Gleaming, impish, certain. His smile is crooked by the scar at the edge of his mouth. “And, perhaps, more.” The way he says more curls around his lips; the way he says more is the same as some promise love or hate or wealth. 

The water has already dried from his face, his hair, his neck. The desert is beginning to swelter. 

“speech” || @Adonai || setting inspired by this image

❂ | ❂

[Adonai]

A D O N A I



—

W

hen I was younger—much younger—most had thought me shy.

Trailing always in Katurah’s shadow, reluctant to smile, reluctant to speak. Mernatius had once said that back then he had thought me docile as a lamb, soft-lidded, hardly a boy but the suggestion of one. I had scoffed, but he had spoken the truth.

The prince I would grow to become—the prince of marble—had come later.

“You’ve discovered my entire motive. The plot’s ruined.”

“Good. It’d ruin your charm.”

But there are moments when I doubt if I have purged myself fully of my childhood reticence. There are moments when I think that the lion's tail is the closest I will ever come to inhabiting one. Not a lion, but a sheep in a lion's skin. 

My siblings have their snakes: Pilate's literally, Hagar's figuratively. But I have only ever had myself.

It is moments like these—when words spill too easily from the mouth of a boy built like war; when I am not at all certain if I am reading too much or thinking too little; when the marble I wear like skin melts in the sun and reminds me that it is not marble, not at all, but frost—

I have no reply save for a smile twisted quickly into a smirk. It feels too much like surrender for me to maintain for long. 

And then he brings the water to my lips and I have no time to look surprised but to lower my head and drink. 

The shame does not come until, between sips and careful breaths, I turn my head to the side and cough. Tiny droplets of red fall on tiny petals of blue. I move quickly to crush them with my hoof.

“Impeccable manners. You continue to impress me, foreigner," I say loftily when I turn back, like I have not just coughed blood into the dirt. Because he has not seen. My eyes dare him to say that he saw.

When the bucket, a quarter empty, moves back to the well, he will feel the strength of my telekinesis next to his, as if to say: I can do this much. This much, at least.

“I am Adonai." I lean against the well as I stretch my neck forwards and look keenly into his eyes, a colour I will now think of as the sea. “And you?" 

I do not miss the way he says 'more.'

I click my tongue, though my eyes are alight. “Perhaps." My gaze drifts to his scars; one through his eye, one at his lip. “But you must tell me of it first."






Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?

« r » | @Vercingtorix

[Vercingtorix]

fearless child, broken boy, tell me what it's like to burn

Vercingtorix has always loved weak things. Of course, this love has always taken the form of possession, of control, of necessity. He saw them as something he could save, when he was younger. Something he could keep quietly, in some dark corner of his soul, as if to say, look, here, I am not all bad as if to say, look, here, I too can be gentle. Something he could in-debt to him forever, for having saved it. The things his father would say punctuate his mind now, when in childhood he had brought home with him broken-winged birds, stray kittens, starved curs...

Another one?

It’s better off dead.

Do you love these things because they remind you of yourself?

How are you going to mend a wing?

You can’t.

You can’t save them.

It will die.

Take it out back, and kill it. 

It is not apparent, at first, this stranger’s sickness. But slowly the pieces come together. The ambling walk; the long pauses and apparent shyness. Impeccable manners. You continue to impress me, foreigner. Vercingtorix pretends not to notice the blood, for Adonai’s sake.

See, the indebting starts with small favours. It starts by pretending as if there is nothing wrong. So Vercingtorix smiles instead and says, just as loftily, “I’ll only continue to impress you, if you let me.”

The pail moves back to the well, returned by the soft prince. Vercingtorix’s eyes are knowing, but he says nothing; if anything, they are appreciative. In sick things, he knows, the will is typically the first thing to go. 

“I’m Vercingtorix.” He does not give his full name often; but he gives it here. “Or, if you prefer, just Torix.” That, too, is a tone that belongs to bedrooms. His eyes are alight when the golden boy demands more, more, more. Yes. “Oh, I only mean a date. As a foreigner I know little of your court. I need an escort for the evening.” 

“speech” || @Adonai || setting inspired by this image

❂ | ❂

[Adonai]

A D O N A I



—

H

e saw, but he pretends like he hasn't, and for that alone I am grateful.

I know I am becoming indebted. But it is not an unpleasant, nor even unseen, realisation. I am indebted to the servants who serve me without rest. I am indebted to my dead mother, who had made me to be a king, and to who I am now a sick, spiteful prince. I am indebted to my sisters, who I have neglected; to Corradh, who I have misled; to Pilate, who I have miscalculated.

(Gravely.)

I am indebted to so many I often wonder if there is any part of myself that belongs to me, any part of myself I will not have to carve up and serve like a head on a bloody gold platter.

Yet the time to collect will have to be soon. There is no cure to my brother's poisons, because he had been clever when I had not thought to be, and my coughs always come out bloody.

When he tells me his name, Vercingtorix, I am suddenly overwhelmed by the need to assure him that I used to be more than this.

That this, the pale, dark-eyed man in front of him, is not Adonai at all. If you had met me earlier, I think, would you have thought me charming then?

When I was not less than you, but more?

“Vercingtorix," I say mellowly, feeling my way around the syllables. It is a hard name, with hard sounds, but together it is harshly lyrical. A guttural battle cry, eulogised in hymn and immortalised in myth. “It suits you."

It is fascinating, the depth that a name adds. Suddenly the man standing in front of you is rendered in sharp technicolour, all angles and jawbone, when before he had been nearly translucent. The sun had shone through his bones; he could have been nothing but a pretty hallucination woven by your maddening mind.

As if to test this, I stretch out a wing to brush against his neck, where a pink scar draws ripples over smooth bronze skin.

“Oh, I only mean a date." “A date." “As a foreigner I know little of your court. I need an escort for the evening." I have not called him charming, as he has dubbed me, but he will surely see it in the way I look at him. In the way I can't quite stop.

I run my tongue over my teeth, huffing lightly. On Pilate the look is sinful. On me, it is still too pious. “You are doing very well for yourself already. With a prince as your evening escort." I grin, and it is as close to a yes as I will say. My pride will remain by me until I am really dying, and pride will be the first sin the devil sees.

Vercingtorix will know, anyway. He is keen. Keener then most.

“Well. There are still hours to go before night." I flick my eyes to the white spire splitting the horizon. “See that tower? They say that a cursed prince lives in it. Do you believe that?" I say 'that' like I am trying very hard to keep my voice from falling flat.

I succeed. Almost.






Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?

« r » | @Vercingtorix

[Vercingtorix]

fearless child, broken boy, tell me what it's like to burn

Vercingtorix. It suits you. He is bold enough to touch him. A feather-light brush against a scar. Torix nearly shudders; but it is a shiver of delight, a slight softening of the eyes. 

His mother used to say it was a shame his father had not allowed to name Torix something gentler, something that did not have conqueror written in to the many syllabus and hard stops. When he smiles, it is with lips crooked by a scar. He does not say, it is the name of a conqueror because he doesn’t need to. 

A date. He repeats the words in a way that is very nearly charming. Vercingtorix cannot tell if Adonai is taken aback by the offer, or pleased. 

There is a moment—ephemeral, fleeting through his grasp as sand does—when Vercingtorix nearly feels remorse. It is the way the other man looks at him that sparks this almost-contrite, this prickling feeling of guilt. Adonai looks at him as if Torix is someone. As if he is more than gilding, bright lights, show. 

As if there is something of content beneath his marblesque surface; his handsome face; the way words come so easily to his lips. You are doing very well for yourself already. With a prince as your evening escort. The comment he nearly delivers in return is too sharp, is too bold: I would be doing better for myself if the prince was already in my bed.

Those carnal pleasures, however, belong to a man lost on Oresziah. Vercingtorix likes to think he has moved past that escape. And so he smiles a secretive smile, tinged with more darkness than the rest. Torix responds, “I suppose that doesn’t hurt, does it? Perhaps you can class me up by the time we part ways.”

Well. There are still hours to go before night. See that tower? They say a cursed prince lives in it. Do you believe that? 

Torix cannot help but think the prince speaks of himself. The transition is too abrupt. Irregardless, he plays along smoothly; he glances toward the white spire on the horizon and admires it for a moment. 

“I don’t know,” he admits, after a long pause. It is the most genuine he has sounded this entire conversation, however. Especially, when he adds: “But either way, I do know one thing for certain. Where curses do exist, they can always be broken. It just depends on how much you are willing to do.”

How much of your Soul you are willing to trade.

Vercingtorix doesn’t believe in devils or archangels, no. Vercingtorix only believes in the evils—and powers—of men. And so when he glances back toward Adonai it is to say, in a voice strangely soft: “And in my experience, curses are always man-made, not god-given.” There is something knowing in his eyes. Vercingtorix asks, "And what do you believe, Fair Prince?" This is a place for confessions, beneath the eucalyptus, by a boy's well, among the blue daisies. It feels almost dream-like, enchanting, strange. 

“speech” || @Adonai || setting inspired by this image

❂ | ❂

[Adonai]

A D O N A I



—

“I

suppose that doesn’t hurt, does it? Perhaps you can class me up by the time we part ways."

I know—that whatever it is we are doing—whatever it is I am doing—that it cannot last. The spell will break at midnight. (Or earlier. What is stopping him, really?) Am I the prince, or am I that pauper princess, her heart snagged in one night, one dance, one heated glance across a cold marble floor?

You could say that it is the same for the prince. Surely he is equally enamoured, his heart equally snagged, when that spell is broken.

But the difference is astronomical and it is this: for him, there will always be another one. When we grow old enough to realise that there are so many endings, we begin to understand. To see. That yes, for the prince, there will always be another pauper princess.

But for her: poor darling. Her story ends with him.

So when Vercingtorix says by the time we part ways I am filled with sudden, excruciating love for the childhood that made me marble.

Polished, princely, and pious.

My smile does not move an inch. “I assure you I cannot be hurt so easily—you must try harder next time. And you are not from common stock, are you, Vercingtorix?" My head tilts as I appraise him anew, his stance, his build, his language, his scars. “You talk too well, and you carry yourself like a man of esteem. The distance between us is but a step. We are already of a class."

My smile is a thing immortal.

You see, dear Torix, I am raised too well. I know what you are and I know what you see in me but I will pretend that I don't. I will pretend that somehow, you have not hurt me already, a needle to the knives in my back. 

And because I am raised so well, you will never know unless I tell you.

“...in my experience, curses are always man-made, not god-given." As I'd thought, he is keener than most. He is speaking not to make a point, but to confess. After my wing had skated along his neck I had not moved away; a calculated risk. I am close enough to be privy to all that he shows me in his eyes but not close enough to suggest that my flirtations, if he takes them as such, are serious.

“And what do you believe, Fair Prince?"

I turn my head and slit my eyes towards the needle-like spire; the sun shines directly behind it. We are too far away to see its sun dial shadow.

“I believe..." I say slowly, “what you do. But I do wonder—" I drag my gaze back to his before my poison-dilated pupils can smart, “—if the price to break a curse is worth the cost? I was raised religious. Very. A pious prince." I shrug, though I really itch to laugh. The irony is never lost on me. “And with that comes a degree of moral stringency to uphold. I was raised to believe that the martyr is revered because he accepts his curse and dies suffering, that there is even beauty, somehow, in suffering." My voice is light. Light incarnate.

“There isn't. I know that much but not enough to know what is proper. Should the cursed prince suffer like a martyr? Or is revenge really as sweet as it is rumoured to be? Should he pay the price," I ask, though I already know the answer, “And kill someone very dear to him?"

If there is a time to leave, to run, it is now. I have served it up to him on a golden platter. If he takes it, my debt will be paid.

If he takes it, I think I will hurt.






Holy wisdom is not clear
and thin like water,
but thick and dark
like blood.

« r » | @Vercingtorix