they dredged icarus up from the sea today; wings bedraggled, tangled in the nets of those who tried to raise his body before. but he would not ascend; he learned his lesson.
I am there for a prince; not for her.
I am there for golden feathers and indigo eyes, and a softness that files my jagged edges into something smooth, into a shape I can weather. But when I see her, I gravitate toward the disaster I know we create by colliding. I ought to leave her alone; but when she sends the child away, she evokes my wicked curiosity. And, besides--my prince is occupied.
(That, in and of itself, incites a pang of jealousy I have no right feeling, but feel nonetheless, like a barb in the flesh).
(And that, in and of itself, transforms me into something monstrous; into a man that I cannot take to Adonai, not tonight, not when I see the lyre strapped to his shoulders).
Instead, I take the wickedness I feel to Elena; instead, I delve through the crowd and find my way to her. The child, of course, is gone; and I cannot erase the image of them side-by-side from my mind, mother and daughter. They are like images of one another.
I wonder if it is a blessing, or a curse, that the child is so painfully Elena’s. I wonder if it is a blessing, or a curse, the father does not seem to hold much likeness at all, whoever he may be.
“Elena,” I greet her, with a warm familiarity. “This is the last place I would have expected to see you.” I have always been masterful with my tone, with my rhetoric: and even though I do not comment on the child explicitly, the awareness is there, a tense undercurrent to the comment itself. I did not expect to see you with a child, here.
If she were someone else, I might have asked her to dance. But I don’t. I simply regard her with quiet, knowing eyes. Then, I let a smile edge my mouth. I say, “I am here to impress a prince, but I am not sure how.”
The confession comes unbidden, but genuine. I shrug my shoulders, almost dismissively, almost as if it doesn’t matter--
And really, does it?
I look over the crowd, searching for the girl. But she is already gone. From here, I cannot see Adonai, either--and, despite the crowd, it is only Elena and I.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
T
hey go to a party, with flowers in their hair, their blue eyes look like winter skies, cool and crisp and flawless. But their smiles, they match in both the beauty and fragility of it, like at just the next moment, something could so shatter them to break the stained glass and send it clattering to the floor.
Elliana wants to go and meet her friend. Elena has a fluttering in the back of her mind that tells her just how bad of an idea this really was now. How her daughter had been able to convince her, Elli bats her eyelashes. It reminds her of Lilli. That big-eyed look of innocence. Elena counts all of her blessings every time she can see her childhood in her daughter’s eyes.
He finds her just as easily as a hunter would, but he lacks the stealth that one would have. She sees his horns, the spotted skin. Those eyes, oh those eyes. She quickly releases her daughter from her hold. She wonders what it means to cut your daughter from the rope on the cliff, when she believe what lays at the top is even more deadly?
And yet.
Elena has to know the end of the story of this meeting. It is the only thing that holds her fast. It is the only thing that brightens those blue eyes with curiosity. “I could tell you the same,” she says when she should say nothing. She hears his undertones, and it makes her feel warm, too warm. She wants to dart her eyes around to make sure Elliana is still in sight, but she held to tight in the bound of his own gaze.
Suddenly she feels herself released with his next words, she break the bind with her own word. A name. “Adonai?” She asks. “Is that who you mean?” She questions because she wonders if the prince will even be at the party, given the state he was in the last time she saw him. She smirks then. “Since when do you try to impress anyone?” She asks tilting that golden head, her smile falls flat. “I thought it was just a given for others to be impressed by you.”
they dredged icarus up from the sea today; wings bedraggled, tangled in the nets of those who tried to raise his body before. but he would not ascend; he learned his lesson.
I should not be so pleased by the way my presence unsettles her. She had made a mistake, I imagine, by showing me such vulnerability on the beach. I had a point of reference; a knowledge of her two extremes.This--her hardness, her displeasure--is in many ways a front, reserved for me. I wonder why she is surprised I am here; festivities are points of friction, information, significance. She does not look away from me; but I allow my eyes to wander, past her, into the crowd.
Adonai?
The name strikes me thoroughly; but I do not allow the surprise to register on my expression. I only raise my brows. “There are three Ieshan princes.” My lack of answer is answer in and of itself, and I know it.
Since when do you impress anyone? I thought it was just a given for others to be impressed by you.
I laugh at her sharpness; the flat tone of her voice, edged up as if a weapon. “No, Elena. I’m impressed by your new hardness.” There is nothing ingenuine in my tone. After all, I had been there for her transformation. My eyes are knowing, and hard; they are now everywhere but on the crowd. They are now solely on her.
But rather than continue down an avenue of thinly veiled contempt, I decide to follow the route she is least expecting. I shrug, and admit honestly: “I try to impress those I know I don’t deserve. He is better than me.”
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
S
he can feel something like pleasure sinking in his veins, and she hates the way it makes her feel such sickly satisfaction. It is like slime. Elena pushes the emotion off herself before it can make its way into her marrow, to settle there like a smile on a liar. “Yes, but he was the only prince I heard about.” Elena responds. “He invited me,” she says, just to watch him, she wants to let him know that she was chosen to be here, just like him, she wants to watch him a feel little less special. It is cruel of her, but she suspects he has done worse.
Elena does not regret her comment with his next words. “What do you mean?” She asks, closing blue eyes for moment. She pretends that night on the beach never happened. She pretends she had forgotten.
“Torin,” she says suddenly, her voice softening, her body relaxing slightly. “You do not seem to give yourself enough credit,” she says despite knowing so little about him. She wants to say more, about his illness, but she cannot, she must keep his information private. She blinks blue eyes before realizing that wall around herself weakening. “Have you just arrived?” She asks him, she wants to know how much he saw, how much of who he saw.
they dredged icarus up from the sea today; wings bedraggled, tangled in the nets of those who tried to raise his body before. but he would not ascend; he learned his lesson.
I have already confessed that her newfound hardness impresses me; but perhaps the words arrive at my lips too soon. Yes, but he was the only prince I heard about. He invited me.
The feeling that wells in response to her words is childish; I recognise this, but it does not prevent it from hurting any less. I am not special. He must have sent dozens of letters to guests, inviting them to the Ieshan celebration. What had they said, I wonder? Certainly, there was nothing to imply in what he had written me that I was set apart from any other--simply that I intrigued him.
He had invited Elena, and this fact fills me with an unexpected bitterness. It makes it painstakingly evident I know little of the prince, and our time shared in the desert grove means very little when paired with a life of other interactions. I am filled with sudden longing of home, and of those who I had known my entire life--
What do you mean?
It is too late, I think, for her to soften.
She does anyway.
Torin. You do not seem to give yourself enough credit.
My smile is small and bitter, a shard of glass against my face. “No.” I answer. “I am too old to delude myself into believing I am a man I am not.”
Why, I ask myself, am I attracted to Adonai? It is because he is nothing like me. It is because he is fragile, and breakable, and for those very reasons he could never inflict the kind of harm I am accustomed to. It is because I want to hurt him; and I want to be his saviour.
“Yes,” I begin to lie. And then amend: “I saw her, if that is what you’re defensive over. She looks just like you.” It goes unstated: And very little like whoever her father may be.
I wonder if that makes Elena feel more, or less, alone.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
H
is emotions are not hidden from the empath, but she does not change her face to tell him that she knows, she keeps it hidden. She keeps hidden because she feels a sick chill of shame slide down her throat and settle in her stomach like reckless butterflies. She doesn't like the way his bitterness hits against her skin in tiny pin pricks. Elena wishes she would have said something else, anything else. She had only wanted to show him the match, not watch it burn.
He smiles—she thinks it looks—he smiles, that is what she counts. “You speak as if you have lived decades before me and are imparting some great wisdom,” she says with playfully narrowed blue eyes. They are not so distant in years, but Elena has not transversed the sea as he has, and it shows in the way she still idolizes the ocean.
“Oh,” she cannot hide the questioning that rests in a single word, a single intake of breath. “She’s—yes,” because Elena doesn't know what she should say, what she wanted to say. He had been the first to know, before Moira, before Azrael, before Tenebrae, before Elena even truly grasped what was happening, before she even really knew herself. He had known. “She is mine.” She clears her throat. “Shame you will not get to meet her tonight,” she says, a promise, that Elliana would not come near the meeting this evening. “She does look a lot like me—“ she wants to say, and like her father. “It’s the eyes.”
they dredged icarus up from the sea today; wings bedraggled, tangled in the nets of those who tried to raise his body before. but he would not ascend; he learned his lesson.
You speak as if you have lived decades before me and are imparting some great wisdom. I sense her regret in the way she takes on a playful aura, as if to lessen the severity of our encounter. But does she not understand, we will never be anything other than severe? That is what we swore, when we vowed to never make promises: when we agreed lies were easier than truth.
I think, perhaps, we are a little bound by that. And by her tragedy. I cannot be many years older than her: but I think the difference is when we experienced our first heartbreak, when we realised that the world does not write out endings to our stories that we enjoy, or want, or can even imagine when it comes to those we love. When, I think, did she begin to recognise that she would raise her child alone? I smile, but there is nothing happy in the expression. “You are reading for something that isn’t there,” I correct, but it is light, almost cordial. “I simply mean to say that I know myself.”
It isn't insecurity, or a vice. It is a fact. I know what kind of man I am, and it is the kind of man who does not deserve Adonai, or anyone like him. Adonai wants to be a martyr. I have only ever wanted--
Well.
I have always wanted to be a hero, the victor. It is funny how different that ambition looks from different sides of history; from different sides of war. I never thought hero could possibly be synonymous with betrayer, but I stand here with blood on my hands and nothing but loneliness between my one heartbeat and the next.
“Elena,” I laugh, now, at her sudden demeanour. My eyes are shifting; they are the sea under fast clouds, light, then dark, then light again. “I do not want to be your daughter’s godfather. I don’t care if I meet her. That isn’t the deal we made.” There, I spoke of it. I gave it life again, so it can no longer hang between us like a dead thing underfoot, heavy, bizarre. I make a noncommittal sound, in the back of my throat.
Mentioning the eyes, I can only think of the women in Oresziah, and how those born with blue eyes were said to belong to the sea. No one married them. They rarely bore children.
It is strange, I think, the differences here. “Does the father know of her?” I ask, but I have a feeling I already know the answer.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
E
lena is used to sitting there and waiting for someone to impart something on her. Whether it be her grandmother, from decades of life and love and loss. Or it was Lilli, gifting her gratitude and love. Or her stand-in-mother and godfather. They all gave Elena something she could use, something she needed.
She is almost disappointed when the man who is no longer a stranger, does not give it to her. “Not many can say that about themselves, so maybe you are wise beyond your years,” she says and she wonders what put that too old wisdom in the too young body. No one gains wisdom with pieces of life falling to ruin. “But remember, you may know yourself but you do not know him.” She says and it will be the only piece of doubt she gives that fumbles in her heart if the prince is not quite right, and if her healing could be enough to offer him.
The palomino watches his eyes with her own like summer skies, like bright water. She thinks she sees ocean waves behind it, but she blinks and she sees only rolling sand dunes. “You are right,” she says, and she thinks, I remember. But she does not dare let it land gently on her lips. Does the father know, he asks and Elena’s eyes widen slightly as if they might be overheard.
“In a way,” she says, and it is so easy to see that this is not he entire story. “Well, the only one she needs as a father knows.” She is confesses it. Hates how easy it is to give him the truth, if only because she knows how easy it would also be to lie to him. “I’m not sure what to do next,” she confesses still because she cannot stop until they are all gone from her. “He has his alter and his goddess, he has no need nor want for a daughter.”
they dredged icarus up from the sea today; wings bedraggled, tangled in the nets of those who tried to raise his body before. but he would not ascend; he learned his lesson.
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.”
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
A
part from each other, Elena and Torix grew up together. Worlds away, they each faced their own tragedies that forced them to grow up faster than they would have liked. There is something that rests inside both of them, a scar where childhood was ripped away with too much force, and too little grace. But Elena grew too in a land where her hand was taken and her tears were caught. She was loved, she was loved, and the children there were seen as more than just girls and boys. Elena was told she would be a healer because it was what she wanted. Elena hopes she can do the same for her own daughter.
There is exhaustion on him, it slips from his shoulder and onto her own, like a little blue bird. Elena cannot find him unworthy of the prince, but she does not fight with him. She fights enough with herself to know that the walls constructed around such emotions are better fought on the inside than someone outside the castle walls.
“No,” she says, “Maybe it doesn’t.” And she yields because he drives his own sword into his heart and Elena would not deliver the final blow, even if it could be merciful. She is no killer, but maybe, by watching, she might as well be.
If she could read his thoughts, if she could read what he believes, Elena would shudder because she thinks about it every day, every night when she kisses her daughter’s brow that is adorned with a perfect ivory heart. Elena knows she is the worst kind of liar, she is the kind that lies with love. “You will have my forever.” he had murmured into her skin, the only warmth on that cold autumn night. And he held her, he held her. But Elena thinks, how fast he would have let her go if he knew the truth, if he knew what would come from holding her so close.
Elena rolls her shoulder, trying to shrug off what he says, like it hasn’t already buried deep inside of her. “Do you have children, Torrin?” She asks him then, bringing a question to him from his own. “I have seen men abandon their children for duty, I have seen them given second chances, only to leave them again. My daughter will not be left.” She says with some sense of finality. His next words catch against her skin like a thorn, not enough to draw blood, but the prick of it sends fire through her nerves. “Well then, thank goodness her father refuses to leave the shadows he so worships,” she bites at him, at Tenebrae. Elena clenches her jaw. “I think you should let the subject of my daughter, rest now.”
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