he was a victim of the of the part that loved, the part that was mortal
I wish she had looked betrayed.
That is what haunts me the most; the almost serene acceptance. I had not been there when she had been arrested, but I heard, later, through the streets. Our friends would not stop for days. “They said that she only nodded when they came knocking on the door, after her father’s funeral. They said that she went without any kind of struggle at all, almost as if she had been waiting for them.”
There had never been much gossip on Oresziah. Boudika the Betrayer had been the first large scandal in our lifetimes. I could not escape whispers of her arrest, of the way she had gone so quietly—
(I think a part of me had hoped, desperately hoped, that she would have fought: that they would have killed her on spot).
(It would have saved me the trials; the confessions; the telling and retelling of how she had confessed her love for me and, in the same breath, shared her lifelong secret).
How terribly brave, Vercingtorix.
How terribly brave, to enforce the standard of the people. How terribly brave, to turn in one you held in such esteem. How terribly brave, to sentence your companion to death.
Those were things the people said, too.
I am dreaming of the staircase.
The prison, built into the cliffside, had to be descended via a treacherous staircase. Half was built into the prison itself; but pieces of it were exposed to the elements, to the wind and the rain and the sea. The descent always felt as if one were descending into the mouth of Death, the Old God least spoken of on Oresziah.
I am dreaming of the staircase and the last time I saw her.
I am dreaming of the way the wind howled in my ears; voracious as a winter wolf in the last leg of the season, gaunt with hunger. It filled me up with emptiness, with the contradiction of being full of nothing. The dream is half memory and half imagined.
In it, I fall to my knees before her and cry out for forgiveness.
(I didn’t: in reality I stood before her and said nothing. In reality, I had stood there and attempted to ingrain each feature of her face to memory; each delicate arch; each sharp angle; the redness of her face; the crimson of her eyes, like blood, like a bleeding sunset. In reality, I thought in cruel repetition: betrayer, betrayer, betrayer).
But in the dream, my face is full of tears.
It was me, I say.
I was the betrayer, not you.
But she turns away and looks out the sea. When I blink, she has already become salt and sand.
——
Somewhere outside of my body I become aware of a useless string of facts.
The air is humid and cool. I can taste metal on my tongue.
My head pounds with the beat of unheard drums. (I realize, after a moment, it is my own thundering heartbeat).
I can smell the sea. My old leg injury is aching with particular fierceness.
My eyes are closed; but I am aware of a wood floor beneath me, and the rustling of fabric in a breeze. There is a part of me that does not want to open them, in fear of where I am, in fear of what I might see; it is almost easier to remain in the darkness, with my aching head, the smell of the sea.
(It is easy to be anywhere I wish, with these useless facts).
But then, I do open my eyes.
The cottage is small and unfamiliar; but in its unfamiliarity it reminds me sharply of someone I know. My legs are curled gracelessly beneath me; I begin to rise, but when I do so my stomach pitches like a boat in a storm. I think better of it and run my tongue over my teeth, trying to clear the metallic taste from my mouth. I am not successful. I hear, outside, the deep rumbling of Damascus’s breathing and remember through, as one remembers something that might have been a dream, the castle and the monster and the breaking window.
It occurs to me, at once, where Damascus had taken us. My voice, when I speak, cracks. “Elena?” I am not panicked, I am not afraid: but when I speak, I can only remember the eyes in the darkness, monstrous and cold.
If there is one thing I could change, I think, it would be the way that she had turned away from me when I spoke into the prison.
Boudika?
It had been the only time I said her real name aloud.
But she had turned her face away, toward the slatted window of her cell, the one that overlooked the slate gray sea.
Now, I snap my head toward the rustling fabric: the curtains are flowing in the breeze. Outside, I can see a storm out at sea. It is in the far distant, with soundless lightening and white-capped waves. Damascus's scythe-like tail gleams in the surreal light. It feels as if we have been taken from one nightmare to another and the effects of his yellow vapor continue to fog my mind.
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 is unsure, and broken.
The sea brought her here. It threw her against the shores of Terrastella, a girl who was once blind, but now had eyes that bloomed to be blue. She had her heart broken, she had seen Hyaline fall from grace, left Lilli behind, and she had ran after magic that should have rather been left alone. She was a weak, fragile thing, like a flower blooming too early in spring.
She is eager to test her strengths and limits.
Elena arrived in Beqanna young and hungry, without having had an opportunity to prove herself. She went searching for her cousin, but she found a kingdom and a leader to serve instead. She found a new calling, to engage herself in diplomacy and become a politician. To help create peace rather than just hope for it.
She is happy.
They had spent every night together since she had been stolen from Woodlands and taken to Culloden. She slept beside Lilli every night. Malachi joked that he thought they spent a lot of time together when they had been small, this was nothing compared to now. Truly joined at the hip. Elena has not slept as well as she did with Lilli in ages—not until Elli.
She is lovestruck.
She follows him around like a puppy, believing this to be true love just because he tells her so and he is so much older than she is. Elena thinks he will guide her through whatever else she may face in this world. Elena learned quickly what love was not, and that lying to yourself is far easier than lying to another.
She is young again. New.
She runs on shaky legs, bounding after her parents, blond hair bouncing atop her golden head. Parents, one of morning sunshine, one of midnight darkness, they chase after her with all the tenderness of experienced parents, if they have only been mother and father for a short short time.
And it would always be too short.
Her senses start coming back to her. Bits and pieces. Scales, fire, eyes. Smoke, screaming, asking. And then she can suddenly taste the salt, hearing the waves, and is faintly aware of ocean mist. She is all of sudden so aware that she is home. Blue eyes greet the familiar sights of her cottage home. Elena wonders first of Elliana. Where is she? Did she see her like this, them like this? She remembers then that she is with her father, in Denocte, Azrael was watching her, she knows nothing of the bridge, of the city, of the nightmares. She is safe—for now. Elli is busy counting the time that passes from lightning to thunder, just as she had taught her. Azrael tells her stories of shed stars and constellations.
She is grateful to him all over again.
“Torix,” she says, watching him trying to rise, looking around. It feels strange having him here, but just like on that bridge, it is comforting too, all at once. She realizes she would want no one else here with her. It is the first time she does not wish for her daughter’s company, and it send a sharp blade of guilt into her stomach. Her limbs feel as if they were blades of grass, bending and flowing. The palomino barely makes her way to him before collapsing beside him. Her forehead presses to his own, and suddenly her heart stops racing, even if she feels like every nerve is on edge. “Are we okay?” She asks him and pulls away as easily as she bent close. “I don't think I can tell anymore.”
he was a victim of the of the part that loved, the part that was mortal
Torix she says, and it is the first time she has called me by a name that matters. We both look like newborns when we attempt to stand; there is no strength in my legs, or in hers, and although her collapse is no surprise it does take me aback when she presses her forehead against mine after her fall.
I might have flinched, had I the strength. But I do not. I freeze, a fawn in the underbrush,
The gesture contains comfortable, foreign intimacy. It is a gesture of lifelong friends or lovers or siblings. A gesture that belongs to those who are bonded. I cannot help the way I turn away hesitantly; almost with shame.
My mouth is too dry. My head is aching.
“Yes,” I answer. I am relieved Damascus took us from the island; I am less pleased with his methods. “It is only a mild sedative and hallucinogen.” I speak more loosely, more honestly, then I intend to. It seems unwise to share with her Damascus’s powers—and yet, she had experienced them firsthand.
There is no denying the continued stupor; the slowness not only of body, but of mind.
And then:
“No, Elena. I don’t think we are.”
There is a cold within me I cannot escape; even within her cottage, I feel freezing. A god, somewhere, is laughing. I am certain of it; and perhaps it is even Damascus, with his strange knowledge of things and his innate cruelties. Perhaps it is no god at all, but fate, or destiny, or the simple passing of time.
(I do not even understand the whole of it; the threads of what we are, of the intimacies we do not understand, are tangled by unseen hands. How could I possibly know, or understand, that the man she loves is the one that Boudika loves, too? How could I possibly understand that her daughter will cause me joy, and the only person I ever loved agony?)
My mouth is dry. My heart is aching. And behind her I see, with perfect vision, Boudika standing watch. She is there with her red eyes and her shorn mane and her flicking, leonine tail. She is as wild, as vibrant, as I remember—
And when I blink, she is gone.
My lips carry a half-formed word—and then the shape is gone, and the recognition gone, and I am glancing at Elena again, wondering—
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
I
can feel every emotion that courses through you,” she says, she wants to sound threatening, but she sounds compassionate. He turns away from her touch and she allows him to. It was like the butterfly Elli caught. When it started to flutter away, they let it, you cannot hold things that are not part of you.
Although—
Vercingtorix is no butterfly.
Vercingtorix.
He had given her his name, nay, thrown it, tossed it on the ground at her feet, and here she is, picking it up and dusting it off, to hold it carefully to her chest. Elena cannot decide if the lie should have continued or not. There is power in names, this she has learned.
Her breath catches in her throat, caught as if her voice is a wayward songbird, enveloped by the iron rods that keep her caged – and her bright eyes watch his every facial expression, as if she would need such clues to know what he is feeling. “Your creature,” she cannot begin to express how she feels about what he had done to them. Instead she looks out at the window. She can picture it behind the clouds, behind the storm. As it looms towards the ocean, the sunlight kisses the ocean, lovers holding each other after such a long day. It extends far beyond Elena’s eyesight. Scarlet, orange, and yellow smear across the water’s surface and paints the world in shades of sunset.
“No, Elena. I don’t think we are.” And her bones start to shake inside her body, her blood runs like ice. She realizes then that this is not herself, this is not her. She has come to recognize the foreign emotions of others in her body, they always feel either too sharp or too full, but this one is like a dagger in her shoulder. Not enough to pierce her heart, but she it still shudders a chill behind her eyes. “I told you Torix,” she says turning to him now, coming to stand, leaning against the wall of her home. “I can feel every one of you emotions,” she says, shooting her eyes like blue flames in his direction. “So tell me the story behind them.”
he was a victim of the of the part that loved, the part that was mortal
I can feel every emotion that courses through you.
Perhaps if she had been successful in her aims, I might have registered then what she meant. As it is, I do not understand; she simply sounds empathetic to me, a man unversed in nonmaterial magics. The experience, combined, is too much. I cannot at once understand her confession and the touch she shared.
I do not know why Damascus had taken us here, of all places. I do not know why Damascus would take us here and not elsewhere; not to the woods, or the sea, or one of the cities. I do not know how he knew this was where she lived, or—
There are many things, it seems, that I do not know.
Her breath catches in her throat (and how does that, briefly, remind me of Cillian? How does the kindness of her gesture make me remember a woman who gave her everything just to try and salvage my fragments?)
Your creature. I say nothing. Perhaps because there is nothing to say, to describe what he is to me, or to explain what he did to us. I do not know if we were saved or condemned by his magic; if he meant to help, or harm, or like me a combination of both, always.
There is something in her, then, that I had been looking past; she looks shaken, or in pain. Once, I would have noticed this immediately; instead it had taken me valuable seconds. I would not have thought Damascus would have hurt her—
I told you, Torix. I can feel every one of your emotions. So tell me the story behind them.
It becomes clear, then, that I am the source of her pain. She stands while I remain on the floor; and now I am looking up and she down.
“I don’t understand,” I begin. And then I prepare my lie—
(But beneath my eyes dance Damascus’s yellow smoke; but beneath my eyes I see now the threads that weave it, the magic of delusions, of truth, of fantasy. They are all interconnected and separate, and I stutter out something nonsensical, because I cannot lie).
Not in the wake of my own dragon’s curse.
I clear my throat. I might not have spoken at all, if not for the way she regards me so fiercely.
“There is someone I hurt.” I say. My voice is too stiff. My voice does not sound like my own. “But they hurt me, first.” I am aware of the childish, clipped nature of my words. But the confession does not want to emerge—it might not have, if I had not had my mind full of these memories before awakening. “I thought our betrayals were equal. But revenge never is.”
I look away from her; and still, I do not rise. I am speaking to my own scars, notched in my legs, when I say: “I came to Novus to find her, I suppose. I knew I could not go on pretending the betrayal had never happened. I came to kill her, for closure, I think. But since I have been here, I have not been able to do it. It has transformed from that kind of closure to—to regret.”
Regret. It is the first time I have said the word aloud, even as it roils within me, as turbulent as a storm. Even as it devours me from within, as insidious as demons, as darkness.
“She was the only person I have ever loved. And I will never be able to fix it, and so—I find it easier to… hate everything. The whole world.”
And that, perhaps, is the emotion she is feeling.
That, is perhaps, the truth I have been made to speak.
I cannot help the way, then, that I laugh humorlessly. I raise my eyes to regard her at last; and then I rise to my feet, unsteadily. "I told her, when we were children, before the lies and our betrayals... I told her that love and hate are not so different. I had once been a man filled with love of country, with esprit de corps, with brotherhood. I had once been full of love of duty. With love of my companion. And now, I am only full of hate and anger and distrust. The two are not so different, in that they have both encompassed all that I am."
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
here is a dark place in Elena’s mind that she dares not tread into because it harbors the worst of her thoughts and her feelings. Worse than breaking Aerwir’s heart, worse than leaving her family, leaving Lilli, lying to Tenebrae. It is a piece that wishes Elli out of existence. She loves her daughter, more than this world, she loves her more than she had ever thought possible, and loves her more and more each day. But Elli is a constant reminder of all the worst parts of herself are prominent enough that no matter how much she tries to bury them, that they would reveal themselves in her own daughter.
She sees in Elli her own reckless nature, the way she dances on the cliff sides as if she could never fall. It is not from arrogance, but from the desperate need to feel like you are floating, flying. There are moments when she looks into Elli’s eyes and is haunted by the way every emotion she has ever felt lives buried beneath them. She wonders if this is why a mother could abandon her child because she looks into their eyes and saw too much of herself.
He doesn't understand.
Not many do, so she cannot blame him.
“It’s okay,” she reassures him even if she doesn't want to. And then she listens, she listens because he had once extended the same to her, and she would not deny him that. She listens because there is a fog of poison that still lives in her lungs and she doesn't know what will happen when she opens her mouth. (There is a terrifying heartbeat that she wonders if she would breathe great and powerful flames.)
She feels a a gentle nick on her shoulder at the way his words clips and bounce, the way he feels like a child tripping on the playground, only to pull another child down with him. She tries to keep the shock from her face as he speaks, instead she focuses on the emotions that leap from him with astonishing clarity. Never had she been able to read his emotions so easily, never have they been so vibrant.
She wonders how he can decide to take the life of another.
She wonders if it is the same way a ruler goes from thinking himself a king to believing himself to be a god.
Does Torix believe himself a god?
No.
Gods do not feel regret.
They smite without such burdens on their shoulders.
And that is the biggest difference between mortals and gods.
There are many things she could say in this moment to him. So many things. She starts with the truth. “We love to break things, don't we? And then try to fix them, only to break them again,” she says. “I have a habit of ruining all of the good in my life—or, at the very least, taking the bad and making it worse.” She thinks of the secrets she has kept. From her daughter, this one is most apparent. She had not been the root of this poison, but was she not to blame for not thrusting it into the sunshine? Was she not the true villain for knowing and not telling Elliana, not telling Tenebrae? Even if she hadn’t intended to do wrong, she cannot help but wonder if she didn’t because she was scared of losing him.
She swallows hard and fights the fear that forms like tears at the corners of her eyes. “Do you still love them, Torix? Do you still desire them?” She asks. Elena moves her golden head close to him once more. “What if I could take that away? If just for a moment?”
he was a victim of the of the part that loved, the part that was mortal
I had been a god, once. I might have told her, had she asked me.
I had been a god, once. I had been a god of my own life; careless; too powerful. I could detail all the promises of my birth; how I had been my mother’s only son and my father’s only heir. That hadn’t been important, however; what had been important was the way that I would excel my peers physically and mentally; what would matter would be how I fought.
I had been a god, once, when I went to war. Nearly untouchable. When we went to war, we had both been young gods, drunk on triumphs, arrogant on youth. The first time I had been painted for battle, had donned my armor, grasped my spear—I had known I had been made for specific purpose, to lord over those fields of conflict, to meet with death and walk away.
I had been a god, once, when I had been young. A god who did not know love, or regret, or even hate; a vapid god, to whom life had been a series of predestined certainties. Decisions were made; but decisions didn’t matter, not truly, until—
Until I had nearly lost my life. Until the war ended. Until I was no longer young.
Drunk on Damascus’s magic, these truths come unbidden and full of self-deprecation; they are the truths of a man who has lived through something he shouldn’t have; who has gained a perspective the world never ought have lent him. The truth, the monstrous truth—
I do not regret what I did.
(It had been a necessity; to hate her, after her confession, had been a necessity. To love her, to forgive her, would have warped everything I would have ever known. I fell in love with my companion; with my brother in arms; with a man who had slept and bled and fought besides me. And she changed all of that, with her truth. She changed all of that, by betraying me first).
I cannot regret it.
I cannot regret it, because if I did, if I acknowledged my own monstrous betrayal; it would be the end of me. And instead, I exhale sharply. I listen to her, as she says:
We love to break things, don’t we? And then try to fix them, only to break them again. I have a habit of ruining all the good in my life—or, at the very least, taking the bad and making it worse.
The words are not so separate from my own experiences. These events should feel far from here, from now, from this time and place; instead they exist with us within the living room. Instead, they haunt me in the glancing shadows, where I see Boudika and Dagda, where my father lurks and my sisters laugh. Cillian is there, and Khier, young and unfamiliar. I want to be like you, he had said. But it was always Boudika—Bondike. It was always the person who betrayed me, who transformed all I had known into a lie, every soft memory, every hope of empathy or progress.
Do you still love them, Torix? Do you still desire them? What if I could take that away? If just for a moment?
I close my eyes. I cannot stand it. There is something almost like a groan at my lips; and I want to blame Damascus; I want to scream and rage against her question, and yet, my limbs are as weak as a newborn fawn’s. The floor feels as if it has fallen out from beneath me; and even Elena takes on an unforgivable edge, the sharpness of knife slipping swift between the ribs to kiss the heart.
Do I love them?
Do I desire them?
Is that not what drove me here? Love turned to hatred, lust turned to rage? Is that not why Cillian existed; why I had spent so many years trying to lose myself in other bodies, in loving other men, in trying to die on sandy beach full of war cries—and yet, the person I loved so much it hurt me, the person I desired to the point of turning all other love away, never fucking existed.
He had been a lie. A dream. And settling for the truth, for her, would have been like settling for a half of the whole. If I had not betrayed her, we would have ended the same; if not worse. I am full of anger with no direction. I am full of a sorrow that never ends. This is the impossibility, I think, of living.
It will hurt no matter what I do.
“Gods, please. Just take it away, Elena. Take it all away.”
I had been a god, once.
But I am only a man, now.
(That is what love does to the best of us; it transforms us into mortals; it imbues us with fear, with longing, with necessity. I had never felt fear until I had known the fear of losing him; I had never known longing until I had been faced with someone I could not have; I had never understood the limitations of my powers as a man, a mere man, until I was given a scenario I had no control over, no sight of).
Outside, it begins to rain. The storm that had been out at sea is hitting the cliffside in a sudden torrent of rain. Damascus groans, low in his throat, and it is the sound of an ending.
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
erwir and her were supposed to last forever. He was her first love, she was young, so young, and he was the older, brave knight that saved her on the mountains, who promised her eternity. She believed every word he said because she was young and because he had such wisdom in his eyes.
Underworld and her were never supposed to happen. He stole her from her home, he knocked her down every chance he got. But he looked at her and set her every nerve on fire, and she thought she should be scared of him, but she couldn't bring herself to be.
Altair and her should have been together. He was the good one, the loyal one, the kind one. He kept her from running into the snowstorm towards her death, he held her, told her he wanted to see her again. She said no, and he let her go, because he cared for her that much. He cared enough to let her go.
Tunnel and her were a mistake. A nearly deadly mistake. He never loved her, never truly wanted her, he just desired to break something pretty, to cage a bird, to pluck the petals of a sunflower. Tunnel destroyed and she was just something else to obliterate. It was wrong place wrong time, and then the wrong time at the wrong place.
Tenebrae and her were another matter entirely.
Azrael and her—she feels guilt, because after all of this, what does she have left to offer him?
She sees them all pieces by piece. Aerwir begging her to stay, Underworld calling himself a demon, not wanting to contaminate her purity, Altair’s antlers catching in a branch, Tunnel’s teeth against her skin, Tenebrae in the lake, Azrael meeting her under the stars. She can no longer watch the shadows of her home, not when their faces keep finding her, she turns to Torix then, wondering what he sees staring back at him because she can feel him, feel everything about him.
There, just beneath the surface, the nerves bristle.
They spit and they spark.
And if she let them, they would lay her to waste.
Because she knows rage just as intimately as she knows anything else. She, too, has been blinded by it. She has felt it tighten like a vise around her windpipe. She has felt caught beneath its grinding heel. So she does not cower when she feels his own, but he says nothing, he does nothing.
He is the hunter of the wolf, and the shepherd of the lamb.
And what is she now to him? If she holds this power.
“Okay,” she tells him, a promise if he just holds on that it will be over in a moment, though for only a moment. Her head falls against him as her magic works its way in the spaces between ribs, the spaces between breath, between heartbeats. The spaces between raindrops against the window. Elena had not even realized it started to rain. She focuses this time instead of reading emotions, instead of giving emotions, on taking them away. She searches inside him for that love that desire and rips it from his chest with such a force, such a rush that she topples backwards with a gasp and steadies herself on golden legs. She holds it inside her, his love, his desire, and all their faces come flashing back towards her. She holds as tightly as she can for as long as she can, lifting this weight from Torix, to bring him a moment of peace.
She strains to talk to him, her blue eyes are closed. “Torix,” she says. “How does it…” she cant finish the question, she feels her strength draining. “What do you— desire now—?” She asks him.
he was a victim of the of the part that loved, the part that was mortal
For some of us, there is only one other.
Certainly, all loves are different. They belong to different times, different places. They belong, even, to different shades of ourselves. The love of youth is not the love of old age.
I don’t think it happens often; truly, most ought experience love more than once, ought to understand it at different stages with different people. We are meant to love many times, as we go through the seasons of life. Those who love once are not true romantics; I would go so far as to say they are not romantics at all.
No. There is something warped in them.
In me.
My eyes lock with hers; I am tensely aware that neither of us are fully in that moment, that beneath the surface our memories play out like running water.
I never even told her.
Rain hits the windows in loud shudders. The cabin seems to groan with the storm when it hits; when the rafters shake; when sky becomes sea.
I never even told her, I love her.
It is because I had never loved her. And that is where I will never recover; the lie, insidious and unforgivable, that was woven into everything we had ever shared. That magic, irreparable lie; the one that hid her from me, that ensured I could never love her as she was, even had I wanted to.
The lie turned my other, the piece that fulfilled me, into fantasy.
He had never existed as I had thought. No matter the time spent together, no matter the memories made, or the blood shed—he never belonged to me. He belonged to the truth, and my love could not weather the confession when it came.
I cannot believe I've carried this burden so far; that it followed me to the shores of Novus and beyond. The memories lay thick on my shoulders in Elena’s cabin with Damascus breathing heavily outside, a storm hitting overhead.
I wonder what she feels; if my emotions are a pit opened up underfoot, or a black hole, or a fire.
What will you become when the war is over? he had asked me, once.
Yours, I had whispered, almost flippantly. The war would never be over.
Yours.
Yours.
I promise.
Her expression seems vaguely frantic; her brows pinch and soften, and beneath her eyes a storm of emotions rage. I wish I could feel more clearly the thread binding us; I wish I could feel her as she can feel me, to reciprocate the burden. Instead, I am a flood of regret, anger, rage, sadness into her. But in the aftermath of such a cleansing there is...
For some, there is a second love. A third. A fourth.
(But how could there be? Not for me. Not for me)
There will be others to want, to lust after; but the threads of my life were too closely woven into the threads of his.
Then she bares down, her head against my chest, no spaces are left.
When Elena tears it from me, there is a moment of agony—the moment of thinking, no, that is a piece of me—you cannot take it!
It is essential, you see.
It is the center of all I am.
The center that drives me; the fuel I burn; the dreams and the nightmares and the fantasies I consist of. How often are these things rooted in love, in desire?
Then, there is nothing.
I exhale one long, deep breath; I glance at her without pain, without the hedging at the end of my consciousness that there must be something else. There is no loneliness. There is no contempt. My head swims with it; my chest is light. It is as if every thought, ever action had been waterlogged by the undercurrent of him—and it becomes clear to me, in the way things become only clear with distance, that my love had become contempt and fantasy and hatred and fear and guilt and want and joy.
I am marveling. I am marveling at the physical strain her body displays; the way when she asks, Torix, how does it… What do you—desire now—? the tension makes it difficult to understand her words.
Then, I realize, she is difficult to understand because I do not have a ready answer.
There is nothing in my life Bondike did not touch. Not my memories of my family, not my memories of war, not my memories of my country, not my memories of the sea. The only thing left is Novus; the only thing left are the blue eyes in front of me, and—
“Nothing,” I say, for the first time in my life. I am quiet and tired and, perhaps, a little sad. “Nothing at all.”
The answer, the sentiment, seems anticlimactic; but I cannot remember the last time those words had been true. For so long, there had been war to want; medals to win; love to earn; I had wanted companionship; and I had covered my wants, my desires, in the bodies of others or in war or in hate. For a moment, ephemeral, I feel nothing but peace.
For some of us, there is only one other.
And when they are gone, there is so little left untouched by them.
I close my eyes and wonder, what else is there?
I close my eyes and wonder, am I ending, or did they?
But when I open them, I know. The comprehension is brief; there and nearly gone, before the feelings flood back, the love and hate and want and that fucking need. Yes. I need him and will never have him and that will not--cannot--go away.
And still, in that moment of clarity, I am assured: there must be something else, after.
The silence stretches until I say, so quietly my voice is barely audible: "Thank you."
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 tries not to think of her dreams. Because in dreams, things work, planets align. In dreams, everyone stays together. In dreams there is no ice, no broken hearts, no secrets, no lies.
She tries not think of her dreams because they so easily turn to nightmares, where she is weeping for her mother, where her father is yelling at her to run, where she is screaming and crying to tell them to come back, come back for me, but it is not enough.
But it is so hard not to think of them in this moment, under the toxins that beats behind her eyes like hummingbird wings.
‘Tag, you’re it, Cherish!’ She squeals to her aunt as she runs through her birth land. She runs, runs as fast as young, sunshine legs can take her. Cherish laughs behind her until Elena abruptly turns a corner. ‘No, Elena, don’t go that way!’ She cries, but it is too late, there is her father, covered in icy, bloodied, vacant. A hollow body of a man she once loved.
A frown creases her lips when she realizes she has ran out of flowers to place in her dark cousin’s mane. ‘It’s okay, Elena,’ he sighs in that way that is so essentially Alvaro that Elena cannot help but giggle back. ‘I know where we can find more,’ he says and leads her into Paraiso’s forest. They come to a hole in the ground, and Alvaro stops, and looks at her, she thinks she sees blood dripping from his eyes instead of tears. ‘Are the flowers down there?’ She asks, suddenly terrified. He doesn't say anything and she knows she has to look even if she doesn't want to. Peering over the edge, she sees her laying there, cream hair splayed out, her body twisted at all the wrong angles. This was no garden, she realizes, but a graveyard.
It is a Hyaline night sky, and she takes comfort in having Lilli’s crimson form wrapped around her, they cradle each other close. ‘Tell me a secret,’ Lilli asks. ‘You are my best friend.’ It is not really a secret, but Elena feels the need to tell her anyway. ‘Tell me a secret,’ Elena asks in return. ‘How about I show you one?’ Lilli asks and Elena, smiling, obliges. But she turns and it is no longer the gentle red of Lilli, but the vibrant, crimson of Boudika, horns sprouted atop her head, venom on her breath as she sinks her poison beneath Elena’s veins. ‘You wanted his love, well, this is what it does to you.’ She says as she watches Elena squirm in agony upon the floor that is no longer Hyaline, but Denocte.
And then there is a bonfire. Ash. Smoke. Flames. Embers. Elena watches it all from a distance, and she turns away because she knows how this dream ends, it was a nightmare from the beginning just like the rest, and just like the rest, she was too foolish to see it.
She breathes, rattled and shaking as she stands there, burdened by his emotions, but so entirely gleeful and happy all at the same time. She hears him exhale and she wonders how did he steal the breath from her lungs like that? Because this air no longer feels like her own.
Elena watches him still, hinging on her question, waiting for him to finish it. And then he says it: ‘nothing.’
“I have to give it back now,” she says, and tears form in her eyes as she slowly reels out the emotions and they seek to find purchase within their host once more. Slowly, slowly, she releases them, it may feel just like a tickle at first, but in time, by morning, it will consume him once more. She wonders if he can already feel it suffocating him. Elena blocks his emotions from herself because she cannot stand to find out right now, not when she knows this time, this time she causes it, if only because she could not keep it. “You can sleep here tonight, wait out the storm,” she says, blue eyes glancing out the window as rain continues to pelt against the glass as if wishing to break it. “You will leave in the morning, before my daughter and her father return,” she says, and though it reads like a command, the breath of it, the melody, is an apology. Elena retires to her room, bites her lip as she sobs in silence. And for the first time, she is not the fawn, but the maiden who places a crown of roses on the hunter’s head. And she is not the lamb, but the girl who wraps the Shepard in a shawl of wool.
I have to give it back now, she thinks as she slumbers. I have to give it back.
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