I nod wordlessly, my hair spirals of gold against his neck. I pull at his mane and bite back a grin when he smiles. Under this lonely torchlight, heightened by the sheen of blades polished bright for war, his eyes are almost feverishly blue. Life, to the spilled ink of mine.
“We fought a generational, racial war. I was the last generation, before we won."
I lift my head and turn to regard him silently, my surprise held close and tight. As a Solterran, the hideousness of his warfare does not shock me so much as the confession. My wariness is worn like a ruby at my throat. This is nothing; I had asked him what he did, and he is merely answering.
I watch as the torchlight plays over the angles of his face. The dark gleam of his cheeks; the sea-blue of his eyes. As he speaks I search his expression like a priest searching auguries for answers, until he utters “...what do men, raised for war, become when the war is over?" and something shifts within me, like river-ice under a swollen caravan.
I am Solterran. I am a prince forged in a court of war. I ought to know how to answer him. Yet his confession (it is more than the confession—it is that he has confessed, the ultimate vulnerability, when I had thought him a man invulnerable) has scraped my skin as raw as his voice.
The silence left behind by my lyre is a live thing. “You repent, if you must," I say finally, my voice suddenly thin, my smile suddenly glancing. There is nowhere to look now but at him and I am terrified of what I will see when I do.
Because it is only now that I realise I have promised him something I can never give him, and it is too late, too late, to repent. “And after—" I swallow, before falling silent. In speech I am used to being eloquent, to being lucid and princely-clever. I am unused entirely to how my words now blur, one after the other after the other: “If he has something still to live for—I think it enough."
It is a testament to the suddenness of my fear.
It is the lump in the throat that turns to metallic poison as my wing skates over his eye and he tells me softly, "My father."
The poets like to say that dying makes a man different—that the pious becomes wicked, that the wicked becomes pious. I do not think that I am wicked. (I do not think that I am pious enough to become wicked.)
Yet I must be. For why else do I not tell him, from the moment I see how he looks at me—that I am a man waiting to die? There is blood at the back of my throat. I smell of bitter herbs and linen and parchment and blood. I wonder if I will last past the spring. I want to live. I look at him and I want to live.
But I still wish to die.
When I try to say this—a sickly sweetness, as filmy as oil, pours down my throat and I cannot bear it. The words choke back down my lungs.
The poets are wise, and I am a fool.
“Your father." I think of my own. Of his conciliatory smiles, his booming laughs, his phantom-like ability to disappear whenever I had wanted to see him. He'd never laid a hand on me. He'd never known me enough for it. My voice is painfully soft when I murmur, “I am sorry."
I am sorry. Each time those words had been spoken to me I had wanted to strangle the speaker.
(I am sorry, Prince Adonai, that you have taken ill.)
(I am sorry, Prince Adonai, for the loss of your parents.)
(I am sorry, Prince Adonai, for the loss of your sister.)
Softly, I brush my mouth over his scar. I do not care if I am hurt. I do not care if I am strangled. (If anything—it will be quick.) There is an urgency, now, to my touches over his skin and I am not only glowing but burning. I am burning, and I have always been burning, and I do not care, Vercingtorix, if you break me.
If I could, I would laugh: bright, bitter, cruel. I have never hated myself more than in this moment, in my inability to resist him, in my inability to tell him that I will not be the one broken, because I will be dead. I will be dead, and you will be alive, and if I was cruel enough I would ask you, in between these feverish kisses (at your nose, your eyes, your cheeks): What is worse? That you lived, while your comrades died?
That you walked out of the war alive?
“Torix," I say, when he tells me I can show you. My eyes are fever-bright. Slashes of blue, where they should be silver. I have never hated a color as I hate this shade of blue. My breath is cloud-soft as I brush my nose against his, longingly, before my smile falls quietly in on itself. “I..." The sea is far; visiting it had only been a boy's fantasy, eagerly shared to him because it had been impossible. There is solace to be found in dreaming impossible things.
Yet my reluctant solemnity is broken, for a moment, when he tells me of his dragon. And what can I do but laugh? It is a sound of delight, to stifle my growing fear. If only for a moment. “A dragon?" I trace my wing indulgently over his cheek. The determination in his gaze nearly drowns me, yet my smile holds. “Then it just may work."
I do not say how the impossible thing is making it out of this marble-carved fortress. I do not say that as much as I wish to see the sea, what I truly wish is for him to promise to visit me again and again and again. There are many rooms in this great, gaping house. I have toured them all. Every visit, I will show him another one.
I yearn for the sea. But what I yearn above all, is his company promised to me.
“There is something you must know," I murmur against his chest, when he presses me close to him, his nose buried between the soft down of my wings. My mouth is still held in the shape of a laugh. In my head, I trace out the contours of a great dragon, sailing like a knight's steed to the beckoning sea. I must hold tightly to this image, so that my voice, when I tell him, will not break too quickly for me to put back together.
My lungs are clean of blood. My eyes are free of poppies. “I—"
I swallow. I am cruel, but I am not cruel enough. I cannot keep this from him any longer. “I do not have very long left to live. This illness of mine, it does not—" When I am interrupted by a slashing cough, it is low and wet and aching. Mucus trapped in the lungs. Blood pressed against the throat. “—it is not curable, because it is not an illness."
A hoarse laugh catches at the end of my breath and I press my head desperately into him so that I will not break.
“It is poison." And I cannot beat it.
Help, I lost myself again
But I remember you
Don't come back, it won't end well
But I wish you'd tell me to
he softness of him, the way he looks at me, it makes me want to hate him. Perhaps it is because I have never known comfort, or gentleness, in the way that most have. Perhaps it is because I have learned vulnerability kills, or that pain is the natural consequence of such gentle sentiments. Yes, I know. This will hurt.
“Can you promise me something?” It was a promise I had asked him to make many times. How many nights had we been up on firewatch together? From the beginning at the academy, our freshman year, we had been bunkmates. Bondike flicks his eyes towards me; but then they return to the coastline, where we stand watch.
The sea beyond is roving, and dark, and restless. The waves toss angrily in the dark: roaring crashes and echoing booms. Even from a distance, the wind whips the spray into our faces.
There is a storm coming.
And the storm always brings unwanted guests.
“That depends,” he answers. “On what it is.” I can barely hear our voices above the turmoil of the sea beyond. He is shouting above the din, and lightening cracks somewhere far out on the horizon.
“Well--nevermind. I just… I saw my father earlier today, and he--”
”Acted the same? Even after your talk with him, about how he speaks to you?” Thunder follows, a loud, resounding boom.
“Yes. I just don’t think I’ll ever be enough for him.”
His eyes leave the coastline. They lock on mine, now. There are times I notice a difference in height; but it is only because, despite his smaller stature, he seems to tower over me. “Vercingtorix,” he says tiredly, wearily. “Your father is one of those men with a black hole inside of him. You will never be enough for him. No one ever will be. He will eat the entire world, if it lets him, and everyone in it. The trick is to decide to be enough for yourself.”
If I close my eyes, sometimes, I can place myself back in that memory. It tastes like rain and salt; but he had reached out and touched me, one of the few times he had done so. He had reached out and pulled me into the alcove of his chin, and held me there, as if a child.
Sometimes, like now, I can remember that warmth and pretend it never went away.
But when I open my eyes, it is Adonai, and Solterra, and flickering lamplight that pools in the Prince’s eyes like liquid gold. There is no storm here; only the echoing silence left when he says, You repent, if you must.
Some men might.
I never will.
Is it too late to tell him that it doesn’t matter? My confessions, bitter as they may be, have no true relevance or depth. They do not matter the way most men’s sins do. If I were quicker to drink, I might take less responsibility: if I were truly my father, narcissistic and apathetic, I may have seen myself as blameless. But I don’t. I have never been so innocent. We are each born into a lot, and this had been mine: I did not live through it with true nobility and sacrifice.
No. My father never came to terms with his black-hole-for-a-heart. But I have. I know the world, and everyone in it, will never be enough to fill me. He struggles to look at me straight; he struggles to field a smile that will stick.
And after--if he has something still to live for--I think its enough.
I had felt flickering resentment before: but it wanes and becomes something else. I am only tired. They are words that fit into fairytales of soldiers and princes going to the sea upon a dragon’s back: and I suppose I am to blame for them, in that right. I write the fable alongside him, ignoring the truths even as they glance at the edges of our warmth. Yes, the truth of me lurks around the warmth of our encounter, eyeing my vital points: all the things I am glare bright-eyed from the darkness, waiting. I still smile, an appreciative smile, regardless.
His voice is barely a breath when he says, Your father. I’m sorry. I am tired of words, suddenly. I am tired of all that they fail to convey. I want to say, I am not sorry. If it had not been me, who would it have been? I want more of his touches, I think; I want to feel more of his searing lips against my scars. With that, I do not have to think so deeply about other things. With that, I can forget my name for just a moment--his touches become feverish, impassioned. I cannot help the noise, low and desperate in my throat, that he evokes.
We are moving toward something, quickly, breakneck and blind. I can feel it in his subtle changes: in the way his eyes have fallen, and his words fold like parchment upon themselves. Yes, I know. We are moving toward the inevitable, the unavoidable. He accepts my invitation to the sea (and in it’s own way, that is a kind of penance) but then, unexpectedly: There is something you must know.
I cannot say, when he shares his truth, that I am surprised.
(Perhaps that makes me more monstrous; that I am not struck by sudden grief, or anger, or confusion). Yet, I hold him tighter: I relish the feel of him pressed against my chest, and think:
Poison.
I have always expected those I care about to die. Nothing has changed. This is no more tragic than those I have already lost--and for a moment, I cannot help but envy him. It was meant to be me, so long ago, when I had fallen from the cliffside. It was not a gift I had survived, but a curse. The silence stretches on as I debate whether I should reassure him. If I should state, matter-of-factly and with no hesitation, Everyone I have ever cared for could have died at any moment. How close has Bondike come, time and time again?
I am quiet, and still quiet, as I work over what to say; and that silence stretches out until it is just our breathing, and just our beating hearts. “Adonai, if it is poison, there must be a cure. Have you searched?” I remember our conversation on martyrdom. But even more importantly, I am thinking of the pegasus from the desert.
The pegasus with the magic blood.
The pegasus kept swathed in Damascus’s magic, in billowing clouds of illusions. The pegasus I am bleeding into vials for the black market. The pegasus that says she is a star. I do not yet know how magic works, nor do I trust it: but in the back of my mind an idea begins to form. Yes, I think, there must be a cure. His cough is wet, and tired, and terrible. It nearly makes me flinch but somehow I hold firm.
At last, I draw away. I know the words in my mouth, and already I begin to hate myself for them. (They are saltwater into wounds; they are bright, and burning, and volatile. How can I say something of such depth, a borderline promise, when I am who I am? When there is a void within me, and I am asking him with all his soft, golden light to fill it?). Yet when my words emerge aloud they lack any such sting; they are empathetic, and I meet his eyes with my own. “... and after… if he has something still to live for… I think it is enough.” I leave the question unasked. But it exists in the silence that follows: do you feel as if it is incurable, because you have no reason to live?
Abruptly, I reverse our roles. I do not fear breaking him. He is already broken.
Instead, I focus on tracing the imperceptible cracks. On filling them. On giving him a reason.
(Had I not done the same with Cillian? Is that not the very reason I had a child I did not love, with a woman I did not love? To fill my voids, and hers?)
I can give him reasons, if he wants them. I can make the world seem less monstrous. I can tell him, again and again, his brother is not striking but, instead, small and uninteresting. (And, by my standards, weak). I can find cures or promises; I can make each evening like this. And inside, I can always feel unfulfilled: I can always feel this resonant aching for more, more, more. There is a desperation to me, a sudden softness: I want to save him, yes, but there is the abrupt understanding that by saving him I preserve pieces of myself. I fill the black hole, the endless void.
My mouth finds his cheek; and rises to his ear; then his neck, and throat, and chest. I find his wings against and spend a moment on the long, striking feathers. How beautiful, I think, he would look in flight. “Adonai, I will ask one thing of you. I will not ask you to make me a promise, or even keep it. But my single request…” I pause, with my lips now against his shoulder. I glance sideways at him, and for the first time I cannot fully disguise the hunger in my gaze. “Please do not become a martyr.”
His kisses had been desperate, feverish; they focused on limited time. Mine are leisurely. Mine are consuming. I bite ever so tenderly at the nape of his neck and say, “There is one place I would like to see within your palace very much. Your bedroom.”
I should have rephrased.
If I were honest, I might have stated: I will only ask one thing of you, with my words.
Instead, I will ask for many things. Instead, I will ask him (again and again and again) to wear the edge of me down. I might ask him to play a role, to fill an empty corridor of my life: to be something I have no right having. But I will never ask outright; I will entice; I will draw it out from him as one draws poison from the wound.
If it were possible, I press even closer. I cannot quite discern where his limbs end and mine begin; we are shoulder-to-shoulder, my leonine tail entwined with his. There is a part of me that wishes to be brutal; that violence that never leaves me dances just beneath the surface, reflecting as firelight does in my eyes. But I surprise myself with my softness, with the way I trace the graceful, aristocratic arch of his neck and whisper in his ear, "If you want a cure, I will find one." And more quietly still, so that it is the same softness as a heartbeat, as a pulse, as a wingbeat in the air: "... and revenge, too."
§
i would take the spear and return the lyre,
hear you sing memories of two boys skipping stones
across the sea, of the sweet crunch of figs between our grinning teeth
of your faltering breath, kissing the shadows of my face
but i can only stare at your golden back
as you march off to war
hen he asks me if there is a cure for the poison, why is it that my first instinct is to tell him no?
To scour his expression as the tragedy hits. To paint myself as a lost cause, a time bomb, a once-but-never-again. To use my death as a siren's lure: now, Vercingtorix, you will never forget me. I will always hold something of you that you can never give anyone else—
(Because tragedy, once felt, cannot be unfelt. Even if he has known it before—that is alright. I ask merely for a place on the shelf.)
It is self-betrayal at its very best. It is narcissism through a shattered lens. It is the obsessive, destructive need to see another in grief for me because I cannot grieve for myself enough. Does life not make voyeurs of us all? What else is the point of a funeral, when the dead are never there to see it?
But the truth is that I do not know. I do not know if there exists a cure to my brother's betrayal because days or weeks or months ago, I had crossed beyond the threshold of caring. You cannot imagine how exhausting it is to search for a cure, when no one but you wants to find it.
So I say softly, “I have looked,” and then I pause, unsure whether truth fits us best or a dozen white lies more. Instead, I draw back from the curve of his neck to look evenly into his sea-green eyes: one scarred, one perfect. (I distract myself by wondering: will I recover from this?) “Please do not become a martyr,” he begs me, and it is enough to take me aback; it is enough to be almost enough.
But in the span of an evening my greed has grown teeth, and then wings. A memory of a game I had played often with my siblings seizes me by the shoulders and shakes: Truth or—
A cough clings to my lungs. “Find one for me.”Dare.“Find a cure, Torix, and I will become—” There shouldn't be an ending written into a promise. “Better.” I breathe out. But there is.
I wrap my wings around him: gold on gold on gold. For a moment, we are nothing but gold.
Until, as with all things, the light begins to fade.
When he asks his sly question with the boldness of a soldier, his breath warming my cheek, I snort, my tongue rolling in mock disapproval. “So you have already figured out I can deny you nothing.”
I reach for my discarded lyre, pull the familiar wooden grain against me. Smiling, I pluck out a lonely chord; in my head I have already begun composing it: a song he will never hear.
(His whisper ghosts along the curve of my ear: “and revenge.” In response, I push him stumbling towards the door of the armory. The word sits bitterly on my tongue.
Yet let it sit for longer, and perhaps—perhaps—it will age into sweetness.)
If I could buy forever at a price
I would buy it twice, twice
« r »
@Vercingtorix
A CLOSER!! - & by "become better" adonai apparently meant "become king"
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
01-19-2021, 12:19 AM - This post was last modified: 01-19-2021, 12:25 AM by Adonai
have learned many times there are those among us who can walk no other path; who will turn always upward, toward the summit they cannot reach, and rage out at the injustice of their climb.
(I am one such man; a man for whom the world, and all her contents, will never suffice. I am one such man, who happiness sits on obscurely, awkwardly, as a cloak that does not quite fit. And so I shed the cloak for deeper ventures, for the infinite profoundness of suffering. A bird, I once read, will drop frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.
I wish, sometimes, that regret hit me as terribly as my hunger; I wish, sometimes, I felt the cold depth of a long winter, or the rain stinging my face.
I wish, in the junction between wakefulness and sleep, between walking and dreaming, that I did not need to hurt so precisely, so fully, simply to feel anything at all. I wish, when I feel his feather’s touch me, that I was sorry.
Oh, Adonai, I wish I felt sorry).
But I don’t. I don’t, when he says, I have looked, and I only half believe him, and then I beg: prolong your tragedy, for me, for me, make it last.
“Better,” I whisper, with all the teeth his greed has grown. “Then you can imagine now.”
So you have already figured out I can deny you nothing. And he reaches for the lyre that made my heart sing a song I thought it had forgotten. The chord resonants within me, and the hunger, now cannot be denied. He pressed me toward the door of the armory, and I gladly go, the half-finished answer unspoken on my lips:
Revenge is the only answer.
I would know all about meeting with betrayal, and emerging the victor. If I did not, we would not be tangled in firelight and the reflection of steel. As I open the door and begin to step out, I see our shapes cut darkly into a wall of gleaming swords.
Our eyes, there; the spire of my horn; an edge of his wing.
The fractured images of ourselves; a truer representation then the beauty we stitch with our words, our touches. And I cannot take the imagery; and so I push past it.
Long after, the image remains ingrained in my mind’s eye, entangled somewhere with the scent of him and the sound of the unfinished song.
§
i would take the spear and return the lyre,
hear you sing memories of two boys skipping stones
across the sea, of the sweet crunch of figs between our grinning teeth
of your faltering breath, kissing the shadows of my face
but i can only stare at your golden back
as you march off to war
