A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY
He had lived beneath the same sky as she and the earth then had felt like springtime, a new promise with each step. The air had smelled of pine and sea-salt and he had been taught by his parents to see little treasures everywhere, even if they were only stones with a silver bolt of quartz cutting through, or a shell so small and soft-pink it was like a perfect autumn morning.
Sometimes he still sees such little treasures, but he understands now they are only there to be taken away.
For what is life but losing? Each breath one less, each heartbeat a tick of a clock winding down and down. Yet they must still be precious to him, somehow, for the way he struggles to prolong them.
When she turns her blue-blue eyes back out to the horizon line Abel does not take his own from her; he observes her, the little frown, the horns like perfect icicles. He wonders if they might shatter like glass if they struck bone, or melt when sunken into hot blood; he does not wonder why it is he can only look at a beautiful thing now and only guess how it might kill or die.
Abel opens his mouth and is surprised when a laugh falls out, rare and heavy as a lump of gold. He hadn’t thought he could still make the sound. And then he shakes his head at her and says “And which of us is the guide? Perhaps we will both die of thirst.” When he at last looks out it is to see black vultures wheeling, their black shadows beneath, and the endless sweep of sand and the distant red walls of the canyon.
He sighs as he shifts closer to her, turning back to the capital, where at least he knows there is a well. “Come on, then,” he says, his voice caught between gruff and too young, “hell is waiting.”
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