It did not make sense to him, how bonds that did not break only grew stronger when tested. So it goes: the rift between them is not only filled but a mountain begins to form in its place, a mountain that reaches for the feet of the gods. Even when her slender ears curl back at the tone in his voice, the mountain grows taller. On its slopes grows shrubs of juniper, maple, chokecherry. Trees of aspen, fir, and pine– her honesty is a soil they take root in.
Eik flushes a little at the mention of sexual nature– he was always such a modest boy– but it does not break his composure. “I see your point,” he admits, grudgingly. “But to die…” Not just death– sacrifice– “hasn’t there been enough of that?”
For a man so ambivalent to the timing and mechanism of his own death, something about mortality did not sit right with Eik. (maybe not ambivalent but, if anything, eager for death– just not strongly enough to act upon it) He had, even after all these years of life and loss, never accepted the impermanence of every living thing. In his mind there was a graveyard, and among the headstones was held a funeral that never ended. It grew with every death, even the nameless ones, the ones Eik never knew until the end, as he passed by their bodies and wondered who they were, what they left behind, who was missing them.
No one taught him how to do this. It was just something he did without thinking. As a survivor, it was his responsibility to carry the dead on his shoulders, in his mind. The problem though, the great truth he could not accept, was that time kept marching on, impartial to the respect that was owed to the dead. To his horror, even memories decomposed. They would shift or blur or dissolve completely. Over the years even tombstones crumbled, kneeling, as all things do, to time.
Eik feels guilty that he never knew the man who died for Isra. Maybe if he did– maybe if I did, I don’t know, things would be different. It would have been me, or no one. It should have been me, or no one– maybe it would have made a world of difference. But he did not know Acton. And time cannot be unwound. As Moira speaks of him it brings some closure to a wound he did not know was there (there are so many, he loses track sometimes)… but wounds itch, when they heal. They beg to be scratched back open.
(a dark, acidic feeling begins to fall from the sky)
“I feel like I owe him something, but I don’t know what.” So he does what he always does: he carries the memories of the dead. Perhaps he should look after the departed man’s family… but he did not even know where Bexley was, or O. He had been so caught up in retribution, he had neglected the living.
(Shame, that’s what that feel is. It settles on him now like a tomb of snow.) Eik leans into Moira’s touch, into her words, wishing he too could rise into the air like the smoke of her voice.
“I hope you never have to be so brave.” Bravery was a sort of death. There were so many things that had to be discarded in order for bravery to rise to the fore. Not that it wasn’t worth it, but… well, sometimes it wasn’t. If the world were full of lions, they would all starve. “But of course you could be. You already are very brave. Probably more than you know.” She had stepped forward to lead her people in times of duress– not everyone could do that well. Not everyone could do that, period. And to persist in loving someone, to anchor one’s self in a sea of feeling when one has been raised to navigate a sea of ice… that took bravery, too.
But it is not in his nature to speak in such lush language, so he does not. He stays quiet, although with his magic he cracks open his mind so she may see the conviction that lies behind his speech, and the pride that does not have words, and the love that grows where there was once only ash.
Eik had almost forgotten they walked a new bridge to a new land– he remembers only when they begin to reach the end of it, where a huge wall of greenery stands too tall to see over and too wide to reach around. He wonders out loud, “what do you think happens next?”
That was always the question. In life, in history, in love and loss–
what happens next?
@
Time makes fools of us all
