[P] oath

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 



I don’t know. She says, after she has looked away from him like an angel averts its gaze from wickedness. For what is his daughter but the entire opposite of he and Rhoswen?
 
Every inch of this girl is soft and warm – though his gaze turns her into ice. He looks and looks and waits for the hoarfrost to come creeping. What is time when he waits like this? What is time when he expects his daughter to turn into a flower – a rose – immortalized in the frost of his rage?
 
Rhoswen was the fire within him. She was the rage that scolded and melted the ice around his heart. But where was she now? Had his heart already known she was dead? Was this why it turned numb and blue and so hard like rock?
 
I don’t know.
 
Her answer sits, unsatisfactory. It is a tick upon his flesh. It itches and poisons and sickens him. As if he was not already sick enough.
 
His ire is a furnace. It takes every drop of the ice that freezes her skin and sends it all to melt-water rivers. It burns out the poison of her answer and has him trembling. What god-monster is this, he might think, that lets such grief flow free.
 
Somewhere as basilisk calls and its cry is enough to rend Solterra’s sky in two. The south wind is howling as it sweeps for the window and cuts itself upon the broken glass blades. It is the only noise in this room with a tooth-filled maw for a window and a bent girl – little more than a wilted rose. Before her the king stands, not a tree nor a flower, but a weed that chokes as it reaches and deprives as it rises. He has not petals but daggers and he does not smile but stare. He looks to the sun, like all plants do, but nothing keeps him alive like she did… His time is already unraveling.
 
Death is already upon him. It laughs in silver and blue. Raum looks to his daughter – does she see it too? Rhoswen is always the victor and this time she is too. Did she know when she turned herself to ash and to dust, that she condemned him too?
 
Oh how he hates her!
 
And oh how he loves her!
 
And it is love, he knows, that ultimately kills.
 
Raum is already dead. Sabine’s words mean little at all.
 
I don’t know. His daughter had said.
 
Grief eats him. It swallows him whole. Yet he steps to her side, and drinks in the scent of her. She is sunlight and woodland, the dust is only a veil for his child is more than daylight and night. She is more than dust and midday heat. He reaches for her, not a king, not a crow but a father, a man drowning. Raum reaches to hold her to drown within the only love he has left. “I am sorry little bird.” He whispers and means everything. Sorry for him, for her mother, for all he has done and not done and for all he has yet to do.
 
He holds her like it is his last, for now he knows it is.
 
He will not survive Rhoswen. Not like Sabine will survive them both. Ah, their slim, slight, delicate child, so very much stronger than them both.

---

@Sabine