Of course, I was young that day on the beach, and in my youth I had never met anyone who took back their words so simply and elegantly. I did not know such a thing could be done, and it was an idea that would stick with me for a long time. Up until that point, everything I heard was absorbed with a sense of finality. This is the way the world is. This is the reason why. Time only moves forward.
But that man, he turned things over. He conceded to my hesitation, like a sandpiper moving always at the edge of the waves. I smiled.
“Hmm…” I was glad this man seemed comfortable with silence, because it often took me a long time to think. Meanwhile the world around us was never still. Gulls cried overhead and the waves kept rolling in and the wind played with our hair and skin. My mane was still quite short at the time, nothing like the long golden silk of the man who shared my company, and at the touch of the breeze it couldn’t make up its mind which way to go. So it went every direction at once, and I looked a happy, windswept fool, fat with secrets. “I don’t know. I guess not.” Something still seemed odd about it, something that dug beneath my heart like it wanted to uproot me.
I suppose I was thinking about my mother, and whether or not she belonged to the sea. And if the sea wanted her back, like its sand dollars. And if the sea would love me, if I let it have her. And what a terrible price some things could be.
“Doesn’t the sand dollar belong to itself?” I did not know. And I did not fully trust this man to know, but I was curious what he believed and if the words, spoken aloud, would resound in me.
I recognized the name Orestes. If my mother was not a queen, and my father a king, at least in my eyes, maybe I would be taken aback to be in the presence of a sovereign. But I think a man would always be just a man to me, regardless of his station. I had noticed how a complete and total idiot could curry favor if his tongue was sharp enough, and as a result I had little inherent respect for rank. I trusted my own judgement more than anyone else’s, and this gave me the shockingly rare ability to happily ignore the opinions of others.
I picked up the sand dollar with my telekinesis. I spun it around in the air between us, like a coin. Heads or tails, I wanted to ask, because that’s what you do when you have a spinning coin. But I had no bets to place, and nothing to put to chance. All at once I wanted and feared being alone, and I could feel these feelings fluctuating like the sides of the sand dollar as they took turns kissing the sun.
(I remember wishing sister was there. She could have distracted this king, and then I could have said nothing and taken a nice long look at those silvery tattoos. As it was, I looked at them surreptitiously. One of them looked like a sun.)
“I’m Aspara. My sister’s name is Avesta.” It didn’t occur to me until later, how silly it was to introduce someone who wasn’t even here. But she was as much a part of me as, well, me. And in the moment I didn’t think anything of it.
He talked a lot about love, this golden man. I would later wonder why to me. A child. Not that I minded, in the moment. I found it wonderful that someone would treat me like an adult. And because of the way Orestes spoke to me, I found him captivating, just as much as he was forbidden. (Papa would have thrown an absolute fit if he knew I was talking to a grown-up boy. But he would never know, as long as I was careful. And I was always, always careful.)
And if I’m being honest with myself, the scent of something forbidden only egged me on. “Yes, I love it,” I said, with a polite grin that said “of course. Are you ever going to ask a question that is not silly?” I did not ask him if he loved the sea. It was too personal a question, and I had a hunch what the answer was anyway. “Is it anything like the sea of sand?” Papa sometimes told me stories of the desert. How at first the Mors seemed desolate and still and dead. Nothing at all like the ocean. How time opened your eyes, the ones you did not realize were there, and subtleties turned to vulgarities, easy as the flip of a coin.
Still the sand dollar twirled in the briny air. Still I did not reach for it with my magic, to tell him what it had to say. I was still thinking about his words “I would like to know what such things say, very much,” and wondering what price that knowledge might fetch.
@Orestes <3
