YOU ARE A GOLDEN THING
IN A HEAVY, HEAVY WORLD
IN A HEAVY, HEAVY WORLD
Marisol does not answer his question with words, and Orestes does not even believe he had expected her to. But her heavy eyes are answer enough; a silent communion exists within the iron-weighted expression of her gaze, in her slow and steady blink, her charming smirk. Orestes thinks of wolves beneath a winter moon; he thinks of the bright flash of their teeth and lolling tongues, and how they bring down the great stag only with the brightness of their eyes to speak.
Yes. It is a fierce image; bloody and strange. The capacity for violence; the hard intimacy of the hunt; the difficult to read expression of a thing at once beautiful, and tragic.
Marisol says, then, My family says it was bad luck. Orestes is taken aback; he did not even realise the staring could have been the glance of the superstitious.
“They were fools.” Orestes cannot help the bluntness, whetted like a blade. “It is beautiful.” Perhaps he is so dismissive of the superstition because he believes, instead, strongly in fate. In the preconceived plan that everything, even as it happens, had been thought of long ago. He softens his voice. “My people called marks like yours angel’s kisses, where you’ve been touched by—“
He doesn’t finish. Perhaps it is the noise. Perhaps it is the way everything except Marisol appears to blur and change and shift, a bright and exceptional display of vivacious colour. There is an almost-hunger to the celebration, an almost aching, as if the very heart of Terrastella throbs beneath their hooves.
It is daring. As close as you want. Does she not know? Does she not feel the way he burns, the way even as she says it his mouth drops just a bit lower, just low enough that when he speaks again he touches the small of her ear and brushes her neck, near her short-cropped mane. Orestes is too attuned to her to not notice the way his breath makes her shudder; and there is a part of him, perhaps a little wicked, that delights in it.
He feels on the precipice of wilderness, even in the crowd—and he wants to take her with him, to a place where they could simply be. The heat of bodies all around remind him nearly of his own people, in the sea, when they swam together. His next blink is languid, and the carefully erected borders of his self-control seem now to blur, to fade. Orestes did not realise how heavy his own burdens have felt until now. Orestes did not realise how alone he has been, until she smiles at him with a familiar shyness. Yes, but not here.
She could take him anywhere, in that moment, with the way that she looks at him as if surprised, as if a light has turned on inside her, a flame lit. Orestes wants to peel back the layers of Queen, Commander, Halcyon, Dusk, until there is nothing but Marisol. He wants to ask, and ask, and ask—and give, and give, and give, until he is not Sovereign, Prince, Day, but only Orestes, Orestes Orestes.
He follows her, close, close, close. Touching, Shoulder to shoulder, flank to flank. He cannot help himself. He nips playfully at her ear, swift and gentle. There is a mischievous light in expression that underplays the severity of mere moments prior; and a part of him, boyish, trembles with both uncertainty and want.
Another part of him, larger, more mature, warns against every step further into the corridors of Terrastella. It tells him he is a Sovereign, and such a position has no room for fancy, for romance.
The wildness in his blood is louder. The need, for just a moment, to feel like someone worthy of something so pure and kind as this.
“Tell me,” and again he is breathless, and his mind thinks of all the ways he knows how to dance. Orestes must think of anything else, and so he asks: “What is it like to fly?”
Those memories of another life are already gone, where with a thought his amorphous body might have become a gull, a sea eagle, a sandpiper. His heart is too full in this moment to recognise the sadness of it; his heart is too full, nearly with bursting, at the possibility of asking her not only this, but everything, everything, everything.
Orestes does not know where she leads him, but they pass through hallways with flickering torches and on and on into the building. Terrastella seems, to him, cool and blue in contrast to Solterra’s brilliant sandstone and arid heat. There is a chill in the air that only enters the desert at night and he feels it creep along the nape of his neck despite the way his body, his magic, radiates heat. He looks at her; it is a seeking look, a piercing look. There is a moment, with that coldness in him and the warmth of her against his side, when he feels the aching in his heart quell. Just for a heartbeat. Just for a breath. He is simply there, in the moment, discovering what it means to be a man instead of a Soul-keeper, a Prince, a King.
Orestes says, very earnestly: “Walking with you tonight is the first time I have not felt alone in this new land.” At once there is something sad and happy in his expression. "Thank you for that, Marisol." I don't know if I deserve it.
"SO EDEN SANK TO GRIEF
SO DAWN GOES DOWN TO DAY
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY"
SO DAWN GOES DOWN TO DAY
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY"
