FIRE-LIT, HALF SILHOUETTE AND HALF MYTH, THE WOLF CIRCLES MY PAST, TREADING THE LEAVES INTO A BED TILL HE SLEEPS, BLACK SNOUT ON EXTENDED PAWS. BLACK SNOUT ON SULPHUR BODY, HE NUDGED HIS WAY INTO MY CONSCIOUSNESS. THERE IS NOTHING THAT WON'T BE LIT UP IN THE DARK TORCH OF HIS EYES.
There is an alien aspect to their meeting; an otherworldly aura possesses the scene. Neither of them fit naturally in the glen; it is apparent in their lean frames, the colour of their eyes, the way that even here they smell of sand, salt, sweat.
Because I would never bleed for a people I do not care about. There is something about the brutality of it that strikes him; perhaps it is his bleeding heart. He remembers, briefly, his imprisonment. It feels as if it were lifetimes ago, but Boudika’s words come to him unbidden and surprised. “How do you not hate me? How do you care so deeply, even for your enemy? Even for your condemner?”
Orestes will never have an answer; not one that made sense. Perhaps it is the sea in him, capable of holding so many beasts and beings that are living and dying, always.
He says, “So it is better to let them fall under the hands of tyrants than take the burden of the crown?” Orestes’ voice is hard, for once—close to accusatory but not quite. It still borders on inquisitive.
Solterra was not meant to be ruled by kings and queens and their pretty gold pieces. It is a feral thing, a beast that cannot be tamed by your politics. There is a reason every bearer of the crown finds themselves dead.
Orestes cannot blame her. Her people are not dead yet; not completely; not like his. He smiles and it is a bitter thing, cold and edged as a blade. “The yoke is on the world, not just Solterra’s desert. There is nothing wild left.”
He thinks of his people, then; he thinks of how when the Oreszians dragged him through the streets to sentence him to death, they built a harbour, a dock, and ships with sails white as a dove’s pale wing. He thinks of how the gods are far, far away—even those that still live, like those in Novus. He thinks of the way those ships cut through the sea like so many whetted blades, taking distant islands, conquering more magic, seeking more, more, more. Always more.
“Do not accuse me of crimes that are not mine, Khan. I did not murder your people; and these politics are no more mine than they are yours. I did not let them build a citadel in your wild land, or hunt the old tribes to the brink.” He thinks of how, in another land, he had let it happen. He had let the freedom of his people slip through his grasp; if not in this life, then in another. Orestes has lost too many of his people's Souls. He thinks of how, in another land, a city on a black cliffside mocked everything he and his people had been.
Orestes sees in her everything he has lost; it breaks his heart. Her face is scarred, dark, with eyes that burn in a way that only the tormented understand. She reminds him tremendously of his Khashran, of his warriors, with their proud faces and their readiness to kill. Yet she is harder, perhaps, than they had ever been. There is no softness of the sea in her; no gentle shush, shush, shush of the waves, longing for the shore. She is everything he has learned of the desert. “I only want people to be as free as they can be. Men have died for less.” But rarely more.
The air is cold, cold, cold, and the magic of moments ago no longer exists. He takes his duty upon his shoulders once more, as Atlas would, and feels the heavy weight. Orestes does not mind being questioned; perhaps it is because he hopes that he can show her is no Zolin, no Raum, not even Seraphina. He is not Maxence, he is not Sol.
They are all dead. And he has inherited, instead, their broken kingdom.
“A burning lion sat me on the throne, and told me I was ash. I walked through the fire.” The line of his jaw is hard. It has begun to snow. “I will give Solterra everything I have and if one day that is my life, so be it.”
I have already failed once.
@Avdotya || “speech”
"THE WOLVES HAVE
BEEN SLAUGHTERED
NOW, A HEDGE OF
SMOKING GUN BARRELS
RINGS MY DAUGHTERS
DREAMS"
BEEN SLAUGHTERED
NOW, A HEDGE OF
SMOKING GUN BARRELS
RINGS MY DAUGHTERS
DREAMS"
