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.
Orestes admires her; he admires her fierce spirit, the way she contests him, as if he is naive. He admires the fact she reminds him so much of his own people. Orestes lets her believe it; besides, anything he said would not prove otherwise, and this he knows. He could tell her he knows more of “wildness” than any other Sovereign; but she would not believe him. Orestes could say that he knows more of “freedom” and the cost of it than even, perhaps, she. But he does not say those things. He measures her with his eyes. He listens quietly to her rage; the rage of the sea against the shore, against the cliffside, trying to wear at something that refuses to be worn.
He knows what it feels like to be betrayed by a god; and has she not been betrayed, as surely as she has been blessed?
“A leader who would be willing to do anything to preserve the people she loves; even if that meant heading a nation she hated.” It is not ideal, no. It is not what anyone would want to do; but it is certainly one way to stop genocide. Orestes understands there are more reasons for her to reject the throne than try to claim it; but one who lives as long in her positions as she has... Well, they possess a certain kind of cunning, of ambition.
I have made the mistake of trusting a king and his word and I will not make it again.
There is something winding within him; something sharp and feral. It belongs to an amorphous self; a form that would have taken her confrontation and become a beast. Orestes cocks his head at an angle; he narrows his eyes. The gesture is brief but predatory, and then gone. “I do not ask you to trust me on my word, Davke. I do not ask anything of you at all.”
I say there is no freedom.
It is Orestes’s turn to laugh. Oh, yes; there is something that builds him demand, steadfast, sure. There is something that builds in him as wild as the sea in a storm. “There has never been freedom. Not freedom as we would like it.” No. There is always bondage. There is always obligation. There are always pieces of ourselves we give away.
It is not a threat when she says then expect it to take your life.
For a moment, transient and strange, he thinks that to die on the Solterran throne would not be a poor fate. There are less noble ways to meet the end. “If it is not there, it would be somewhere else.”
Orestes’s eyes gleam, and they are full of mischief; of wildness. “What is your name, Davke? Should I expect you to come calling, the moment I step astray?” Orestes knows the answer to the question before he asks it. But he wants to hear her say it.
Then, his demeanour changes abruptly. His expression becomes hard; the mirth leaves his eyes. “What would you die for? Where do you see your Davke going in the war-torn desert kingdom?” He knows a survivalist when he sees one.
@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"
