TELL ME LOSING EVERYTHING IS WHAT SAVED YOU, TELL ME YOU FINALLY TASTE FREEDOM. DON’T LIE. I SEE IT IN YOUR EYES. WOMEN DO NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THEIR OWN VOICES AND RESORT TO THINGS DEEPER; DON’T LIE TO ME. TELL ME YOU LOVED TO DESTROY. TELL ME YOU NEED ME, PLEASE. YOU ARE THE BONES OF MY SPINE. YOU ARE THE GROUND BENEATH MY FEET. YOU ARE MADE OF DEEPER STUFF THAN EARTH CAN GIVE.
Mm. Yes. Just a—spell. Seeing her is like looking at a half-remembered dream; he knows he dreamt it, but when and where and how he does not know. He cannot remember the plot, the content, only that those tragic eyes remind him of something even more tragic and even more nameless.
There is a pit opening up in Pravda; he feels gutted like a soft fruit, as if someone has cleaved from his body the seeds of the future and transformed him into a morsel, transient and overall insignificant. Pravda feels small, and dark, and full of melancholy. He clears his throat again and, taken aback, says, “Miss, allow me to take you to the doctor? Does this kind of thing happen often?”
Pravda has brushed off his feeling of unease by this time; but when she asks, do we know each other, he is again taken aback.
Do we?
It is impossible. They cannot know one another—unless, does she mean, within the Court? Pravda nearly laughs at his own foolishness. Of course she means within the Court. How could she possibly mean anything else?
Pravda smiles nervously. His tone wavers just as much as her own had. “I have seen you around the library before. I’ve never managed to work up the nerve to introduce myself, though.”
It was a half-truth.
There is something dark, tortured, and achingly familiar about her. Pravda finds himself contemplating if another Priest has made their Second Journey and followed him to Novus—but, Pravda decides, it would not make any sense. He would recognise their physical form.
It leaves him wondering if this is a lesser form of reincarnation—and try as Pravda does to dismiss the idea, there is something that makes him hesitate. He turns his head, glancing shyly away, only to see the looming row of ornately bound plays. Antigone. Oedipus Rex. The Bacchae. Prometheus Bound. The Odyssey.
Pravda glances back toward her; he realises it is her eyes. They seem too old for the rest of her body, like bits of collective memory trapped body too young to understand. Pravda strains to understand; there is something the universe is trying to tell him in this moment, and he cannot quite grasp it. At last, with all the painstaking awkwardness of the boy he still is with his own eyes that are too-old, he compliments her: "Your tattoos are beautiful. I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself yet... I'm Pravda."
ADMIT IT; YOU ARE LOST WITHOUT THE WAITING. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE YOURSELF IN PARADISE? EVEN THE DAUGHTER OF GODS MUST KNOW LONELINESS, MUST SOMETIMES WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO BE TRAPPED IN A HELL OF FOREVERS. THANK ME, YOU QUEEN. I’VE GIVEN YOU FOREVER.
