“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”
She's right.
Michael is afraid. Of everything.
(A time on the mountain, with the wind barely shifting the wet mass of his mane, with a scarf that glitters like the scales of sea serpents, like the tolling of church bells. Michael's hands shake as he unfolds the paper. Michael's voice shakes as Isra reads. He shakes and shakes and shakes and doesn't stop until he reaches the tavern's doors.)
Michael smiles and smiles and smiles like he is not made of eggshells, like her mismatched eyes do not fracture his skin as they pass. She takes another impatient drink, and Michael smiles. She speaks, and Michael smiles.
Morrighan looks again at the pit of dying fire, at its red coals and the almost-white ash tucked beneath them. Michael things it would be nice to be called to like that, thinks that if one person, in all his life, had thought to call him to action, to dare him to live and to grow and to become he may have said no, I am not going. He thinks if anything at all were different he would also be different--just enough to be a little less scared, a little less sad.
A little more like her. Or Isra. Young gods with their hearts on a pike.
He reaches for his drink and finds it empty. He tries not to hear Isra and her magic screaming at him to wake up with closed mouths and dead eyes. He doesn't want to wake up. He never wanted to wake up.
"Alright then, a love story." he repeats, snagging the edge of his smile the rusted nail of his fear, feeling it unravel thread by thread.
Michael rolls the empty glass in his grip, glad that its weight holds him down.
He breathes: in, out.
"There is man on the edge of something-- a cliff, or a porch, or his wits, it doesn't matter. The cliff and the porch and the deck all tell the same story, all say something sad about the man, because the porch is bare and creaky, the wits are frayed, and the cliff is a cliff.
The man is painting. His wife hates when he paints, especially her-- her husband is not one for flattery, always says things like 'there's beauty in truth' or 'why would I lie about why I love you?' and this last one usually make the wife shut her mouth, and huff, and storm back to the house with her fists balled at her sides.
When he is finished he packs up his easel and brushes and carts his work home, leaning through the door with a smile on his face.
'Look!' he says, smiling, and turns it toward her.
She examines the canvas, its thick brush strokes, its just-dried layers of paint. Before her stands a mirror of sorts: she can see the tired lines of her face, each carefully-rendered and out of place hair, the scar on her cheek from a life she can barely remember, white against the dark brown of her skin.
'This is an insult.' she says, her voice breaking. 'I can't believe this.'
The man rests his chin on her head and says, 'Your face is wrinkled from smiling, or frowning, or just being. It is not easy to be anything at all. It is not even easy to be alive. Your hair is a hard day's work--because god only knows you are more capable than I am. Your scars mark each time you looked pain in the face and said 'instead, I will live' and you have lived. I am glad every day you wake and I can wake with you. Age means only that you are strong enough to still be alive.'
She smiles.
Someday soon he will paint on his cliff or his porch or there at the end of his wits and she will think how he only paints her, in her cracked old beauty. And he will remind her again, that she is strong enough to stay alive."
Michael blinks, watching Morrighan with an expression that starts as curiosity and quickly spirals into something like broad panic before setting his glass on the table with a loud thunk and laughing.
"Um--" he stammers, "I'm going to get another drink. So. Do you...?" but he doesn't finish his thought or wait for hers, just ducks into the crowd with a nervous smile.
@morrighan
