NATURE'S FIRST GREEN IS GOLD, HER HARDEST HUE TO HOLD. HER EARLY LEAF'S A FLOWER; BUT ONLY SO AN HOUR. THEN LEAF SUBSIDES TO LEAF.
The only way Orestes can ground himself is observing, with an analytic eye, the natural beauty that surrounds them. Autumn has fallen heavily upon Amare Creek. In the later edge of day, the forest still brims with the sounds of light and the deciduous leaves are alight with nearly unimaginable colour. The entire forest is a fire of reds, oranges, yellows. The autumn leaves cushion their footfalls, and spiral lazily down the creek’s current. They are bright flashes through the mist that otherwise obscures the details of the creek and, with that elusive mist, Orestes discovers the entire area subdued with a kind of magic, a kind of quiet intent.
His thoughts stream as the creek does; endless; misted over, as if in a dream. First there is the self doubt, the eternal nagging of you should be with your Court now, at this time, not here, with yourself—
And yet Marisol is the one pleasure Orestes has allowed himself in Novus; she is the one thing in his life that strays from rigid duty, despite duty ironically being what brought them together. He steels glances at her through the trees, though they travel at a trot and not quite together. Orestes has not done this intentionally; no, instead the journey along the creek had become a sort of game, a dogged race between the two. At times Orestes dart’s closer to brush his lips against her neck, her flank, or to nip softly at an ear. Then he is away again, rushed with colour and noise, until—
There is a clamorous waterfall and the sun has shrouded itself in the hands of twilight. The colours, which had been so vibrant moments before, seem more subdued as Orestes comes to a walk; the waterfall obscures the sound of his breathing; it obscures, too, his thoughts. It is here Orestes closes the distance between them, tentatively, step by step. His eyes are upon her with a sudden intensity, one he has not felt before and likely will never feel again. His stomach is gnarled and he feels, suddenly, as if this is the only life he has ever lived.
He is silent for an extended moment; long enough that his breath begins to still, and his heart begins to slow, and whatever worries or fears he has are carried away with the sound of the water as it falls into itself. He stays a stride away from her and says, quietly, “‘I am too alone in this world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy.’” The poem returns to him and this time, this time Orestes knows his timing is right. It is there, in the way his heart beats so loud it rushes in his ears like the creek. "’I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive.” It is now the world’s golden hour; and around them the mist swirls, lit the sun’s dying rays. Orestes does not think too long or hard on how they are surrounded by the seasonal death of trees; or the way his heartbeat, so loud and firm, is a reminder of his own fragile mortality. No, he presses closer and when he does so it is to extend his lips to the hem of her wing and run them up the soft feathers. He has never touched her there before and while not exactly sensual, the gesture has more intimacy in it than perhaps any he has shared with her before.
“‘I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will as it goes toward action; and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things… or else alone.’” As he speaks, in a voice belonging to bedrooms, and sunlit corridors, and the rustle of the paper in his study it becomes increasingly clear the secret things of which he speaks. “‘I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.’” Orestes moves from the feathers of her wing to the almost delicate spots beneath it; for those within his reach, Orestes’s brushes his lips against them and then turns inward, toward her ear. At the small of it, he continues: “‘And I want my grasp of things to be true before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother. Like a ship, that carried me through the wildest storm of all.”
Perhaps the poem is impersonal, written by another man. But for Orestes’ it says all he is too inelegant to express. It shares the simple fact that for him, a foreigner, Marisol’s kindness and intimacy had grounded him from the first time she sent him a letter. The sea tells me that she knows you, she had said. And: If there is a day you need to come home, Terrastella’s shores are open.
All along, that promise had stood: all along, Orestes had found comfort in the shared burden of leadership, of knowing what he had felt in it, he did not feel alone. And that after, after all that had transpired and would transpire, there was a place waiting for him, a home, a person who for some reason (and oh, there are many reasons) his Soul reconciled with. And somewhere, the promise had transformed from an assurance to a desire. Somewhere, Orestes had folded back the layers of an impenetrable wall; he had seen the warmth of her grey eyes and come to understand the pain, and sorrow, and fear that could govern her. There is a part of him, now, that wells with the desire to be a salve to these things: to show her not the self she sees, self-deprecating and always punished, but the Marisol he knows. The beauty and grace with which she exists; the tenacity and steel that has allowed her to sacrifice, and sacrifice again, for her people.
And that is where they are Bound, he thinks. That is the crux at which Orestes will become a martyr, to show her her sacrifices are worthy, and beautiful, and so is she.
“Marisol.” He says her name like a prayer. He is so close he can see the way his breath disturbs the fine hairs at her ear, upon her cheek. “I pledge myself to you. Beneath the moment where our gods touch, where the sun sets and twilight embraces him, I pledge myself to you. It is the first pledge in all my lives made not of duty, but of love. I am yours.”
What he does not say, because he does not believe it adequate: And you are mine.
The reason he has grown to love her as she is, despite her sense of duty, despite her fears and anxieties, Marisol belongs more solely to herself than anyone he has ever known. But Orestes does not want to belong to himself, no.
There is not enough time in his last lifetime for that.
“I am yours,” he repeats, and the sun blinks out on the horizon. The sky turns the colour of indigo silk and Arabian dreams, and Orestes’s voice becomes the trees, the waterfall, the wind.
I am yours.
“speaking" || @
"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"
