Two Travelers were walking along the seashore. Far out they saw something riding on the waves.
"Look," said one, "a great ship rides in from distant lands, bearing rich treasures!"
The object they saw came ever nearer the shore.
"No," said the other, "that is not a treasure ship. That is some fisherman's skiff, with the day's catch of savoury fish."
Orestes, at first, is too tired and too old to be made furious by her youthful pride. How easy it is for you to sound so cold. Isra says, as if she knows him. Isra says, as if she has seen his entire orchestra of lives played out before her, one after the other after the other, a string of instruments singing into the void that is life and death and the purgatory between.
As if she knows in his first life they called him Unalaq, after the West Wind that brought storms to the coast. He had been the wind, and the storm. And as such, Unalaq had been the first to die among the foreigners, the first to meet them, the one who brought them to their island. (Does she know that in that life, he died by fire, burned alive atop a pyre so all his people could know the First Treaty had been denied? Does she know they mounted his head outside the walls of their stone-and-mud homes—newly built—and left it there until summer came and dried the flesh, like fish skin? Or how when he was reborn—before they knew to Bind the Soul—his people cried for four days and four nights? They knew the gentle Souls of the Khashran would never be the same. They’d been touched by a violence too great.)
Isra is close to him, now, and her comment evokes anything but coldness from him; Orestes’s skin wafts the heat of the sun and, for the first time, his tattoos become alight with the light of it in the darkness of the catacombs. His eyes are gold when he turns to her, gold and pouring light.
But Orestes listens.
He listens, before he speaks.
Have I ever told you the story of the sea and I, Orestes? Of how the primordial ocean, and broken men, and kings have all tried to take choice away from me?
Orestes does not need to be told the story.
He learned long ago there is no choice. From the moment a child is borne into this world, its cries alight in the air, all choices are taken from them. There is only the forward momentum of all things that came before, and would come after, their brith. Her smile-turned-snarl twists his mouth in something that glows thick and golden and ancient.
Would you like to know all the ways how they tried to break me down to nothing but down-softness and swan-white purity?
In his second life, they had called him Kallik, for the lightening in his soul and the fury he brought with him into his Second Coming. Yes, in his second life—and Orestes remembers this, he remembers it because he wrote it and the story, now, belongs to it’s own book in his study, the story of Kallik, his second life, the story of Kallik, who started the War. The story of Kallik, who lead them to desolation. But it would take generations to get there. In Kallik’s lifetime, they had nearly overcome the foreigners who sought to settle their island. They were still capable of great and terrible magic and Kallik, himself, razed the entire colony in the shape of a tremendous blue dragon.
Kallik, however, had died of poison. A mutiny among his own, when too many warriors were lost to the mission.
Or should I tell you about how all the monsters with chains forged out of love and salvation are nothing more than all this dust tracking our hoof-prints like we are lines of ink on a map?
Then, he had been Nanouk. And after Nanouk came Theseus. After Theseus was Kier. After Kier came Anaxander. After Anaxander, Akycha. After Akycha, Pyrrhos. Then, Caesarion, Noatak, Demetrious, Taqukaq and, finally, finally Orestes. The last life. The final prince.
Beneath his hooves, the dust streams with the water of her magic, and butterflies begin to flutter about his face. “I had always expected more of you, Isra.” His voice is not cold when he says it, stepping back from her. No, when he speaks his voice is wracked with a strange kind of sadness. Orestes is not meant for this place, or her wrath, or the way death becomes her more than the sunlight above, and despite her butterflies she is full of wasps. “For all your righteous fury, you have chosen to become exactly what the primordial sea, and broken men, and kings have made you. Are you telling me this—“
And he gestures at everything, the diamonds, the water, the butterflies, the way skulls turn to dust at her barest touch. “—is in your nature? That the choice to become this—near goddess, near immortal, near monster—was yours?” His voice is hard when he says, “In all your saving of others, have you ever stopped to save yourself? Yes, you have overcome all the things that sought to defeat you. I’ve heard the stories. You have destroyed them and, in the process, allowed them to cut away the pieces of who you once were. The cruel sea and broken men and kings with too much power; all things that seek to devour, and devour, and devour. You speak as if you are the only one who has suffered such evils. Oh, I understand your wrath.” Orestes begins to turn but it is Ariel, first, who twists to return the way they had come. “But you wield it as if you are the only Soul who has ever fought them. You assume I am cold. But I am what I am because I have seen how the world ends when, as a saviour, you too try to devour it.” Orestes is staring over his shoulder, into the darkness that she stares down. He will leave her, then, to search for her monsters and her death-things and to come out singing on the other side with the sea and her dragon and her myth.
Yes, he will leave her. Because in all his lives he has learned the quickest way to burning is rage, and fury, and the way righteousness can be as bad as maliciousness, as evil. “You are welcome to Solterra anytime, Lady of the Sea. But do not bring your fury here. Do not bring your anger at ghosts and dead tyrants and all the evils the world will ever suffer. Or at least, I ask you not to.” His mouth twists wryly. “I can't make you do anything. No, you have made it clear to all of Novus you are the most powerful among us, able to desecrate entire armies.”
Orestes finds it difficult to tear himself away; but he will not, he cannot, let her fury devour him as well. “I cannot help but wonder, Isra, how heavy that is on your Soul?”
He is struck, suddenly, by Aspara.
He wonders if her mother had ever been so soft.
"Orestes." || "Ariel." || @Isra
Still nearer came the object. The waves washed it up on shore.
"It is a chest of gold lost from some wreck," they cried. Both Travelers rushed to the beach, but there they found nothing but a water-soaked log.
