in the garden
i will die
i will die
I
wonder now, as spines and fangs tear through the stallion’s flesh and something bitter and black rises at the back of my throat, if this is what I might have become. If I had stayed, if I had let the desert turn me hard, if I had let it fill my veins with sand and heat instead of soil and petals, if I had become a Davke like my brother — maybe then my heart wouldn’t feel quite so heavy, filled as it is with all those “what if’s”. I wonder if I had stayed in the desert all my life if I would ever have learned to look towards the horizon and dream about things I could not see, about lives I have not lived. I wonder if the desert would have been enough for me (in the way the forests, the meadows, the rivers never are, in the way Delumine never has been).
Does he know?
Does he know I can hear the desert whispering to me as clearly as I can hear his voice? Does he feel the way my heart is trembling, the way the sand trembles alongside it, the way the sun stares down on us both like it already knows what my decision will be, like it had already made up its mind all those years ago that I was too weak to bother with? Or that he looks like the forest, like the rich soil I grow flowers in, that he looks like my adopted home and that is why the Davke demand I kill him (and by extension, that part of myself that lives in him)? I want to tell him that some days I feel like my destiny has already been written for me, that every day I can feel my rights being siphoned away as surely as if there shackles chaining me. Every day I feel more like a puppet, every day I feel more of myself slipping away —
There are so many things I want to tell him (as if I could make him understand, as if I could make him forgive me for doing the unforgivable if only he knew why I did it) —
But there isn’t time enough. The desert has only ever been an hourglass.
All the bits of sand are moving now, sweeping us together, sweeping my spear towards his throat and I can hear my brother laughing. And in the instant before it pierces his skin I see —
I see his eyes, staring back at me in defiance. I see his face, which ought to be the face of a monster, but still he looks at me like I am the monster of this story. I see the promise in his gaze. I want to tell him he is wrong, that by killing him I am giving myself back a home that was taken from me, a family that had forsaken me. By killing him, I am taking back my birthright, my destiny, trading in my crown of flowers for a place among them.
But I know he is right.
I know I will never be Davke.
And I am not sure if that makes me feel better, or worse.
The sun is still laughing, the desert is still whispering, and for once — for once, I do not want to prove them wrong. Not like this. Maybe that is why I cannot make myself bury this spear into the earth-colored stallion’s throat.
In that twisted dreamscape where time ceases to function as it should I watch the way the spearhead quivers against the man's skin, as a single drop of blood falls to the ground and turns all the sand red, red, red. It comes to a stop, the spear, the snarling, the whispering of the desert — it all stops, and I —
I alone move. I alone make the final decision to shift my spear from the man to the vulture, to pull it back close enough to kiss the gleaming edge of it. I alone launch it into the air at the bird that sounds like my brother.
I miss.
The vulture laughs again, it flaps its wings and transforms into a coyote leaping down from the bone-white branches it had been perched upon. And before I can blink, before I can take it back or begin to wonder what I have just done, the sands start to part like the sea. And from the depths of it rise the horde that had surrounded me from before, warpaint lining their cheeks red and spears tipped in gold.
@Dune "speaks" next post will be his "waking up" one!
