[P] soldier, poet, king | autumn fest

[Adonai]

« there will come a ruler whose brow is laid in thorn »
—

I

am about to lose heart—how quickly Solterra forgets—when a voice cuts through the dark like one of Apollo's arrows.

"Prince Adonai, light be with you."

It is difficult, and then impossible, to stifle the swell of affection that spreads like thick broth through my bones for this voice that addresses me not only by title, but by Solis' light.

It means that it knows me. Not the me now, but the me then. Proud Adonai, Cleric of Virtue. When I close my eyes I can almost see him. Me. If I play everything right no one will notice the difference.

Slowly I turn the direction my ears, unsure as they are, flutter towards like flags. I tell myself that the dragging pace is forgivable. That the ghoulish cast of the candles plunges everyone into sallowness, making mine as much a costume as the next. In the dark, eyes turn into hollow sockets. Pupils bloom belladonna black. Skins stretch tight over the gullies of ribs.

In the dark, my shadow remains unchanging.

I walk forwards a step and then another, until what had once been a hazy, dreamlike form gathers into cheekbones cut in sharp relief and ears as long and slender as a doe's.

"Light be with you," I repeat, as solemn as a disciple. By the time my tongue sinks back behind my teeth I know who it is that has called me prince.

"Amunemhet." 

Firstborn of the House of Smiths, once nearly our equals in esteem and wealth; the War has ravaged them almost as completely as it has the Hajakhas. Still, they were—and continue to be, if the scraps of hearsay I am allowed to hear are as accurate as they are snide—strong contenders for an Ieshan alliance.

We had hunted together as boys. I remember the brightness of his hair, silver snow in a tide of raven-haired children as we polished our bows and laced up our oiled armour, House crests burned into the leather, our collective silence betraying our fear as lords and ladies (our mothers and fathers) watched from their silk pillows which of their stock would sink the first arrow into the wicked teryr's flesh.

It had been mine, struck neatly through a dinner-plate eye.

Amunemhet had been in Pilate's year, slender as a willow branch even then. Now, we are nearly of a height, his limbs supple and bronze while mine, pale as wax candles, encroach daily further upon the realm of gauntness. I can no longer draw tight a bow. I can barely tune the strings of my lyre.

But I am still draped in a hundred sapphires, and my smile is still just as quick. "It's been far too long, Sevetta."

@Amunemhet

♢