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.
Perhaps it is that he has never had a chance to love, that the only thing he can find to give voice to it is poetry, and pledges, and the monumental expressions of… more, more, more. He had been raised up humble; humility had always been his virtue of choice and, with that, the penance of eating last at a meal, of taking the least, of ensuring everyone’s needs came before his own. Now, he reigns over a people who value pride and sometimes avarice and Orestes thinks, for the first time in his life, that is why his people had died.
They had refused to take things for themselves.
When foreigners came under the guise of helplessness, his people had extended all their possessions and knowledge. When those foreigners took that knowledge and wielded it against them like a weapon, they were nearly helpless. Despite their magic blood and their amorphous shapes, they had been too weak to keep what was theirs.
But…
Orestes is tired of that memory.
He is tired of that sorry life.
(He nearly hates himself for it; he nearly hates himself for the way happiness is bursting, insurmountable, within his chest.)
And so Orestes moves on; he refuses to feel the survivor’s guilt any longer. He refuses not to learn the penance of extreme humility, of softness, is also tragedy. Now, he will not shy away from choosing his own happiness. Tonight, beneath the stars that begins to burn upon the dark expanse of sky, he will not turn from joy as if it is martyrdom to do so.
Her mouth grounds him to the moment even more surely. As she presses her lips against the tattoo on his shoulder, Orestes inhales sharply; it is nearly unbearable in the best way. They are both breathless then. They are both little more than stars in orbit.
What spring does with the cherry trees, she repeats, trembling beneath his touch as the aspens do beneath the wind.
So—you want to make me blush. Well. You’re getting there.
He smiles and when she presses the tip of her wing against his cheek, he closes his eyes.
“More than that.”
When Orestes opens them again, there is no ambiguity in the suggestion; there is no ambiguity in the raw way he looks at her, vulnerable, full of want and history and the promise of tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
In all his lives,
he has never felt new. But here, he is. And he hopes he can return the sentiment fractionally; he hopes that in offering himself as he does, he opens a new door for her as well. Orestes offers not only himself, but the certainty of all that he is; the unwavering faith, the dogged determination to make the most of everything he is given, to better it.
But, even if she does not know it, she has been doing that to him all along. Somewhere from her first letter to the drunken festival to his admission beneath Terrastella’s cliffsides, Orestes has learned how to be something he has never been before:
Simply, a man. Not a Prince, or a Prisoner, or a Sovereign. Just a man, in love, with a woman. And perhaps, for just a moment (stolen, quietly, between the trees) he can help her become something other than Commander, Sovereign, Queen.
Perhaps they can simply be. That is his thought, when he closes the distance a final time. Orestes has no more words; no more poetry; he only has his heartbeat, and hers.
“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"
