[P] it was a pure creature [party]

[Adonai]

A D O N A I

“Y

es, the lyre," he says, and laughs.

There is something different to this laugh of his. I marvel at the way his eyes crinkle at the corners, like autumn leaves. He looks younger. I feel as if I am looking, suddenly, at a painting of him, either fantasy or a past reality: a proud, tall youth, militant still in his posture, yet his step unburdened of a limp, his skin unmarred by scars.

I barely recognise him like this, but I tell myself that this is forgivable. I wish, instead, to pluck this painting out and carry it away with me. I wish this fiercely. I search for permanence in everything now, and it has yet to make me weary.

“Alright," I say, and my laugh is an echo of his.

As I play, I look occasionally towards him to glean from him his feelings. My eyes flit again and again, glancing touches, over his angular brow and his arrow-straight nose and his eyes as changeable as the sea.

It is the mark of the true musician to honour the audience always. I am playing not for myself but for him. There is no pleasure to be had if the listener is not enraptured; and if he is, then there is no greater pleasure. I wish to see how the melody captures him. I wish to see if the rhythm is too slow; if his attention flags; if the song is distastefully spritely. I wish to catch my errors before they can happen. I wish—

I wish to be godly perfect.

Mernatius' father had been a merciless teacher, but he had said to me, once, that I was a merciless student. Nothing was ever enough for me. I was rarely happy, he'd said, because I was happiest when I was in torment. This had stung. My smile had collapsed into a snarl. In any case, I'd retorted, it is better than being a fool in happiness. I no longer remember who I was angry at. Only that I had remained silent for the rest of the lesson, my eyes as cold and sullen as dull steel.

So when Vercingtorix draws closer, and closer, and closer as I play; when he tucks his warm chin against my cold shoulder; when his hair spills pale over my chest; when his nose brushes the shuddering feathers along my back—I wonder what the younger version of me would say to such a scene. A soft-lidded youth penitent in his dedication to unhappiness. Only a fool is happy, he would murmur. The eyes of my younger self, when he lays them onto me, are mercury and starlight and envy.

The line of my throat is golden and as soft as fawn skin in the sputtering torchlight. My inhale is drowned by lyre-song. My attention to the strings flag; my rhythm becomes as uneven as my breath. This is unfair; Vercingtorix means to distract me and I cannot return anything but a heavy-lidded shudder. I must tend to the strings and him, at once. They are both jealous things after my attention.

Vexed, I turn my head and press into his bronze neck, inhaling the scent of him—wood-smell and sea-salt—and only turning away when my next chord comes and I have forgotten it.

“What would you like to know?" His laugh echoes through the room once again, yet this time it is a hollow sound. It is jarring against my music until I realise that I have set my lyre down, and the music is only a memory.

I shift towards him now, freed, and begin to thread my touch softly through his pale, pale hair. It is almost the color of mine. “Does my question frighten you?" My voice is light and laughing. I tug at his hair; payback. I am being extraordinarily kind. He deserves worse punishment.

Yet I think it over solemnly, because I wish to know everything yet cannot say this. So I begin with: “You never told me what you do. Or, did, I suppose." He is a foreigner not just to this court but to this land. He has the scars and limp of a soldier, barely returned; yet the charisma and—devilry—of an heir born into title. I know the type, the noble type, almost too well; yet Vercingtorix fits it only in some corners, the rest of him spilling over into a shape that mystifies me.

In comparison, I do not think that I am difficult to know. I am a prince. My horn is as golden as a crown. I have never touched war. My skin is smooth and wan. My mouth is bloody if you open it. My eyes are glossy and blown-wide, like the dark heart of a poppy.

I shift, my back pressing into the cold stone wall we are leaned up against, when he says to me that I was not wrong. My wing lingers on the scar over his eye and it is as rough and harsh as I had suspected.

No—it is more. It is gruesome and cut as deep as a canyon yet I am fascinated. The question hangs in the air between us—who did this to you?—yet I am afraid to ask it. His scars mock to me that I am pretending to believe that I might understand, because he is not a noble nor common and I know very little of anything else.

“No," he says. “It is the only place I'd like to be." I watch him carefully. “And I am very impressed with what I see." My mouth curves into a smile. I know what he has given me. I know what I am supposed to do with it. Pilate's affairs are the infamy of our house but since he and I had stood at a height ever since adolescence, I had resolved not to trail him in anything; and though that game in particular had been his strength and my weakness, suffice to say I had given it my best effort.

I idealise myself in my memories. I was so far from perfect that it pained me, and sometimes—I did shameful things. None but my snake-maned brother knows of them. As carefully as I had watched him, as carefully as he had watched me.

My lashes thread together when I angle my chin down and look at him through them. “It makes me appreciate you more." My golden horn taps softly against his black ones. “Sly," I murmur, though I do not look up at him as I say it. I am looking at his mouth, at the dark lips, at the way he forms his syllables. “And men who... are just like me" My pulse is thick and slow in my ear. It is only then that I realise I am warm, warm, warm and that my wings, draped over my back, are pulsing with golden light.

I wonder what I look like to him. Less like death, and more like something eternal? I hope so. “I am not," I say, finally, my voice barely a whisper, “like them." I realise, then, that that is why he has come to this party, followed me to this armoury, rested his head against my shoulder. Because I am a marvel; because he has never known anything like me.

This should bother me. I smile. It doesn't. When the inside of you rots away as you deliberate, it helps put things into dear perspective. Am I not doing the same to him? Am I not as fascinated by him for the very same reasons? Because he is different. Because I have never known anything like him.

Because I am running out of time to find out.

So I do not hesitate when I bring my mouth close to his. “Shall I tell you your words back to you? Or shall I just—" My lips against his nose, his cheek, his eye, are grinning. “—show you." My lungs are clean of blood. My eyes are free of poppies. I draw away, but I drape my wing over his back and leave it there. The cold of the wall along my spine sobers me. My head tilts towards the vaulted ceiling, my eyes fluttering softly closed. “I have never been across the seas but I know that I don't need to. I know I will not find anyone quite like you."

My voice is free and open. I mean what I say. I have very little time left to waste it away on lies. When he asks me where I would wish to go if he could—if he was—to take me there, my pulse quickens. Without hesitation, I reply, “The sea. I have never been to see it, as a desert prince. Yet I know it is the color of your eyes."

I crack open my own, and they are less ink and more sky. Bright, like my grin. With almost my old speed, I push myself off the wall and towards him again, pressing my nose to his. “I wish to confirm this."

My wings hover in a glowing shield above him, so that he will see only me.




How does the moon look tonight
From the other side of town
God, I wish I knew
 
Is it bold? Is it bright?
Is it hanging in the sky
Looking down on you?
Oh I wish I was the moon

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@Vercingtorix ;__;