The hero is strangely close to those who died young. Lasting
doesn’t contain him. Being is his ascent: he moves on.
doesn’t contain him. Being is his ascent: he moves on.
Do you need a place to sleep, Vercingtorix?
Those are the words that inform me, quite nonchalantly, that I am no longer in my prime. Although soft and entirely unthreatening, they mark a transition I have observed far too many times: I had not been prepared. In another life, the enemy at my back would have killed me; in this one, he only moves a pawn forward and prepares the onslaught of his queen.
I do not turn to face him. I still, as I had already been still; and with leisure that suggests the meeting had been my idea, I at last crane my head to glance over my shoulder. He does not, I think, strike an imposing figure. But why would he need to? I suppose a prince’s world of wars rests upon a man’s ability to wage battle not with swords and spears, but deft and pointed words.
Perhaps this is why I give the answer I know he is not expecting.
“Yes, actually. I would appreciate that.”
I turn, then, to regard him more fully. I am drunk, but not to the point of complete inebriation. Just so that I do not feel the cold; or the hard shard of resentment lodged somewhere between my heart and lung. I hear, now, what I should have heard before: the sharp crack of his cloak as the breeze catches it, and draws it taunt.
I notice, with quiet contemplation, that Pilate is dark where Adonai is light; the contrast surprises me more than it had across the Ieshan halls, with the glamour of bright chandeliers and flickering lamplight. Here, the darkness softens him; it becomes him. The hard panes of his face do not seem so acute and the serpents that nest along the arc of his neck take on, instead, the appearance of twisting locks of hair.
Perhaps I am drunker than I thought, in that I do not take care to disguise the roving of my eyes, the devouring of every inch of his frame. I am made for conquest and that will never change: there is something unrefined surging at the forefront of my mind and being, a wild edge that had remained dormant most of the night.
He is striking, is he not? Adonai had said, with a vulnerability disguised as detached observation.
I ought to say more aloud, but I don’t. I turn my body to face him fully and wonder to myself how long he had been watching.
It is there, in that darkness, that I think he and I are more alike than I might ever admit, or want to understand. And while I wish to feel edged, furious, on guard--I only feel a bone-deep sort of exhaustion. Yes, I think. I need a place to sleep. But I cannot remember the last time I had found a place to truly rest.
(I know it was long ago, across the sea, where the ocean sang like breaking glass against the cliffs. It must have been beneath lamplight, or bleeding of the sun through stained glass. Brotherhood; and red, wind-swept hair). There is nothing else in this moment; no clever, barbed comment, or analytic observation. I simply stare across the courtyard at the desert prince wondering if, in some way, I now serve a penance.
Those are the words that inform me, quite nonchalantly, that I am no longer in my prime. Although soft and entirely unthreatening, they mark a transition I have observed far too many times: I had not been prepared. In another life, the enemy at my back would have killed me; in this one, he only moves a pawn forward and prepares the onslaught of his queen.
I do not turn to face him. I still, as I had already been still; and with leisure that suggests the meeting had been my idea, I at last crane my head to glance over my shoulder. He does not, I think, strike an imposing figure. But why would he need to? I suppose a prince’s world of wars rests upon a man’s ability to wage battle not with swords and spears, but deft and pointed words.
Perhaps this is why I give the answer I know he is not expecting.
“Yes, actually. I would appreciate that.”
I turn, then, to regard him more fully. I am drunk, but not to the point of complete inebriation. Just so that I do not feel the cold; or the hard shard of resentment lodged somewhere between my heart and lung. I hear, now, what I should have heard before: the sharp crack of his cloak as the breeze catches it, and draws it taunt.
I notice, with quiet contemplation, that Pilate is dark where Adonai is light; the contrast surprises me more than it had across the Ieshan halls, with the glamour of bright chandeliers and flickering lamplight. Here, the darkness softens him; it becomes him. The hard panes of his face do not seem so acute and the serpents that nest along the arc of his neck take on, instead, the appearance of twisting locks of hair.
Perhaps I am drunker than I thought, in that I do not take care to disguise the roving of my eyes, the devouring of every inch of his frame. I am made for conquest and that will never change: there is something unrefined surging at the forefront of my mind and being, a wild edge that had remained dormant most of the night.
He is striking, is he not? Adonai had said, with a vulnerability disguised as detached observation.
I ought to say more aloud, but I don’t. I turn my body to face him fully and wonder to myself how long he had been watching.
It is there, in that darkness, that I think he and I are more alike than I might ever admit, or want to understand. And while I wish to feel edged, furious, on guard--I only feel a bone-deep sort of exhaustion. Yes, I think. I need a place to sleep. But I cannot remember the last time I had found a place to truly rest.
(I know it was long ago, across the sea, where the ocean sang like breaking glass against the cliffs. It must have been beneath lamplight, or bleeding of the sun through stained glass. Brotherhood; and red, wind-swept hair). There is nothing else in this moment; no clever, barbed comment, or analytic observation. I simply stare across the courtyard at the desert prince wondering if, in some way, I now serve a penance.
