It isn't the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor —from breast to knees—
and the battle was so pure
an Angel wears it after you.
✧
T
hey are not the type of monsters written into poems, into stories. Damascus is not the dragon at the top of a tower, guarding the princess; he does not pillage cities or loot caravans, hoarding treasure so deep it becomes a sea of gold and gems. No.
Damascus is a dragon made of the broken pieces of a man. He does not recognize predator and prey.
Damascus recognizes something deeper; more inherent.
Pain. The factor that governs the life of men just as stars govern the evolution of galaxies; growing, and dying, and consuming even as they become.
And Damascus’s eyes, the colors of black opals, gleam with an entirely different desire to taste, to consume.
A dragon from the pits of Tartarus hungers not just for flesh, but for futures. For the potential of being. For tomorrow, and the tomorrow after, and a field of forevers that cannot be reached. He consumes because he cannot exist without tragedy.
Are you a tragedy, Sereia?
What pain do you feel?
Damascus laughs again, seeing beyond her feminine face; oh, certainly, Damascus recognizes a predator where I do not. But I cannot read the Bond as easily as my companion does; and so I do not know where his hollow amusement stems. Only that he is laughing at me; only that he says, ominously and in my mind alone, something wicked this way comes.
How can a girl, quoting poetry from my past, be anything but sad? I shrug off Damascus’s warning and the dragon lays down, exhaling silver-white vapor that I recognize as euphoric. I try not to breathe it in; but the wind blows, and what was there is gone.
She shares something with Damascus that I do not understand; I wonder how she cannot flinch when he droops down to meet her eye. But I am busied by the business of starting a fire to keep the chill at bay; and soon the flames are licking up pieces of wood I had already collected. The evening darkens quickly after that, until—
Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows.
She surprises me; and in doing so, I am nearly enamored. How is it, this bone-thin girl can find a way to take me aback, with her forwardness, with her sudden and brazen demand?
Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows. Her voice is repeating, soft and sweet, in my mind. I gaze at her over the fledgling flames; they begin to crack and the heat rises in the air.
I bet you did not expect to share your fire and yourself with me tonight.
I smile a smile that does not quite reach my eyes; but the reflection of the flames within them makes up for that. I don’t answer for a very long time, watching the flames flicker, nearly entranced. What could I tell her, that no one else has ever been told?
I think unexpectedly of my recent conversations with Elena. I had mentioned Cillian, and Khier, and what they had meant to me. I had said that some children are better off without fathers, and implied that my child was. Perhaps I could tell Sereia now that I was most afraid of becoming mine but knew I already had.
That seems too brutal, too raw; too easily argued away, by someone kindhearted, someone good. I do not say it.
I remember, now, telling her that the only man I had ever loved had been killed by a water-horse.
That had been a lie. He hadn’t died.
I wish, sometimes, that her truth had killed her. I wish, sometimes, that she might have died before she had ever revealed it. I wonder how differently things might have played out.
These are too complicated; too muddled, in truths and in lies.
Finally, I decide. I say, “When I was a boy, I used to wake up before the sun. My father would be getting ready for his day of war. First, I would smell the oil he used for his leather gauntlets. Then, I would hear him begin to whet his gladius against the whetstone. I woke up every morning, and sometimes even crept from bed to peer down the long hallway to where he stood at the end, donning his armor and his red cloak, or stooped over that sword. He was so patient with his routine, nearly gentle. He treated each piece of equipment with such care and rhythm; the routine was a type of religion, I think, a type of prayer.”
I can still see it. His face pinched in concentration, his eyes dark and almost tired. He looked boyish in these moments, younger than any other time I had seen him.
Then, I add: “But I never went to him. For years, I did this, every morning. I would watch from the end of the hallway and then disappear as soon as he moved to stand. We never even spoke of it, although I suspect he knew. Instead, he would fasten his baldric and leave, everything in place. The sun was still not up, and each morning I would lay back down to sleep, as if I’d never been awake at all.”
My voice is quiet, and lulling. The fire seduces everything into a soft rhythm. I glance at her above the flames, holding her eyes. I say, “I think about that often. Every morning, I would say, Today I will go to him, and I never did.”
I had not been aware of it as I spoke, but I realize now that Damascus had exhaled a lower potency illusion vapor. Around us swirl in dark violet colors the scene I had described; a boy and a father, separated by vast darkness and distance. A child who turns away. A father who does not meet the child’s eyes.
I snort at the theatrics, and Damascus exhales sharply, dissipating the vapor that had danced so elegantly before our eyes.
“Life is never as I have expected it,” I admit abruptly, in late response to her earlier comment. I say it mischievously, if not darkly. “It’s your turn,” I demand. “Tell me something you’ve never shared before.”
If nothing else, Sereia of Delumine is not uninteresting. And although Damascus is meant to be the beast that hungers, my expression is voracious.
(I do not consciously answer that question of myself, but I recognize on some level: I am desperate for this conversation. I am desperate for something of depth, of meaning, even knowing that there is nothing of meaning left in my life).
The narcissist in me wants to demand she analyze my story; I want to ask her what she thinks it means. I don't, because I already know. It shows in many ways I am a coward, I think. But more importantly, more significantly, it does not say the thing I wish I could, the truth that lays heavily upon me, unspoken: my father made me what I am.
Yet, if I had said that, it would have been shrugging the blame.
He didn't raise me that way.
