the grieved – are many – I am told – there is the various cause – death – is but one – and comes but once – and only nails the eyes –
I wait for him in the shadow of a creaking chestnut tree, grown from the silt that winds dark and snakelike besides a towering sandstone wall.
Long before this land was Ieshan, this wall was the only thing standing between its inhabitants and the terrors birthed nightly by the desert. I'd picked along its crumbling walk many times as a child, winging up to its highest remaining battlement to sink behind an arrow slit and imagine myself a soldier, or a paladin, or anything more glorious, really, than a boy-prince kept like a bird in a cage. Somber as a gravestone at the western edge of our property, the wall formed the boundary of my world. I liked going to it alone, sneaking away from the house before anyone was awake to deter me. I would skirt around the sleeping form of Mernatius (who, as the first prince's companion, slept until adolescence on a smaller bed tucked at the foot of mine), steal an apple from the kitchens, and cut through the gardens with dawn washing everything a soft, haunting blue.
I reflect upon these memories — dim skies, tart apples, Mernatius's soft-lidded yawn when I leapt onto his bed to wake him — with the solidness of the chestnut tree at my back. I dislike being idle; and waiting is all idleness. If I allow myself to listen for it I know I will hear the thud thud thud of my pulse, reckless and unabashed, while my mouth is waxen and sealed. I rub my eyes; they are dry from sleeplessness and bright, overly bright, with anticipation and its sister-dread. I am not afraid that he won't come. I am afraid that when he does, I will disappoint him with all that I am and not.
He appears as a blip on the horizon, a smear of shadow marring winter's greys: wide at the shoulders, narrow at the hips, like the long-dead heroes immortalised in the vases dotting our halls like trophies. I swallow, and taste the bitterness of the medicine I drained before leaving. I swallow, and remember the warmth of his mouth between my wings.
I swallow. He is before me. I bow, half-serious, half-jubilant, my wings curling into my sides. The sky, when we depart, is cloud-chased and ringed with gold.
The dragon — Damascus — is massive. And despite his docility, the dragon's eyes are too teryr-like for my liking; my uneasiness around gigantic winged beasts is Solterran and hereditary. (Yet if Vercingtorix were to lead me to an open pit and bid me jump, I'd do so without hesitation. I understand this with the utmost solemnity. Not because I trust him; not because I am enamoured with him. It is something harder, flintier. Pride, I think, shot through with harlequin resolve.) My breaths leave me in white clouds. With a nonchalance I do not feel yet act, I hope, with certainty enough, I lower my head and follow quick on his dark heels.
In the dragon's closed palms, all is darkness. I hear Torix's breathing as clearly as my own; we are pressed shoulder to shoulder, limbs upon limbs upon limbs. I feel every nerve in my body and too quickly, this close — the silence turns sallow and indecipherable. It had been comfortable before. I had bowed, he had grinned, we had walked. Quiet streets, quiet sands, sweet solemnity. But in closeness and in restlessness I wish to press my head to his; I wish to tilt his chin to me and to ask him what he is thinking. I do neither. If he turns to me I will smile, but in the absence of it I clamp my tongue and watch the sands darken to rocky bluffs through chinks in Damascus's scales.
And then — there, below us, is a sea like a skin of glass, or a ripple of Denoctian silk. I blink, before the dragon pitches, and I am knocked against Vercingtorix's neck. I forget the silence, the restraint, the dread. I taste the salt in the air, the salt of his skin. I say, whisper-soft: “That is it, isn't it?” and seek no answer but the brightness of his eyes, so that I may dub it ocean blue.
The sea-slick sand that meets me is a different breed than the shifting golden dunes I know. It is springier, easier to stand on, walk in. I shift my weight on it and were I less unmoored (were I the me of before, the Cleric of Piety and Marble) I might have found my fascination ridiculous. It is just sand; it is nothing; you are a prince with an inheritance of gold. Later, I would recognise that the fascination was as much a front as it was true. I feel now in halves: seriousness and jubilance, anticipation and dread. Fascination and front.
Commitment to nothing and no-one.
“Do you like it?” I turn to him, my back washed a violent red by the dusk, and wonder: is he asking if I am happy? Is to like something to be happy? I do not look at the sea when I answer. (I do not look at him either, not fully, but in parts: the horns, the sun charm, the scars, the limp. The gold covering his eyes like war paint.) “I don't feel like myself out here. For that alone—” My mouth flickers in distress. “—I both love it and fear it.” Because I am out of my element. Because here, when I am not puppet-lord of my surroundings, what does that leave me?
A corpse? (Not enough of one.) A commoner? (Dressed too finely for one.) Just Adonai? (And here is where hatred flares up like a salted flame. That I was left like this alive. That I was stripped of nearly everything, of brilliance, of grace, of strength. The old heroes died for glory. What will I die for? Not for blood, not for peace. Nothing but a withering away, season by season by season.
I was not even worthy of violence.)
My lungs burn with salt. My wing reaches for Vercingtorix until I still it, clench it, drop it. My black cloak billows around me like strange wings when I sweep down to the rhythmic tide. I do not trust myself to stand by him and speak, not until the burning stops. I will open my mouth and end up asking him to do something unforgivable.
I sink quietly to my knees in the warm tide. The ocean is beautiful, and I lack any description of it but this: that it is of a beauty that takes. “Is it what you expected?” A gust of wind throws my hair into my eyes. I tuck the salt-heavy locks beneath my cloak. “Not at all. You will think me ignorant, but I hadn't expected for it to be quite so—” I break off to nudge his shoulder, to point at a white bird flying past with its beak bulging out like a leather pouch. “—other.”
I inhale deeply. Salt to lessen the tang of iron. “If you sit at the edge of the Vitae Oasis, you will see the same sight of blue water scraping up to the horizon-line. I used to go often with a... companion.” I speed quickly over this. Mernatius is lost to me. “But it is not the volume of water, as I'd thought. It is everything else. A man does not feel mortal here.”
I turn to him. His dark cheek is lit afire by the setting sun. I see the way he looks at me, shy, dark, followed by that smile. I smile back. I am not convinced. “You are quiet, today,” I say, low and soft. “It makes me feel strange.” Like our positions were somehow reversed. His unhappiness becomes mine. I am anxious to find the root of it.
I will not say this — I will never say this — but when Vercingtorix leaves, he will have taken with him the very last part of me I can give.
Long before this land was Ieshan, this wall was the only thing standing between its inhabitants and the terrors birthed nightly by the desert. I'd picked along its crumbling walk many times as a child, winging up to its highest remaining battlement to sink behind an arrow slit and imagine myself a soldier, or a paladin, or anything more glorious, really, than a boy-prince kept like a bird in a cage. Somber as a gravestone at the western edge of our property, the wall formed the boundary of my world. I liked going to it alone, sneaking away from the house before anyone was awake to deter me. I would skirt around the sleeping form of Mernatius (who, as the first prince's companion, slept until adolescence on a smaller bed tucked at the foot of mine), steal an apple from the kitchens, and cut through the gardens with dawn washing everything a soft, haunting blue.
I reflect upon these memories — dim skies, tart apples, Mernatius's soft-lidded yawn when I leapt onto his bed to wake him — with the solidness of the chestnut tree at my back. I dislike being idle; and waiting is all idleness. If I allow myself to listen for it I know I will hear the thud thud thud of my pulse, reckless and unabashed, while my mouth is waxen and sealed. I rub my eyes; they are dry from sleeplessness and bright, overly bright, with anticipation and its sister-dread. I am not afraid that he won't come. I am afraid that when he does, I will disappoint him with all that I am and not.
He appears as a blip on the horizon, a smear of shadow marring winter's greys: wide at the shoulders, narrow at the hips, like the long-dead heroes immortalised in the vases dotting our halls like trophies. I swallow, and taste the bitterness of the medicine I drained before leaving. I swallow, and remember the warmth of his mouth between my wings.
I swallow. He is before me. I bow, half-serious, half-jubilant, my wings curling into my sides. The sky, when we depart, is cloud-chased and ringed with gold.
The dragon — Damascus — is massive. And despite his docility, the dragon's eyes are too teryr-like for my liking; my uneasiness around gigantic winged beasts is Solterran and hereditary. (Yet if Vercingtorix were to lead me to an open pit and bid me jump, I'd do so without hesitation. I understand this with the utmost solemnity. Not because I trust him; not because I am enamoured with him. It is something harder, flintier. Pride, I think, shot through with harlequin resolve.) My breaths leave me in white clouds. With a nonchalance I do not feel yet act, I hope, with certainty enough, I lower my head and follow quick on his dark heels.
In the dragon's closed palms, all is darkness. I hear Torix's breathing as clearly as my own; we are pressed shoulder to shoulder, limbs upon limbs upon limbs. I feel every nerve in my body and too quickly, this close — the silence turns sallow and indecipherable. It had been comfortable before. I had bowed, he had grinned, we had walked. Quiet streets, quiet sands, sweet solemnity. But in closeness and in restlessness I wish to press my head to his; I wish to tilt his chin to me and to ask him what he is thinking. I do neither. If he turns to me I will smile, but in the absence of it I clamp my tongue and watch the sands darken to rocky bluffs through chinks in Damascus's scales.
And then — there, below us, is a sea like a skin of glass, or a ripple of Denoctian silk. I blink, before the dragon pitches, and I am knocked against Vercingtorix's neck. I forget the silence, the restraint, the dread. I taste the salt in the air, the salt of his skin. I say, whisper-soft: “That is it, isn't it?” and seek no answer but the brightness of his eyes, so that I may dub it ocean blue.
The sea-slick sand that meets me is a different breed than the shifting golden dunes I know. It is springier, easier to stand on, walk in. I shift my weight on it and were I less unmoored (were I the me of before, the Cleric of Piety and Marble) I might have found my fascination ridiculous. It is just sand; it is nothing; you are a prince with an inheritance of gold. Later, I would recognise that the fascination was as much a front as it was true. I feel now in halves: seriousness and jubilance, anticipation and dread. Fascination and front.
Commitment to nothing and no-one.
“Do you like it?” I turn to him, my back washed a violent red by the dusk, and wonder: is he asking if I am happy? Is to like something to be happy? I do not look at the sea when I answer. (I do not look at him either, not fully, but in parts: the horns, the sun charm, the scars, the limp. The gold covering his eyes like war paint.) “I don't feel like myself out here. For that alone—” My mouth flickers in distress. “—I both love it and fear it.” Because I am out of my element. Because here, when I am not puppet-lord of my surroundings, what does that leave me?
A corpse? (Not enough of one.) A commoner? (Dressed too finely for one.) Just Adonai? (And here is where hatred flares up like a salted flame. That I was left like this alive. That I was stripped of nearly everything, of brilliance, of grace, of strength. The old heroes died for glory. What will I die for? Not for blood, not for peace. Nothing but a withering away, season by season by season.
I was not even worthy of violence.)
My lungs burn with salt. My wing reaches for Vercingtorix until I still it, clench it, drop it. My black cloak billows around me like strange wings when I sweep down to the rhythmic tide. I do not trust myself to stand by him and speak, not until the burning stops. I will open my mouth and end up asking him to do something unforgivable.
I sink quietly to my knees in the warm tide. The ocean is beautiful, and I lack any description of it but this: that it is of a beauty that takes. “Is it what you expected?” A gust of wind throws my hair into my eyes. I tuck the salt-heavy locks beneath my cloak. “Not at all. You will think me ignorant, but I hadn't expected for it to be quite so—” I break off to nudge his shoulder, to point at a white bird flying past with its beak bulging out like a leather pouch. “—other.”
I inhale deeply. Salt to lessen the tang of iron. “If you sit at the edge of the Vitae Oasis, you will see the same sight of blue water scraping up to the horizon-line. I used to go often with a... companion.” I speed quickly over this. Mernatius is lost to me. “But it is not the volume of water, as I'd thought. It is everything else. A man does not feel mortal here.”
I turn to him. His dark cheek is lit afire by the setting sun. I see the way he looks at me, shy, dark, followed by that smile. I smile back. I am not convinced. “You are quiet, today,” I say, low and soft. “It makes me feel strange.” Like our positions were somehow reversed. His unhappiness becomes mine. I am anxious to find the root of it.
I will not say this — I will never say this — but when Vercingtorix leaves, he will have taken with him the very last part of me I can give.
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
