You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
I
am ignorant to the ironies that bind us. It does not occur to me, of course, the many varied meanings of a sun sigil. Where I am from, the sigil belongs to the old gods; those that bestow life, and take it. More fundamentally, it is a sign given rarely, sometimes for luck but more often for decrees of fate. It is the mark of the chosen son, or so they say. The priests had given it to me, at my coming of age ceremony. I wish I had known why; I had never felt chosen in any way that mattered. No. Very little of my life had ever seemed to dictate choice. Everything had been preconceived. I had been given a narrow road to walk, with only one purpose. I have thought long and hard on the ironies of it, in my life—how the mark I bore would be the mark that Bound the soul of the Last Prince, how we were irrevocably tied in that way.
There is no way for me to discern that the same Prince would be touched by Solis after his banishment, and given a new purpose. There is no way for me to understand that the woman before me is not simply another battle-worn soldier, but the past Sovereign of Solterra. And even if I did know, I doubt it would mean anything of significance to me. It would only be another irony. Another lack of choice, another strong-fisted show of chance or fate or whatever it is best considered.
She is deliberate, and the confident motions of her brush suggests she has done something similar in the past. War paint is not a new phenomenon; but I do not see the natives of Novus brandish it as we had, in Oresziah. I recognize the make of a warrior; the musculature; the scars. I do not ask about it, however; I only appreciate the time she takes to do it correctly.
The effect of the gesture is intimate. There is no way to avoid it, in our close proximity, with the bonfires creating a plethora of dramatic shadows and even more dramatic light. She seems whetted like a blade before me; her eyes are dual colored, but in the relative darkness and the colored flames, I cannot decide what make they truly are. We are too close. This silver woman reminds me of someone, but I fear the recognization if I were to walk down that avenue of familiarity and ask, who and why?
“Your daughter?” I repeat, mostly because she did not impress upon me motherhood. I feel the smile that is instinctive flit across my lips; it meets my eyes, bright, but it does not meet my soul. “I have heard children have a penchant for such mischief.” It is what Cillian had told me of Khier, the first time she begged I claim him. I push the thought from my mind and refocus on the situation before me. I think I would offer to help her look; but somehow, I think that might toe a line I do not want to cross. So I do not; I simply make a noncommital sound of acknowledgment and add, almost as an afterthought: "I am sure you will find her." I think of Elena, briefly, and her daughter. I remember my own father, and the kind of parent he had been.
No, I think. I am not made for knowing children. Why are you here? she asks, as she finishes the definitive mark. It feels severe, and familiar, and—
It should feel as if it is restoring a piece of me back to myself, returning it. Instead, it feels borrowed; I can feel the tightening of the paint on my skin, the way it is already drying.
I realize I do not know how to answer. Finally, because it is a somber type of evening—beneath the festivity, beneath the poems of new life, the joining of two courts—I tell the truth. “I suppose I was looking for someone. But I did not expect to find them.”
I wonder if I will ever quit looking for her; glimpses, through the crowd, like a myth. I wonder if I will ever quit feeling the sudden, elated jump of excitement at the slightest glimpse of her face. I hate the way it makes me feel and yet, sickly, I cannot end my obsession. I know it is an obsession, and yet—I cannot let it go. I cannot let her go, and anyways—
This is a place she would go. To the bonfires and the gems and the paint. To the race in the distance. I am here, to find her—but I do not look.
I do not smile. “Would you like me to return the favor?” I ask, at last. “Do your people have any customs, any paints? I am sure your daughter would be impressed by the sight, if she has never seen it before.”
The first time I had seen my father in his warpaint as a boy, I had been frightened; I had thought he was not my father at all, but a god. This truth belongs to a life I can barely remember, but the moral remains: there is a brief moment where parents are more to their children than they will ever be again.
