AND I KNOW THAT ROME WASN'T BURNT IN A DAY
BUT IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN A WEEK
BUT IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN A WEEK
H
e would love to say he’s been staring this down, and oncoming train howling into the distance, the ghost of a machine barely visible through the fog. Maybe it is because he has his head in a well full of snakes and honey, the one soft, harmless place in the beating drum of his heart. Maybe it is the distance, Andras closed in the library until the day he is called to come back to the court for the coronation. Maybe it is that when he looks at Ipomoea he is busy seeing everything but this, like Po is a series of photographs, but none of them the king in his entirety.Through the ceremony, Andras is quiet, and still; no crackling light, no electric hum. He feels numb, almost empty. He is unprepared to cope with the nuances of his heart (the only thing pounding in his ears louder than the celebratory drums, the only thing brighter than the poppies unfolding like palms as the morning fog burns away) so he doesn’t.
He will unpack this all later, he decides. He will choose what to feel when he knows what it is.
Later comes in minutes, then hours, when he sees Danaë in the center of the garden, just for a moment free of the throng of well-wishers and citizens only now brave enough to peek at her and Isolt now that she is their queen.
Andras swallows the rest of his drink and carries the empty glass with him toward the young unicorn, turning it over as he searches for something-- anything-- to say. He thinks, not for the first time, that her father’s faith in his diplomacy is misplaced at best, catastrophic at worst.
It is strange, after all this time, to look at someone and see so many parts of a person you love: the angle of the brow, the red eyes, and not know who this new, different version of them is. It is strange to look at a face and not know if it is the face of a friend or a stranger.
Some things are like that, he supposes. Our faces are reborn, again and again, in those of our children. It is a path paves with moments like this, in the bustle of the garden, where, for just a second, around them it is quiet-- almost too much so.
Andras stares at her one second longer, and ducks his head low. ”Congratulations,” he says. ”I am here if you need me.”
ANDRAS demyan
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
