pilate.
I
hate him.I despise him. Not the way I hate my brother (and that is not “hate” as much as a violent tendency to pretend I hate him), based in real knowledge and years of hurt feelings. Not the way I hate Andras, rooted in the panic he instills in me and the way I can’t see a bird without thinking of him. These are real, turbulent, and permanent feelings, or as permanent as feelings can be. They have roots in my heart, and in my head, and in my memories. They are credible.
I hate him purely because of his attitude. His horrible, cocky smile. The aggravating smoothness of his voice, totally convinced of his eliteness. I hate him because I know I should. Because, in my own way, I can see the future, and I know with black-hole certainty there is not a timeline in this universe where we would ever become friends.
I hate him, and I smile. I know he finds it pathetic; I don’t care. The only reason he thinks me small is because he has not lived my life, slept in my bed, argued my cases in court. He thinks me small because he is the kind of hulking, savage man who was bred and raised to think war is both the question and the answer; who thinks strength is only ever found at the point of a spear or the slicing edge of the sword.
But he is wrong, wrong, wrong. Idiot. One day he’ll learn. I hope I get to be the one to teach him.
His laugh makes my skin crawl. While I’ve learned to keep the impulse quiet, there has always been a part of me with too-sharp teeth that craves during arguments, rather than remaining well-mannered, to rend limb from limb. Now is one of those times. His laugh makes my skin crawl, and my throat grow raspy, and my gums fill with the taste of salt. And I laugh back, clear and bright as a bell, with the amount of easiness I think will best aggravate him; but in my head I ponder, my body cloyed by desire, how he would look as a pelt on my library floor.
The stars are bright overhead, little pinpricks opening the velvet-carpet sky. Towering at my shoulder, he asks, is it true your mother made you of desert sand?
My pace does not falter, nor slow. I turn to look at him; my ears flicker; around my now-curved neck, the nest of snakes undoes itself from the braids of the party and presses itself down against my flesh, so that for a moment, in the darkness, I look almost like a normal boy with thick and glossy hair.
“No, ajnabi,” I laugh dryly. My voice, when I hear it, is dizzyingly sincere. “If any one of us were made from sand, it would be Delilah. Not me.”
“it does no harm to pretend you love him.
provided you sell him the idea.”
