A D O N A I
—
W
hen I was younger—much younger—most had thought me shy. Trailing always in Katurah’s shadow, reluctant to smile, reluctant to speak. Mernatius had once said that back then he had thought me docile as a lamb, soft-lidded, hardly a boy but the suggestion of one. I had scoffed, but he had spoken the truth.
The prince I would grow to become—the prince of marble—had come later.
“You’ve discovered my entire motive. The plot’s ruined.”
“Good. It’d ruin your charm.”
But there are moments when I doubt if I have purged myself fully of my childhood reticence. There are moments when I think that the lion's tail is the closest I will ever come to inhabiting one. Not a lion, but a sheep in a lion's skin.
My siblings have their snakes: Pilate's literally, Hagar's figuratively. But I have only ever had myself.
It is moments like these—when words spill too easily from the mouth of a boy built like war; when I am not at all certain if I am reading too much or thinking too little; when the marble I wear like skin melts in the sun and reminds me that it is not marble, not at all, but frost—
I have no reply save for a smile twisted quickly into a smirk. It feels too much like surrender for me to maintain for long.
And then he brings the water to my lips and I have no time to look surprised but to lower my head and drink.
The shame does not come until, between sips and careful breaths, I turn my head to the side and cough. Tiny droplets of red fall on tiny petals of blue. I move quickly to crush them with my hoof.
“Impeccable manners. You continue to impress me, foreigner," I say loftily when I turn back, like I have not just coughed blood into the dirt. Because he has not seen. My eyes dare him to say that he saw.
When the bucket, a quarter empty, moves back to the well, he will feel the strength of my telekinesis next to his, as if to say: I can do this much. This much, at least.
“I am Adonai." I lean against the well as I stretch my neck forwards and look keenly into his eyes, a colour I will now think of as the sea. “And you?"
I do not miss the way he says 'more.'
I click my tongue, though my eyes are alight. “Perhaps." My gaze drifts to his scars; one through his eye, one at his lip. “But you must tell me of it first."
Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
