there’s enough light to drown in
but never enough to enter the bones
& stay.
❖
but never enough to enter the bones
& stay.
❖
I am careful to keep the river between us.
(Why? Because, if he is Gennaios, then I am Fovos. My phoenix fire is yet uncontrollable; it may spare leaves, and twigs, and drip like water off of coals: yet is that enough? Enough to convince me that no matter what, I could never burn him with flames impossible to extinguish?
I would not have sacrificed Gennaios.
I would not have won the war, because I cannot sacrifice someone I love. In return, I sacrifice those I do not love. It is a hundred thousand lives to one.
Who, really, is the worst of us?)
The current churns with white froth as I sail down to the stone-tossed shore. He does not see me. I make sure of this by keeping behind the gnarled trunk of a cypress, its foliage the deep emerald of summer. When I bring my eyes to the water it is not like how it was at the river's mouth—my eyes no longer smart, and instead of bubbling silver, the river is dull and bloated, grey crashing over grey. In this form, the sun’s light is but a single ray to the brightness of my body. In my presence, everything becomes absence. Were the magic not god-given, it would surely be blasphemous.
(Sometimes, I am still undone by the origins of my magic. I have been cultivated into something altogether too pious to expect a saint’s heart from a divinity. The too-mortal gods of our pantheon never bestow gifts without expecting something greater paid back, so what has mine taken in return? The last half of my life? A curse to fade into obscurity? An inability to know true happiness? Or perhaps he went for the jugular. Perhaps, on the day I have sharpened my magic to a point, it will pierce through the heart of someone I love.
Fovos, killing his Gennaios. Is that how the story should have gone?)
A flurry of motion stirs a thicket of reeds clinging to the riverbank and I tense, glancing towards Vercingtorix, who has waded into the water, before leaning warily towards a twitching cattail. From within its damp hiding place beady eyes watch me with reciprocal suspicion: they belong to a sleek-pelted otter. The otter leans out to sniff at the carbon shedding off of my feathers before I draw back, apologetic. It bids me farewell with a flash of serrated teeth.
I cannot stall for much longer before I glide from the cypress to the shore.
Later, I would ask him how he had known. How quickly the realization works its way across the angles of his face—from the eyes to the mouth—before resting in the crook of his brow. “I was wondering,” he says, his voice a song above the roaring current, “when you would try and find me. If you could.”
My phoenix's beak aches to sneer: one to match that smile. For a moment I believe myself capable of resenting him.
“I must admit, Adonai, you have outdone yourself. I did not expect you to find me with such... shall we say... flare.” And then it is not really so difficult.
My wings snap out in a torrent of fire—
And I dive headfirst into the waiting river.
It begins with a tingling of the skin, the transition, a thousand needle pricks as the magic seeps out of the pores. Then the bones begin to soften—there is no pain, yet the feeling of compression—like folding yourself into a pickling jar—is disorienting enough to cause faintness. To return, however, is an easier matter; instead of compression it is expansion, cells swelling gargantuan, everything a sucking in of breath, a pouring in of life, until the lungs strain to burst. I have done this enough times by now that when I break the water's surface, my face a hairsbreadth from his, I am myself again.
“Avoiding me, were you?” I say, carefully ignorant to the way my pulse taps hummingbird-quick at my throat. I think of the glass vial at the bottom of the river. “—Torix.” I think of him, on the beach, spinning sincerity like spinning wool. And then I think of how he had looked hopelessly mortal back then—not so far away from me.
My eyes scan feverishly over him. He has lost it, that mortality. However damaged it had been—none of it now remains. I lean closer, stifling a cough. “Outdone. Somehow, I doubt that.”
This far inland, he smells like the darkest part of the sea.
(Why? Because, if he is Gennaios, then I am Fovos. My phoenix fire is yet uncontrollable; it may spare leaves, and twigs, and drip like water off of coals: yet is that enough? Enough to convince me that no matter what, I could never burn him with flames impossible to extinguish?
I would not have sacrificed Gennaios.
I would not have won the war, because I cannot sacrifice someone I love. In return, I sacrifice those I do not love. It is a hundred thousand lives to one.
Who, really, is the worst of us?)
The current churns with white froth as I sail down to the stone-tossed shore. He does not see me. I make sure of this by keeping behind the gnarled trunk of a cypress, its foliage the deep emerald of summer. When I bring my eyes to the water it is not like how it was at the river's mouth—my eyes no longer smart, and instead of bubbling silver, the river is dull and bloated, grey crashing over grey. In this form, the sun’s light is but a single ray to the brightness of my body. In my presence, everything becomes absence. Were the magic not god-given, it would surely be blasphemous.
(Sometimes, I am still undone by the origins of my magic. I have been cultivated into something altogether too pious to expect a saint’s heart from a divinity. The too-mortal gods of our pantheon never bestow gifts without expecting something greater paid back, so what has mine taken in return? The last half of my life? A curse to fade into obscurity? An inability to know true happiness? Or perhaps he went for the jugular. Perhaps, on the day I have sharpened my magic to a point, it will pierce through the heart of someone I love.
Fovos, killing his Gennaios. Is that how the story should have gone?)
A flurry of motion stirs a thicket of reeds clinging to the riverbank and I tense, glancing towards Vercingtorix, who has waded into the water, before leaning warily towards a twitching cattail. From within its damp hiding place beady eyes watch me with reciprocal suspicion: they belong to a sleek-pelted otter. The otter leans out to sniff at the carbon shedding off of my feathers before I draw back, apologetic. It bids me farewell with a flash of serrated teeth.
I cannot stall for much longer before I glide from the cypress to the shore.
Later, I would ask him how he had known. How quickly the realization works its way across the angles of his face—from the eyes to the mouth—before resting in the crook of his brow. “I was wondering,” he says, his voice a song above the roaring current, “when you would try and find me. If you could.”
My phoenix's beak aches to sneer: one to match that smile. For a moment I believe myself capable of resenting him.
“I must admit, Adonai, you have outdone yourself. I did not expect you to find me with such... shall we say... flare.” And then it is not really so difficult.
My wings snap out in a torrent of fire—
And I dive headfirst into the waiting river.
It begins with a tingling of the skin, the transition, a thousand needle pricks as the magic seeps out of the pores. Then the bones begin to soften—there is no pain, yet the feeling of compression—like folding yourself into a pickling jar—is disorienting enough to cause faintness. To return, however, is an easier matter; instead of compression it is expansion, cells swelling gargantuan, everything a sucking in of breath, a pouring in of life, until the lungs strain to burst. I have done this enough times by now that when I break the water's surface, my face a hairsbreadth from his, I am myself again.
“Avoiding me, were you?” I say, carefully ignorant to the way my pulse taps hummingbird-quick at my throat. I think of the glass vial at the bottom of the river. “—Torix.” I think of him, on the beach, spinning sincerity like spinning wool. And then I think of how he had looked hopelessly mortal back then—not so far away from me.
My eyes scan feverishly over him. He has lost it, that mortality. However damaged it had been—none of it now remains. I lean closer, stifling a cough. “Outdone. Somehow, I doubt that.”
This far inland, he smells like the darkest part of the sea.
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
