I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn’t.
I think your people will begin missing you soon.
She hears her own voice in her head, and it is cold; it is detached; it is not the voice of someone who is in love, or it shouldn’t be. She sees Orestes’ face, wearing the expression of a heartbroken boy, and wants to cry, though the raw hurting is days old by now.
But the hating is still fresh: the unadulterated venom, the strength with which Marisol has turned it onto herself, the disgust, the hostility, the part of her that says you broke his heart and you should be ashamed.
Which she did. And she is.
I think your people will begin missing you soon.
Her heart is pounding, a metallic pain in the back of her mouth, and Marisol is walking briskly, fearfully past the walls of the court proper, head tucked to her chest not like a queen but like a girl who does not want to be seen. Her ribs ache; it is beginning to get dark, an early-winter sunset with strange purple and yellow foam laying just on the horizon. Solterra’s buildings are traced in a thin film of gold.
It is all very beautiful, in a way that does not feel good at all, beautiful in a way that only makes her ache more. If she could navigate with her eyes closed, she would; everywhere she goes a new pair of eyes turns toward her, scathing, judging, making her ears ring, making her jaw ache.
They say things:
Isn’t that the Halcyon Commander?
She must be coming to see the king.
I heard he went to her festival.
I heard—
I heard—
I heard—
She is standing now at the doorway of the castle. Lanterns flicker from their sconces, strange, bright eyes set hanging from the gray cobblestone. There are sounds all around her—people moving, the wind singing, the sound of desert birds calling to one another, or maybe it’s merely their wings, sifting and ducking through the air. From the door a face looks back at her, made from strange whorls and carvings of stone.
A face framed by soft white hair. A face with bright sea-eyes and gold tattoos. A face that says her name in a voice like despair. Marisol closes her eyes; something inside her hurts,
and hurts,
and hurts, until it doesn’t even feel like pain anymore. Just a strange, dark, pulsating ache.
Mari shoulders her way into the foyer. Inside it is strange and quiet, just like last time—no courtiers, no servants—just huge, old-dusty portraits hanging from the walls, and gold plates and cups, and ornate instruments, relics of of a bygone era in which the desert was a place for treasure and not skeletons. An era where a king might have been given something, not had it taken. The Commander’s ears flicker, but all the sounds in here are strangely muffled; someone’s voice is floating through the air, floating down, down, down to her.
She climbs, slowly, achingly, up the stairs, a step at a time.
Cobwebs coast the railing, dust lines the cracks in the cobblestone. The voice has faded, but she follows the same path it did, the same path she followed last time, when she had walked behind him into his office with the steaming tea, the precarious towers of books, the strange old art, the smell of sand and salt and old, cracked parchment. The halls are hallowed, they rise too high overhead; Marisol feels like a child as she picks her way through them, meeker than she can ever remember being,
and then she is standing in the door of his office, and he is there, his back turned.
The same sea-foam hair. The same dark, pretty dapples. The same lines and swirls of gold lancing across his cheek, up his leg, coating his shoulder like a spiderweb in the places the last light of the day is catching it; Marisol’s heart stops. Her blood runs cold.
She opens her mouth:
“Forgive me.” It is a raw sound, a pleading sound, in a voice hoarse from disuse or tears or maybe both, and Mari is trying not to tremble where she stands, and cannot be sure how well it is working, if at all. (Forgive me, forgive me, it is all so useless: all these words may mean nothing at all. All these words may not be a balm to the wound she has opened, or a reasonable reaction to the thing she has done to him, which has no name but a point like a knife.) “I should not have turned you away. I… did not want to.”
Mari’s eyes meet his only barely. And when they do—oh, there is no steel, no stone, no hardness at all.
Only a kind of sorry which no one has ever heard from her.
She steps forward, then stops, catches herself in the middle of the act. Is this still allowed? Is this still what he wants? She has been good at overstepping her bounds, lately; perhaps this is another one of those.
“Forgive me,” she says again—soft, quiet, passionate—“and I will tell you all the love poetry I know, forever."
Everything you’ve ever read doesn’t tell you that. It doesn’t read the way it feels; or the way it watches. No; you can’t romanticise the loneliness,, but somehow when people do talk about it, they make the sacrifice noble. What people see is this: pride, and brilliance, and charisma. Leadership. They don’t tell you in stories, or fairytales, that at the end of the day the decision is always yours, and the duty will forever be upon your shoulders, and you make those weighted decisions alone. There is no legend that describes how there are a thousand and one moments the hero nearly reaches out, nearly speaks up, to say that this is too much, he cannot bear it.
They didn’t tell me that when I became the Prince of a Thousand Tides. They didn’t tell me the way it feels like to let go of everything for someone else, to become more than just a person. An ideal; a vision.
Do you understand that? I am not a prince. I am the Prince, through no account of my own.
This is what happens:
You stop sleeping at night
Your heart aches, aches, aches.
You dream of love and know that only the lucky, the privileged, deserve it. (You think of how everyone deserves that happiness but you; because your heart belongs to the People, and the People can’t share their keeper, their guardian, their symbol.)
But People don’t know the weight. They don’t know how fiercely you love, and how utterly you suffer. They do not realise the extent which you will go to sacrifice yourself for their benefit; the hours; the weeks; the days; the months; the years; even the lifetime.
I have lived so many lives with this weight; and I know why the sea chose me. She is in me, and I am in her, in the way that her waves are deep and dark and endless. Only something tragic can contain such multitudes and I know this because I have felt the way she sings at night, when we are alone.
Yet, it is my privilege to bear their burden. It is. I would not trade it for the world. But you must understand… there are days it would be nice, for just a moment, to have your heart held by someone else. To be told, once, everything will end up fine.
Even if it is a lie.
Journal Entry of Prince Orestesiahzrah’Zanrekiah’reta’Mournansuin, the last Prince of the Khashran, lost to the sea.
He dreams the words and by the time he wakes, they aren’t real. Just a memory of a feeling; just the sentiment of loss, of searching, for something misplaced but insignificant.
Orestes has found himself dozing at his work table; his face is pressed against one of Zolin’s salvaged journals; he has been searching for an answer to… to… Orestes doesn’t remember.
He stands up and goes to the window, drawn by something he cannot explain. But the setting sun casts a glare that is impossible to see through, and he returns to his work, attempting to remember what he had been searching for.
Orestes is tired.
A bone-deep tired.
He hears footsteps below; it must be one of the courtiers, perhaps Charles. His eyes are closed and he is leaning his forehead against the cool glass window that faces the sea. That is how he stands, when Marisol enters.
Orestes does not realise it is her. He opens his mouth to say something to Charles, and stops dead when she begins to speak. Forgive me. Orestes turns. His eyes find her and his heart swells; no, he thinks. No, this is all wrong—this is not the way he is meant to hear her, this is not the way he wanted to make her sound. He turns to face her but refrains from stepping forward. He had overstepped last time—
I should not have turned you away. I… did not want to.
And in his head he remembers the expression on her face.
He had hurt her.
Marisol will not meet his eyes; that, too, is something he can hardly bear. But for some reason his voice is caught—he does not want to say the wrong thing. There is something in her expression, apologetic though it may be, that reminds him of a bird about to take flight, or a deer about to flee.
She steps forward, and Orestes is still unsure if this is a dream. “Forgive me, and I will tell you all the love poetry I know, forever.”
His voice is petal-soft when he says, “Oh, Marisol.” Orestes steps forward, at first hesitant, and then with confidence. It is only to drape his head over her neck and pull her into an embrace; tentative, gentle, as close to a question as a physical touch could be. “There is nothing for you to apologise for.”
Orestes pulls back; it is only to look her in the eyes. “Forgive me,”, he says. “I… it was too much, too soon.” Orestes’s heart is fluttering in his chest; the gentle swish, swish, swish of wings in his veins. His head feels light; his tongue is dry. He feels more nervous, more hesitant—but it is only because he cannot stand to make the same mistake twice.
He says, “I understand… I do. I know what it is like to have the weight of the world on your shoulders. I know how there isn’t much room for… this in a world like that.”
Orestes wants to give her something, but he had not been expecting company. The room is growing dark without a lantern lit; and the stacks of books remind him of their first interaction. Orestes is shy, uncertain. “I… I ought to have been more patient. And I wasn’t. I was… tactless… and… and… I had so many poems I wanted to share that night, and I didn’t.”
He has no eloquence; not in this moment; not full of surprise and awe and the fragile, impossible hope. “I… can I get you anything?”
Orestes turns away, for a moment, as if to find her something. But Orestes stops. He turns back toward her, and his eyes seek out hers in the dim, fading light. It is her god that is here between them; it is her god, taking hold of the sky, and casting a thin veil of blue light. Orestes’s cannot help but think, for a moment, that she makes even sadness look beautiful. He cannot help but think it is not his light, but her own, radiating from her expression in a form of vulnerability and regret uncommon for a commander, a queen.
“Not one word,” he whispers. It is not possible for blue eyes to smoulder like flame; but somehow, his do. “, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…”
Perhaps, this poem at least, will not go unfinished.
@Marisol || "speech"
I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn’t.
Shyness looks strange on him. It is ill-fitting, a coat it seems he has grown out of. But Marisol knows she must look equally foolish, a queen and a warrior who cannot quite hold herself still, whose muscles seem to tremble, whose eyes blink rapidly and too nervously as she pulls her lip between her teeth and watches, watches, watches. Like a bird being chased, her heart flits recklessly in her chest. It pecks at her ribs. It tries to break out. With every passing moment she feels a little more faint,
and then he speaks.
Oh, Marisol—never has a voice been so soft, or cared so much, at least point-blank; her breath catches briefly in her throat as he turns to face her. He looks just as he did last time, sans the wreath. Ringlets of star-white hair. A warm darkness in the eyes, like a league of the ocean, warmed by the sun. The high cheeks, the thick, fluttering lashes, the way he smiles in a way that is nearly sad but not quite, a boy strung between wanting and hesitation—once bitten, twice shy, maybe.
She licks her teeth, anxious in a way that buzzes to the bone. In here it is dark and dusty, still like a mausoleum: her eyes drift, unsettled, from one corner to the next, naming the stacks of books, the engraved teapots, the scrolls and strewn-about pens with their feather-tails fluttering against the wood. The setting sun casts a light on the scene that is somewhere between purple and gold, somewhere between magic and a lovely, perfect real world.
The kind that does not exist, she reminds herself. Are you a fool enough to get your hopes up?
He will say something painful, she is sure, something that hurts and hurts and hurts even though he will try to make it easy. He will turn her away, like she turned him away, and they will return to their separate corners of the world and be doomed to a relationship of politics, conveniences, letters sent but not replied to. This is how the world works—or, at least, the part they live in.
Now she understands Asterion’s curse. Why he had spent so many lights alone, why so many of his lovers had disappeared after just a season. Why Florentine had only had the strength to love Lysander long after she had passed on her title. Mari closes her eyes. Little swirls of green and gold move in circles across the back of her eyelids. The world is quiet, now, or she is deaf, and all that is left is the sweat-slick beating of her heart and the sound of fear like blood rushing through her head.
An exhale.
An inhale.
The Commander opens her eyes, and—
She can see nothing but the white waves of his mane as he draws her in, the smell of him—salt, sun, something almost like enchantment—filling the air, the warmth of his skin a sun-strong heat that floods her like a wave, nearly knocks her over as the weight of his head comes to rest against her shoulder. Relief stuns her, a god-given bullet, and Mari’s every muscle goes liquid-weak.
There is a sharp breath that she knows is hers but sounds completely alien, and a breaking noise like a sob, and Marisol buries her face into the slope of his shoulder, the cloud of his hair, and does not let him go. Her heartbeat is banging too loud to hear over; heat floods her until her skin starts to burn. When he begins to pull away, she pulls back, lashes beating like butterfly wings against his skin.
Don’t leave, Mari wants to beg, wants to cry—don’t leave, don’t leave. But she bites it back soundlessly.
But when he finishes the sentence for her she almost laughs, knocked back by a sudden wave of calm so strong it does not feeling like anything but flying, and flying, and flying: how lovely a room this is, and how quiet, flooded with the jewel-colored light, pulse dull and insistent against her tongue, her cheek, the place just behind her eyes. She’s managed not to cry, but something is—
breaking, coming apart.
Another few breaths, forced to slow calmness, and Marisol presses her forehead again into the edge of his shoulder. “You were not tactless,” she offers softly. “I was only afraid.”
Or is she still? There is no way to know; now something bitter is coating the back of her throat, a kind of paranoia, or something like self-hatred. She closes her eyes tighter.
Orestes knows. Orestes knows because he knows the way the sea breaks against the shore, no matter how many times she has done it before. Orestes knows, because there is a certain tragedy to loving something, wanting something, when a lifetime—an eternity—has said it is not meant for you.
He sees it in Marisol's eyes; in the way they are the soft colour of a steely sky, ready to rain. The gunmetal of the sea in a storm, but softer, fluid. He has never seen her eyes look like this; and he doubts they ever do. Orestes feels it in the way she is taunt as a bowstring and abruptly, against him, supple. The feel against him is still a question mark; but the question of the sea and the shore, the question of everything he has ever known, arching to say again, again, again? The sound of it, of her aching, is enough for Orestes to draw her closer. He makes a small sound in the back of his throat, nearly a shhh but not quite. Let me put you back together.
Marisol begins to speak, and he is not sure what will come when she says:
You were not tactless. I was only afraid.
Orestes does not say anything for a long moment. He keeps his face tucked against her shoulder and feels as she presses harder against his side. He breathes deeply, steadily, until their breaths begin to sync. Orestes rests like that, breathing with her, as the sun dips from the horizon and the light goes from gold, to purple, to blue, to dark. Orestes watches the colours as they pass over her skin, as they tell time.
Orestes can smell Terrastella on her; with the cliffside sea and the pine and something soft but strong, something he cannot name. There is something vaguely calming about it, not lavender or sage but something like it, something dark and smooth. It reminds him of when he had visited her court; it reminds him of the drunken festivities, the taste of hard cider, the dancing. It reminds him of how he had not felt alone. Orestes does not draw away to meet her eye when he says: “Marisol, it is no sin to feel fear.” This he whispers against her skin; this he says as the gold light of his tattoos fills the air, and turns her gold too. “I understand why you are afraid.” Perhaps there is a part of him that understands more than he admits.
Because he feels it now.
He feels it in the way he does not want to push her, or rush her, or see the expression of hurt on her face. Orestes does not want to draw that broken sound from her voice; he does not want to make her breath catch with anything sad, anything tragic. He is afraid of a misstep; but he is more afraid of the loneliness that wells within him like the deepest pit of the sea. He feels it in the way his mind is, at once, on a thousand other things. He is trying to remember what he had been searching for in the journal; Orestes knows there is more he ought to be doing to promote economic growth in the market; and yet she is here, and she is everything those obligations are not. Breathe. And so he does, and forgets everything but those breaths, slow and smooth.
Orestes does not know how long he stands like that before he says, in a tone for secrets and bedrooms and dreams, “I once read, somewhere, that there is nothing that prepares you for the burden of command. No matter your passion. No matter your resolve. There is always some component of sacrifice; at first it is your time, and then it is your personal life, and then it is your every waking hour. It is the beautiful privilege of leadership; and I would never change it, or trade it, or wish it away…”
As Orestes speaks, it feels almost like a story, a fable; for a moment it feels like something he has already lived. "The legends, the fairytales, they do not tell you the suffering of the hero. There is no legend that describes how there are a thousand and one moments that he almost reaches out; nearly speaks up; and all for him to say that it is too much, and he cannot bear it anymore… through no fault of his own…”
The sun is completely gone, now. Orestes knows if he were too glance out the window there would be some distant red tinge on the horizon, but it is not bright enough to penetrate the study. Instead, everything is illuminated by the faint golden glow that comes from within Orestes. He closes his eyes against it, and focuses on those measured breaths, on the shared inhalations and exhalations. “I understand why you were afraid, Marisol. Why you are still afraid. You cannot commit yourself to someone, to something, when the weight of your court is upon you. That is your responsibility, your duty, and you cannot stray from it. And it is also mine.”
It is now, and only now, that he draws away; Orestes does so gently, with the elegant grace of something leonine. He admires her for a moment; a smile surfaces for the first time, a little sad, but there is only happiness in his eyes. "Marisol, please know, I would never ask more of you; I would never place more weight upon your shoulders. I only hoped that, perhaps, we might share some of our burdens. It can certainly be lonely.”
Orestes’s voice catches, then, on that word.
Lonely,
the word that belongs to the ache that has never left him, the hollow and resonant emptiness that exists within his heart, his brain. The place within Orestes full of tragedy; of sorrow; of bitterness. It is not something he likes to remember.
It is a remote area within him, full of the smells, and sounds, and sights of the sea. The place that is half-forgotten memories that are blended with a sea of sand, a burning lion, a hungry people. Orestes turns away form her, briefly, to light a lantern. It casts a flickering, bright light about the room full of silence. It weighs on him, and weighs on him, and weighs on him. And at last Orestes asks:
"What is the point of it all, Marisol, if we do not also allow ourselves to live? What is the point of our sacrifice, our burden, if we only guard the lives of others? You are alive. You are more than a Commander, a Queen. Don't you feel it?" Although his tone is not unhinged, there is something within him riling now; bright as a spark. "There is passion, and life, and need beyond command, obligation, responsibility... There is poetry, music... passion." His voice cracks and for a moment his face flushes with frustration; he cannot say what he means, in the way that he wishes to say it.
I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn’t.
He is too kind. Too kind to her, too kind for the world; it is with a heavy heart that Marisol wonders (and fails to understand) how a man like this can rule a desert made for a death.
Or maybe she is oversimplifying. When people think of her home, do they think only of the hospital? Do they call it the swamp, the cliffs, these too-simple words? Now shame comes to greet her, a spine-deep shiver. An embarrassing silver-gauze threat of tears surfaces; it burns the corners of her eyes, the insides of her nostrils. Maybe she is the fool, for thinking Solterra is exactly what it looks or sounds like—blood, and sun, and melted steel.
Maybe Orestes would be upset, if he knew what she thought of this place.
When she swallows, it is painful: her throat is cracked by the dry air, the dehydration, the heat and the stress baked into her like sunlight. It is no sin to feel fear, he says, and—
Briefly—just the space of a heartbeat—she hates him for saying it.
She is thinking of Achilles and her own white heel. She is thinking of the scar on her shoulder, a river of silver. Of killing the man who ruined that word love. She is thinking of the spear she has left just outside the office door, sharpened to a shark-tooth point, worn by use until it fits like a second skin. She is thinking of her title—Commander—and the weight that it carries, an iron noose at the back of the neck.
When I was a child, my mother dipped me in the divine river, hanging by an ankle.
When I was a child, they called me unlucky.
My name means lonely.
My mother named me lonely, because she knew.
If fear is not a sin, then it is still sacrilege; a refusal of the white heel, of her goddess’ blessing, the drowning in the sacred water, a refusal of the title itself, Commander, Queen, Halcyon.
If fear is not a sin, it is only something worse.
The light is gone. Day has drained from the sky, and the room is dark but for the shine of Orestes’ tattoos. Dust swirls through the air in patches of faint gold. Marisol does not know what to feel. What to think. What to do. All at once she is nauseous, pained, exhausted and brightly awake; when he pulls away she only blinks, dazed, as if just surfacing from a dream. (Nightmare? Dream.)
You cannot commit yourself to someone, he says.
Oh, and then he says other things—burdens, lonely, need beyond command, passion—but Marisol cannot hear it, cannot hear anything over the rising despair, the cold blue mania that begins to ice the inside of her chest, the ringing of her back right heel,
the hot, stinging threat of tears rising to the surface,
the repeating voice: you cannot commit yourself, and neither can I.
Mari is grinding her jaw, holding it oh-so-tight, trying not to speak. A tense, blooming pain. The expression she gives him is almost hurt, but not quite; almost asking, but not bold enough.
Something in it is uneasy. A prey animal running. A thing which knows it is being hunted.
Again she swallows, with some effort, and oh she is in pain— struggling to contain the rising fever, the rotting ache, the part of her that only wants to beg for love
and love, and love again.
Mari’s dark brows furrow; she glances up at him, eyes vast, and nearly heartsick; her heart flutters in her chest, faint as a dying bird, and her voice almost wavers (or maybe, probably, it does) when she says, soft, “So.” A brief blink. A trembling lip. “I don’t understand. How to share a burden if one cannot commit.”
And now the rot in her is rising, aching, burning, and she wants to cry, or maybe is, despite her best efforts. She steps toward him. A sharp, hungry, pleading movement.
“Orestes...“ Her voice is coarse, heavy, verging on a sin—there is a glow in the eyes, something dark and burnt and pressing—“I do not give my heart away easily, if at all. So I am not made for uncertainty.”
Another step. A too-quick brush of her lips against the base of his ear, a flash of teeth over the neck, and when she speaks again it is low and quiet, a kind of murmur, or purr, from not more than a few inches away: “So if it is desire only, or if you would rather return to your papers, then I will let you work. But if you would like to hear the poetry I have, or let me love you—“
Maybe her voice catches on that word. Love. Maybe it doesn’t.
IN HIS TENT ACHILLES GRIEVED WITH HIS WHOLE BEING AND THE GODS SAW HE WAS A MAN ALREADY DEAD, A VICTIM OF THE PART THAT LOVED, THE PART THAT WAS MORTAL. IN THE STORY OF PATROCLUS NO ONE SURVIVES, NOT EVEN ACHILLES, WHO WAS NEARLY A GOD. PATROCLUS RESEMBLED HIM. THEY WORE THE SAME ARMOUR.
If she is Achilles, he is Patroclus.
Orestes has always been Patroclus. His own pride has never been his undoing; it has always been that of those he loves. If Achilles had known not just his fate at Troy, but his lover’s, his best friend’s, would he have still followed the drums of war? This is not a new dance for Orestes; there is only the aching familiarity of a story he knows vaguely but cannot quite remember the end to.
Orestes has always been Patroclus, ready to don his lover’s armour and take his place. He has always been Patroclus, suffering for the tragedies of others and taking a place in the conflict, anyway. Did you know he tried climbing the wall of Troy, before Apollo dragged him down and again and again? They don’t tell you that, often. No; it is an afterthought, because Patroclus always dies, anyway. Even though he made it, with the Myrmidons rallied behind him. Perhaps he died knowing, he had touched the walls of Troy and ended the war that very day with his sacrifice, his death.
That is the way it is, for Patroclus, for Achilles. That is the way it has always been and always will be. Achilles raging, raging, always raging. And Patroclus, dead. Patroclus begging for the war, the pain, to end.
There is always one that loves more than the other. There is always one that fears to be loved.
There is a palpable tension in the air; one that settles with the sun. Orestes feels it; he sees it in her expression, shrouded in dusk. The way the pain is blatant, but not quite; the expression of a rose pricking blood; a half-finished sentence that might have ended a question, but he will never know. There is something about it that still belongs to a warrior; perhaps it is because only warriors can bear so much pain and not break. Orestes looks away. He feels as if he has said something wrong again; as if she will flee, abandoning him to the lonely resonance of his aching heart. He does not know when it became something he wanted. Perhaps it was that very first day he met her, and saw something in her eyes that has haunted him his entire life.
So. I don’t understand. How to share a burden if one cannot commit.
He has muddied the waters. Orestes works his mouth, but does not yet speak. She steps towards him and it takes all he is not to flinch.
The older he becomes, in this young-old body, the more difficult it is to do good.
Orestes… I do not give my heart away easily, if at all. So I am not made for uncertainty.
Another step.
She is touching him. Her breath, her lips, are against his ear. Orestes closes his eyes with her teeth at his throat and wonders if there is a metaphor there. Then she is low and quiet, quiet, quiet, the sound of water in a cave, the sound of night meeting day. Then tell me you will stay.
Orestes does not have the words. Does she not know it of him? Has he not showed her? And then he realises that of course he hasn’t. It is only their third time meeting. It is only their third time talking, and his heart is a bird ready to take flight. He wants to say that he never leaves anyone. He wants to say that he is the certainty of a rising and setting sun, but realises there is still too much magic in that world to make the guarantee. Yet it stands: he is old enough to remember what it felt like to walk from the sea the first time, and then a thousand after that. He is old enough to remember the way it used to be when there was only land, and sky, and sea. Orestes stayed with his homeland until it sank; the only reason he is here, now, is retribution.
He opens his eyes.
“I will stay.” Orestes voice is the quiet pitch of a prayer. “But you never have to. That is all I meant; I am not another one of your obligations. I will be so much more, and less, then that for you. I am here, Marisol. I will stay; there is nothing in me that is uncertain, not of you, not of this.” Not of anything. Perhaps he lied to himself, when he thought that his own pride is never his undoing. But Orestes cannot prevent the calm confidence; the assurance. For many years he has believed that the philosophy of doubt will end in either pain or death; and so he does not allow himself to doubt, only to believe.
Orestes smiles.
Orestes smiles, because that is what Patroclus would do.
I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn’t.
Every inch of her is waiting,
and waiting,
and waiting, poised like a cat about to pounce or like a deer about to run, body tightrope, heart beating too fast and too shallow against the parts of Marisol that are nothing but frail, porcelain bone.
She has never thought of herself as frail before. But times change.
So there she stands: waiting, and trying not to shake. Her eyes are fixed on his, deep gray that has become altogether too serious. Her mouth is dry, face aflame with unconquerable heat; it is a blessing, then, that her skin does not show such a blush so easily. This kind of weakness is unbecoming for a queen. Even more so for a warrior. And the knowledge of it rattles around in her chest like a lead weight, pulling her down, down, down—
This is unbecoming.
This want, with its teeth and its claws and its bright, pale eyes—
It is unbecoming.
Yet—
She does not quite care. Or cannot. Of course some part of her struggles against the net of it; of course there is a bit of her, wearing Anselm’s coat, maybe even his voice, that says run while you can; and of course this is all silenced by the way he looks at her with eyes like the farthest patch of the ocean ocean, his face oh-so-sweet with that pretty, tragic smile. Nothing more than a boy who wants and wants and wants. Like her. With the same depth, the same ferocity.
Mari inhales; the breath burns in her chest. A reminder that, for better or for worse, they both still belong to the land of the living.
His mouth is working without sound. She watches him intently, on edge for the moment in which he will finally speak, rattled by the infinite possibilities of what that speech might be: so many of the options are terrible, dismal, heartbreaking—but still she is hoping, with the stupid eagerness of a child whose wide eyes are only a lighthouse for bringing heartbreak ashore.
Marisol does not know what he is thinking. She does not know what he will do, if anything. She does not know what she has done wrong, or right, or if she has done anything of note at all. She only knows that:
His hair is a veil, soft against her cheek. That he does not flinch at the touch of her lips, or at the ghost of a breath that whooshes over the slope of his neck, then his shoulder. That he is not moving away from her, that he radiates warmth, that she can maybe (can’t she?) feel his heartbeat like it is her own, just as strong, a little slower.
Only that when he speaks it is reverent, delicious.
Only that when he speaks she cannot believe it—how gentle, and how sweet—hoe close it is to what she was hoping-hoping-hoping for with the strength of a fever or a blooming storm.
Only that her breath shudders on the inhale, that she is dazed by the sound of the word stay, the rich darkness of his voice saying nothing in me is uncertain, and in a gesture very (very) unbecoming for a queen she does not draw back to look him in the eyes but buries her head again in his shoulder to hide the part of her that is about to cry in relief.
“Oh,” she mumbles into his skin—half laughing, half pained. A dark wing sweeps out and up, comes to rest its weight over his back; finally, then, she does step back, smiles at him shyly, blinks up through lashes dark and maybe a little damp. “Good,” Marisol says, soft. “I was hoping you would say so. But I would have waited, too.”
IN HIS TENT ACHILLES GRIEVED WITH HIS WHOLE BEING AND THE GODS SAW HE WAS A MAN ALREADY DEAD, A VICTIM OF THE PART THAT LOVED, THE PART THAT WAS MORTAL. IN THE STORY OF PATROCLUS NO ONE SURVIVES, NOT EVEN ACHILLES, WHO WAS NEARLY A GOD. PATROCLUS RESEMBLED HIM. THEY WORE THE SAME ARMOUR.
Orestes feels the tension; taunt as a violin’s aching, a rising crescendo. The sort of song that needs an answer. The sort of question that hangs, and hangs, and hangs until there is nothing but their breaths, their heartbeats, between them. Somewhere, in a place distant and far away, his own mind begs:
Ask me.
Ask him what his dream would be.
Orestes likes to think somewhere Patroclus and Achilles grew old; he likes to imagine Hektor with his grown son, riding around the walls of Troy, breaking a brilliant stallion side-by-side. Ask him what he dreamt of, when he allowed himself the rare and private privilege. Ask him, what has kept him going for so, so long.
<>i>Ask me.
Orestes would say: the chance of growing old with a cabin in the wild by the sea, far from anyone, with the person I love most and a pile of poetry
There is a chamber of his heart that unlocks when she says Oh. Good.
There is something within him that unravels, unravels, unravels; until his mind and thoughts and future are a pile of yarn, held in limp hands. It is the feeling of Prometheus the moment the eagle steals his liver; Atlas beneath the weight of the world, hoping just for a moment the sentence will end. It never does; but how does that knowledge serve them? For a moment, Orestes is not old; for a moment, Orestes has never been hurt; for a moment, he hopes with the brilliance of the sun as it rises.
He thinks of many things in their tension. Do you know together, our eyes are the colour of the overcast sky? Blue and grey? Do you know you are more than a weapon?
When Marisol’s wing touches him, the tension that is left between them dissolves: if her emotions are unbecoming, his are more so. He tucks her beneath his chin, presses so close their hearts might as well be one, and says, “You do not have to wait, Marisol.” Then she is drawing back, and looks at him with damp eyes. He presses his nose to her cheek; consolingly, softly as a butterfly’s wings, and then withdraws. His eyes are measured, patient; they do not betray the whirlwind of thoughts within him—
A cabin by the sea—
the waves crashing—
and then the desert sun, burning, burning,
Sit. Sit and remember you are ash.
Orestes clears his throat. The action does not prevent it from being husky; intense. “I would not make you wait.” Then, a little awkwardly, a little uncertainty: “I meant what I said at your festival. I would not like to be folded anywhere, in front of you. I cannot bear it. Your eyes—“
His voice softens, softens. Orestes’s speaks in an almost-whisper. “They are beautiful, but they cut me to the quick. I could not make you wait.” He is stumbling over himself with joy, with trepidation—make her happy, make her happy make her happy, don’t mess up, make her happy— “Please, Marisol—what can I do for you? You’ve come such a long way. Please… sit. Let me find you something to eat, or drink, or—“
Orestes does not know what else to say; in his own way, this is a confession, too.
In his own way, it is the first time in a very long time the sea is not singing in his ears.
No; in that moment, soft gold and with eyes like the edges of the sky, he is nothing but hopeful, nothing but a man.
I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn’t.
I think your people will begin missing you soon.
What she says—Oh. Good—is less than a millionth of what she is trying to express. It is a pathetic rendition. Like making a sunset out of crayons. But there is no combination of words that could even begin to describe that thing, whatever it is, so Marisol does not feel as ashamed as maybe she should.
Besides, isn’t that what poetry is for?
You do not have to wait, he says, and there are no words for that either. Only a cold, sweet rush of relief: coming down like a hammer on her heart, flooding rough-and-tumble through every thunderstruck vein. For a moment their heartbeats are all she can hear.
A tick like a metronome. A beat like a drum. The thrumming of it is steadier than any part of Marisol’s life ever has been. The warmth he exudes is a balm; it settles into her softly, and fully, with no more weight than a gossamer cloak. And for a moment she cannot help wondering what it would be to feel like this, every day, forever:
Stronger than the fear that she is weak; more certain than the rising moon; sure in a way she never has been, in a way that might prove she is worth loving.
He brushes her cheek. The will to leave grows weaker still. How can someone be so kind? She can see it in his eyes, the undue softness, how he looks at her with something both brighter and quieter than a smile: it is just the kind of look Marisol will never be able to wear properly. Her face is too rough, her eyes are too cold. The lines of her body are far too sharpened by oh-so-many years of spars. Of course she is not made to be kind.
But looking at him—the warmth of his expression, and the sweetness, and most of all the unabashed eagerness, like a boy’s—something deep inside her aches and aches with the desire to be more like him.
Which is to say, good.
How could Solis himself have chosen such a saint? Can he really belong here? Solterra is a place for battle, for blood, for bones: these are the things which make up Mari’s life, and she cannot refuse nor disdain them, but neither can she bear the thought of Orestes at war, Orestes in armor, Orestes with blood at the corners of his mouth. Marisol’s eyes close. Her mouth is gritty, suddenly, with the taste of sand and iron.
I will do anything, she promises to herself then—the thought is dark, and deeply serious—to keep that from happening.
She meets his deep-sea eyes again, and when he speaks in a voice almost soft as a whisper Marisol finds herself shy. Flustered, even. (Perhaps that is his power. Without even asking, he makes her do things she wouldn’t, or act ways she shouldn’t; without any effort, he can pull her by a multitude of strings. For a girl like her it is worse than any real defeat.) And when he remarks upon her eyes, her gaze flits down, down, down: some part of her wants to insist I did not, would not, want to cut you at all.
He must know. He must know. They have met only once, twice, three times, but the stuff of their souls have known each other far longer. There is no other explanation for it—the way her body, now, is less than a weapon but much more than a vessel for blood. Stardust is involved, now. And moonlight. And sea salt. She could not hide from his deep-dark eyes or the curve of his smile even if she wanted to.
(He must know; the alternative is unbearable.)
“This is enough. More than enough.” From a place deep in her chest, Marisol’s voice is unforgivably earnest; she steps forward to turn her steel-grey eyes up at him, which have long since melted to liquid metal; for once she is all-soft, all-warm, as imploring as any lovestruck girl, duty and court be damned for an hour. She noses absent-mindedly at a curl of white hair, and says softly, "But I would not refuse food, or someone’s bed to nap in—“Here her mouth twists, the barest flash of a smile. “—if it would not be too much trouble. And later, anything you wish, if I am with you.”
And even as they stand together and day bleeds into night, as time stretches on, as the day itself ends and Marisol falls asleep, she is only a little bit scared.
IN HIS TENT ACHILLES GRIEVED WITH HIS WHOLE BEING AND THE GODS SAW HE WAS A MAN ALREADY DEAD, A VICTIM OF THE PART THAT LOVED, THE PART THAT WAS MORTAL. IN THE STORY OF PATROCLUS NO ONE SURVIVES, NOT EVEN ACHILLES, WHO WAS NEARLY A GOD. PATROCLUS RESEMBLED HIM. THEY WORE THE SAME ARMOUR.
His words turn her eyes downtrodden; they advert, until she is no longer looking at him. Orestes reaches out with painfully gentle telekinesis, hoping to nudge her chin back up and turn her eyes to him once more. Perhaps it is because he has spent a lifetime learning to understand the sea; perhaps it is because it has not just been one lifetime, but many, understanding the untranslatable. Either way, Orestes feels her shame as hotly as if it were his own. I know, the water-soft expression in his eyes suggests. I know you did not mean to.
And, water-soft, no cut lasts on him. With her apology, the pain he felt only nights before vanishes. Orestes understands, in a way nearly melancholic and ancient, that the only thing ever guaranteed is the moment he is living now. And so he lives it, feverishly, and without reserve.
In return, Marisol blooms for him like a flower. She sheds her austere metal; her aura opens, opens, opens, until the militant and dutiful Commander with steel-grey eyes is replaced with a woman of soft-sad gossamer. Orestes sighs against her short crop of mane. He closes his eyes against the gentle touch of her soft nose. There is a smile—nearly wry—that curls the edges of his lips. “If you will not refuse it, then you shall have it.” There is more he would like to add; a thousand flirtatious quips run their way across his tongue, but all of them would seem cheap in light of their exchange.
You are just the right amount of trouble, he nearly jokes. But the jest would have too much of a cliche in it; and against her he is nothing but rosewater sweet. Against her, he is nothing but genuine.
And the day fades into dusk, the air full of whispers and soft laughter, poems and the nuances of newly blooming flowers just learning their natures. Orestes commits the lines of her faces to memory, and his conversation with a young girl comes back to him.
I don’t think anything truly belongs to itself. But of course, that is only my belief. It comes from the sea, and so the sea will always be a part of it. Just as the sand-dollar will always be a part of the sea. Look at people… everyone you know, you give a little piece to. And the piece you give away will always belong to the person you give it to, and no one else."
Remembering now, the comment seems naive; it seems to miss something essential.
Orestes thinks, except for that missing spot where it came from you. Marisol's name is written, now, on Neruda and Rilke and every place he is folded. Her name now is written in the Dusk sky, and on the mere idea of wings.
Perhaps he is careless.
But when he falls asleep, his heartbeat next to hers, he has given away a piece of himself he no longer knew he had to give.
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