Wicked ones I hope.
“Of course.” If only she knew.
Once I’ve started thinking of it, it is often impossible to forget.
The sterility of hospitals; him sitting at my bedside, reading, talking, sharing battle stories, reminiscing our days as cadets. The way he would fall asleep standing up next to me. The soft scent of leather, and oil, and the wild mint that grew by his cabin.
The way his touch ignited my blood like it was fuel for his fingers.
Wicked ones, I hope.
The way he would sigh against my ear, and always had a reason for why we couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t and now, only now, do I know it is because his entire life was a lie. Our intimacy would have revealed that.
The bitterness is a sea in and of itself, welling within me. I untie our vessel and cast us from the dock; I am busy with the tying and untying of the small masts, and as I rest at the back of the sailboat, steering the tiller, I listen to her sing.
It sounds hungry to me.
A pack of wolves; or, no, no,
one wolf alone, howling, howling, howling.
Endless because it waits, and waits, and waits
for an answer.
There isn’t one.
I know, because the same kind of singing fills me. I say, “Al’Zahra. You are not from these lands.”
It is obvious in her golden chain; the way her eyes dance. I know what other looks like. I know how other sings. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me what you hope to find on those distant shores.”
My mother always warned me against asking questions in the form of statements; leaving little room for discussion. I lean back, ducking as the boom swings to catch the wind. The sail fills with wind and we begin to gain speed, cutting through the choppy sea full of as many secret’s as a stranger.
It unsettles me; it unsettles me in the way the lingering silence after a battle would. The quiet, quiet that fills in the air after utter destruction. It unnerves me as something wrong does, but my expression does not show it. A gull careens above us, diving low to investigate our vessel; then it wheels away.
It ought to be beautiful, the way the ocean stretches before us, virgin and ready for discovery. She is enticing, today; full of jewel-bright water and the distant peak of the island. The wind is high in my ears, and Al’Zahra’s singing echos within me, a resonant call that tries to fill every empty edge of my soul.
It only magnifies the emptiness.
Something wicked, I hope.
My teeth work against my cheek. I know beneath us teems every nightmare imaginable; beneath us there are beasts we are vulnerable to, there are unknowns that stretch and reach and threaten to consume us.
Yet the sailboat cuts through the waves. And the gulls careen overhead. And the day seems bright and new and willing to take us.
@Al'Zahra
