IT HURTS
Instinct tells him to be skeptical of her statement. To suspect it might be a kindness, a thing you tell a child to make them go away. But there is such a gravity to her words when she says “forever,” like she really knows what that means, and he believes her, and he is happy. A nervous kind of happiness, but happiness nonetheless.
And then she believes him, and he’s not as surprised as he thought he would be because that’s just the way this night is shaping out, all these pieces fitting together that shouldn’t but they do, all dreamlike and strange; all right-wrong, doubtless insanities, sharp-edged joy. And her cheek, pressed to his cheek like a promise and a goodbye.
“Tell me a story, Dune. Tell me all the ways in which I can learn how mortality is more than pain, and hope without reason, and better than the cosmic expanse.”
A story immediately comes to mind, and he almost tells it to her.
He cannot remember when and where he first heard it. (Some small pitiful part of him wants to think it was his mother who told it to him, or his father, or a sister or brother. Someone who loved him.) It is just one of those stories that takes root in your heart and stays with you forever. He’s heard it told many times since the first, each a little different, and there was a certain beauty to the way the story twisted and spread like a forest, but the heart of it always remained the same.
The story goes like this: There is and has always been only one peach tree in Solterra, and nobody knows when and how it first got there and settled in the dry, sandy soil. There was an old stallion who took care of the tree- his back bowed and chestnut face greyed with age- and nobody knew when and how the stallion came to Solterra, except it was quite certain he came with the tree, or else the tree came with him. Nobody knew the stallion’s name, either, for he only spoke in smiles and gestures.
The old stallion watered the tree every morning in the darkness before dawn, and the tree grew tall and broad with a quickness that made many wonder what strange magic was at work. Each summer the tree bore more and bigger peaches, such a bounty that most every Solterran, no matter their station, were able to sample the fruit.
The tree was originally planted on the very outskirts of the court but soon became the heart of its own little village. In the spring, lovers young and old picnicked beneath its blossoms, and when the wind blew the delicate pink flowers fell like the gentlest rain. In the fall and throughout the warm winter the massive tree provided ample shade for the community to gather beneath, and it was said that even during the hottest of days a cool breeze could be found beneath those boughs.
Of course, the peace and beauty was temporary. The people wanted more peach trees, to export for coin. They pestered the stallion: “how do you grow the peaches so well, old man? How do you make the trees take root here?” He would only shake his head sadly, or shrug, and heavy shadows began to grow behind his eyes.
Here the story grows legs. It ends differently depending on the teller, but in the version Dune first heard, a less popular variation of the tale but the one that sat most deeply in his heart as true... and apologies to the story, but we skip ahead a bit here… the story ends with the old man being murdered beneath his tree in the hour before sunrise, his blood soaking into the parched earth. The peach tree lives on to this day, you can go see it in Solterra, but it is a meager shadow of what it once was. No one eats its fruit, which now tastes bitter and rotten. The village that sprouted up around it is impoverished and barren, and the breeze rolls through the streets hot and dry and merciless.
It was not at all the story she asked for, but he doesn’t know any other stories- all the rest of his life is toil and pain, sweat and dirt. And dreams, but there was nothing mortal about dreams. “Uh... I don’t know anything about those things.” I only know that you take whatever good things you can get, and you hold on tight, and you don’t dare be greedy or you’ll lose it all.
“I don’t know if you can learn how to love. It just happens.” His throat feels tight as he looks at her collar, its crescent moon a mocking smile that seems to say “you’re going to lose her, boy,” and his heart is sinking, sinking, sinking. “I hear it’s overrated, anyway,” he says, because that is what he’s heard again and again, scoffed by worn-down men he’s worked alongside. He wouldn’t know firsthand, although he thinks he might love the sound of her voice in all its ranges, dead-serious one moment and whisper-soft the next. Even when it seems to purr and fall away from him like a shooting star.
“You have to go now, don’t you?” His voice is quiet and trembling and so very close to that of a boy’s. She asked one thing of him, one simple thing, and he couldn't give it to her and now she has to go.
@Warset <3
