BEDE WROTE HOW A SPARROW FLEW
from dark through a lighted meadhall into dark again. / Tiny wing of your lungs - each beat a breath.
I am not lucky enough to have been alone. (Humiliating. My endeavors in this new land have been consistently humiliating, I think – but just as exhilarating.)
A man enters my vision. He must have been here – or nearby – all along, but I have only just noticed him. (Like the shadow beneath the oak tree; present, but unnoticed in favor of the golden leaves and gnarled bark.) He is dark all over, and dangerous likely, and somehow there is a look to him that is familiar to me, though it should not be. (Some pale, ephemeral grasp of recognition. I couldn’t tell you why.) He is handsome, probably, and particularly in the way that his frame is cut open by veins of rippling gold.
He moves like a cat, I decide. That is the closest image that I can bring to mind: a cat in the bush, but maybe not quite a cat. Maybe a knight-that-was-a-cat, or a cat-that-was-a-knight. You always carry a bit of yourself with you, from life to life, even if you can’t see it yourself.
Well done, he says, and I expect it to feel a tempestuous flush of anger; it would have been better than what I actually feel, which is a red-hot blush of shame, right from my nose down to my hooves. (I feel, frankly, cooked.) If he sounded properly sarcastic, like his comment seems to imply, I might have been angry, but he doesn’t. There isn’t a hint of anything at all in his voice. It isn’t comforting, and it isn’t cruel; it isn’t soothing, and it isn’t frigid. I don’t sense any judgement in it, either, which I find comforting, but something about the lukewarm character of it all makes me want to shiver. I am not sure what I see when I look at him, and I am not sure what I hear when I hear his voice. You’ve been cut, he says, then, and I follow his eyes down to the gash on my leg, biting my tongue to keep myself from wincing at the reminder.
I finally conclude that I don’t know what I see when I look at him. Something – more or less than himself, somewhat. I have not had the talent for a priestess in any of my lifetimes; they say that they can look into you and see your soul from the inside out, painted with every single life that you have lived. Of course, I do not have the sight to see, so I can never confirm the veracity of such a statement, but I like to believe that they are telling the truth. At least: I have never doubted it. The priestesses have not been wrong about me in any of my lives. Surely, there is a reason for it.
“It seems,” I say, with measured caution – as his eyes flick back up to my own, fathomlessly dark in a way that has nothing to do with their color, and somehow only halfway present (it unnerves me, but not enough to silence me), “that I have.” It is a shallow wound, at least. The kind that will itch when it scabs over, but little else.
What were you trying to do? he asks. I am ashamed to admit that, until he asks the question, I haven’t considered the answer at all.
If I were to approach some forest creature – an elk, or a big cat – I would expect it to startle, or, worse, to show its teeth. Why would I expect anything different from the creatures of this land, creatures that I know nothing of at all?
I wanted to understand, I think.
In the back of my mind, the man wreathed in laurels laughs at me, and I can’t help but think, oh, you would. He says that he wishes that he had one thousandth of my foolish bravery; I tell him that I am no fool, though sometimes I understand why he thinks of me that way.
Oh, old friend. If you only knew.
I wonder, sometimes, what became of you. My foolish bravery took me long – so long – before I could ever learn the answer. (But sometimes, I think that I remember your grasp on my bone, on the carving knife (the wet press of your tears against that pale ivory) – painting spirals and tumbling leaves into the heart of me. I do not know what I looked like as a sword, but I am sure that you made me uselessly pretty.)
“I-“ I halfway stammer, stumbling over my own words, “I don’t know, to be honest.” I shouldn’t be surprised by this turn of events; if I were at home, I like to think that I would no better than to just approach some strange creature on a whim. I think that there should have been a reason for it – I was sure that there was a reason for it at the time. Now, it just feels ridiculous. “Do you ever just…feel drawn to something? I suppose that I was curious. I thought that I might…” I trail off, my mouth dry. I wonder if I what comes next will make me sound crazy. After all, I know nothing at all about those creatures on the other hill. “…learn something from them.”
When it tried its best to impale me, it seemed like a brute animal, as I have come to know them. But there was a moment before that – a precious moment where I looked into those ink-dark eyes and thought that I could almost understand them.
I think that it is a consequence of rebirth that I am always looking for understanding, impossible as I know it may be. I am no longer a sword, and I feel no kinship with the swing of a blade; I no longer know how to sing like metal sings, or how to dance like the autumn wind. I remember it, of course. I remember – not everything, but the feeling of it.
I remember it, but it doesn’t feel the same. I recall it through water – from the bottom of a pool, staring up at the maybe-blue of the sky (or, more likely, a crown of yellow-gold leaves) through the ripples.
@Erasmus || a slightly more philosophical nic post.
"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
