[P] it was a pure creature [party]

[Adonai]

A D O N A I

W

hen he asks me if there is a cure for the poison, why is it that my first instinct is to tell him no?

To scour his expression as the tragedy hits. To paint myself as a lost cause, a time bomb, a once-but-never-again. To use my death as a siren's lure: now, Vercingtorix, you will never forget me. I will always hold something of you that you can never give anyone else—

(Because tragedy, once felt, cannot be unfelt. Even if he has known it before—that is alright. I ask merely for a place on the shelf.)

It is self-betrayal at its very best. It is narcissism through a shattered lens. It is the obsessive, destructive need to see another in grief for me because I cannot grieve for myself enough. Does life not make voyeurs of us all? What else is the point of a funeral, when the dead are never there to see it?

But the truth is that I do not know. I do not know if there exists a cure to my brother's betrayal because days or weeks or months ago, I had crossed beyond the threshold of caring. You cannot imagine how exhausting it is to search for a cure, when no one but you wants to find it.

So I say softly, “I have looked,” and then I pause, unsure whether truth fits us best or a dozen white lies more. Instead, I draw back from the curve of his neck to look evenly into his sea-green eyes: one scarred, one perfect. (I distract myself by wondering: will I recover from this?) “Please do not become a martyr,” he begs me, and it is enough to take me aback; it is enough to be almost enough.

But in the span of an evening my greed has grown teeth, and then wings. A memory of a game I had played often with my siblings seizes me by the shoulders and shakes: Truth or—

A cough clings to my lungs. “Find one for me.” Dare. “Find a cure, Torix, and I will become—” There shouldn't be an ending written into a promise. “Better.” I breathe out. But there is.

I wrap my wings around him: gold on gold on gold. For a moment, we are nothing but gold. 

Until, as with all things, the light begins to fade.

When he asks his sly question with the boldness of a soldier, his breath warming my cheek, I snort, my tongue rolling in mock disapproval. “So you have already figured out I can deny you nothing.”

I reach for my discarded lyre, pull the familiar wooden grain against me. Smiling, I pluck out a lonely chord; in my head I have already begun composing it: a song he will never hear.

(His whisper ghosts along the curve of my ear: “and revenge.” In response, I push him stumbling towards the door of the armory. The word sits bitterly on my tongue.

Yet let it sit for longer, and perhaps—perhaps—it will age into sweetness.)




If I could buy forever at a price
I would buy it twice, twice

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@Vercingtorix 
A CLOSER!! - & by "become better" adonai apparently meant "become king"