But the walls stay, the roof remains strong and immovable, and we can only pray that if these rooms have memories, they are not ours.
Regarding her, with her uncanny eyes and indifferent expression, I cannot help but let my mind fall victim to rumour. After my first encounter with Adonai, I had asked about the family: I had listened to the talk on the streets. They claimed the Ieshan matriarch created her children rather than birthed them. That, I suppose, is the origin story of the Ieshans; it is the noble myth they were born into, regardless of if they as individuals choose to believe it.
The fact seems startling to me, as the first stories of “origin” that reached me were ones of conquest. I learned the cities my great great great grandfathers conquered long before becoming trapped in Oresziah. Beneath me, the entire estate takes on the aura of the transient, of a thing that might succumb to sand and fire.
This knowledge is, perhaps, the only meritable thing I inherited from my father. Everything will burn, if brought to kneel by war. The villages beg for mercy; the women, too, no matter what regalia they don. It washes over me now as I regard her, one of the Ieshan princesses, belonging to an estate worth more than the whole of the island where I had been raised.
None of it, the wealth, the circumstance, means anything at all.
One day, perhaps, I will not view life through such a caustic lens: perhaps I will move past war and conquest to view one as others ought to, in times of peace and prosperity. I wish to see the beauty, to perhaps engage her in witty conversation. But how badly do I wish that, I ask myself. How badly? Not badly enough, because no matter how hard I try to act the part of another man, first and foremost I can only see how all that they are is built upon the false guise of eternity.
This is where I differ so intrinsically from them; it is the reason I am drawn to Adonai like a moth to flame, perhaps.
I want to remind them nothing is eternal; that even the most beautiful things will burn, if brought the right flame. (I have seen a little of that reflected in him, I think; it is his martyrdom).
I am Ruth. The third daughter. Her answer is so simple, so understated, that I do not feel the urge to respond to it. She has yet to show a flicker of emotion; but her eyes remain unwavering. I do not look away. I do nothing but let the breeze tease my hair. It is strange to realise I cannot smell the sea.
“I am,” I answer just as simply. And then with faux innocence ask, “He is allowed them, isn’t he?”
There is nothing snide in my tone; only the impression of doe-eyed ignorance.
I mimic her tone when I state, “You are not hosting,” as if commenting upon an unremarkable feature of the weather, the time, the year. If she will look away, neither will I: and in that stare I find my answer. I have never once met a snake: but I begin to wonder if the Ieshan estate is a nest of them, all in different forms.
