01-19-2018, 03:52 PM
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; In another life, before he stepped into the ocean, he might have warned her. I am too old, he might have said, I am too wanting. But he isn’t old, now – not in body, which is in its prime, all slick black with no gray. She doesn’t know of the other life he lived. She’s close, still, and he can catch her scent. It’s sweet, earthy, and he savors it. She compels him, with her boldness, her dreamer’s gaze. “Me too,” he says. Loneliness is a terrible creature, and for all his familiarity with it, it never gets better. It’s why such shivers crossed his body when she brushed past. It’s why his mind reels at the scent of her. She inquires about his eyes. He doesn’t have the real story to tell her – the real story is terrible, anyway – but he has something. A notion. “I got them from my father,” he says, and at that word - father - his voice chokes for a moment. He doesn’t know his father. They never met, in this life, or the last. In this life, he doesn’t even know his father’s name. (Covet. An awful king who killed the man his mother most loved.) He fights the urge to close those same eyes, to hide the orange hue. They are a mark, a scarlet letter proclaiming his heritage. “Mostly,” he says, “I live here as much as anywhere else. I was never one for kingdoms.” What worth is he to kingdoms, anyway? He has no powers, besides a penchant for not dying when he should, he has no mind for diplomacy and no spirit for fighting. He is better as a nomad. As a nothing. Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |