Reminders

[selenias]

Reminders



The reminders came periodically. In a bruising, a kick, an injury. Words of piteous charity offered to me for my losses—they were easy enough to retaliate. Simply strike out with my tongue and watch the enemy scramble for his senses. This is what I would have imagined myself to have first done to him.

But this reminder came in the form of a heron—and was as far from an enemy as I was from sainthood.

Perhaps if my remaining brethren had been stolen, then I too, would have piteous words to offer him. But I will not so easily condemn him to a fate that stalks in snarls at his feet, nor will I allow the waves of despair to drag him under where I cannot reach.

Cruelty is a beast of nature that I've been taming for years. Even now, on evenings like this, when the sands blow into my eyes and cover Rafiel from head to toe in its boggy warmth, I know that there is no limit to where it lays its chains.

It goes so far as to rip a heron from the skies.

"My Queen… Those marks on your skin… If it's not offensive to ask... what do they mean?" I blink.

His questions were innocent. Merely meant to be inquiries. I wonder at times if he understands what he says when he speaks, of if he's merely asking on reflex. He seems too stubborn to give into temptations for deeper speculations—though, we have all fallen once. Perhaps I am too confident in assuming what I have been lead to believe.

Certainly my sight isn't as good as it used to be.

I reach without hesitation and snatch his pastel hand within my own, white silken fabric tangling briefly within my grip. "These are reminders," I say blatantly. I place it on a small splotch of ink, his fingers tense with nerves, than loosely splayed and soft upon my skin; they have no calluses, and I am reminded once more that my hands have never felt like velvet.

Yet he has known despair far greater than mine. I don't need special knowledge to see it in his face what he keeps silent and still at night, his voice only broken with a requiem of his loved ones when he does not believe me to be listening.

I have never known a harmony to be so piercing to the soul.

"Of what?" His voice is quiet and I am left to wonder yet again why such profound purity is not found within my own nation's boundaries.

I know the answer but it is not one I particularly find myself rejoicing for.

"My trials."

He stays still, fingertips hovering like moths against a lantern. "...Did they hurt?"

I throw back my head and laugh into the orange endless sky, ignoring the pinching cold clasps of the jewelry at my throat and his bewildered following eyes, and allow myself to contemplate how different our relations to each other truly must be.

We are so far apart from one another. I fear the gap may swallow us both.

"Ha. I have had worse. Pins and needles cannot hold a candle to a warrior's temper."

He stays lost in his ideals, and I flash my teeth in a show of strength and silently tuck his dawning expression away for later thought – the night is creeping softly now – when he sleeps—head light and gleaming against the satin cushions within his chambers.

We both know by now he doesn't ever sleep a wink.