Hope was a foolish thing.
Yseulte had hoped many things in her life, even going so far as to wish on the faraway stars her aunt told her about. Surely someone would catch her star when it fell, cup it like a butterfly in gentle-caged fingers to their heart (because a wish can only be made from the heart and so it, too, must be heard from the heart), blow softly, and then her sweet wish would take flight on wings of stardust. It was her favorite story, but now that her heart was world-weary and cynical, she almost preferred her father's gruesome tragedies where there were no happy endings and foolish little girls did not wish on stars for their father to come home to them a changed man. It had been a cruel thing to learn so young, that you could not change somebody simply because you wished it with all your heart.
Only the gods could change a man, because it was they who had fashioned man's flesh from naught but dust and then returned a man to dust.
So she had learned this lesson as a child, and yet, here she stood as a grown woman at the top of the tallest mountain in Helovia, wishing, hoping to see a glimmer of silver eyes, the flash of a crooked grin, and yearning to feel the sigh of his warm breath on her cold, cold skin. She had hoped for all of these things, without admitting it to herself, so how could she possibly admit it to the earth-singer boy, standing their amid his violets and sweet spring grass in the dead of a frozen, treacherous winter? "You are most generous. However, I'm better off without it," she said quietly. "It was not so valuable to me as it was to him, I think." Yes, she must harden her heart, or what remained of it, into a ball of iron. Unfeeling, cold, and invulnerable.
Cherish my heart while you can, my King of Thieves, for you will never have it again, nor another like it in all the world.
She felt Itzal's venomous violet gaze fixed on her, pricking her skin like needles, suddenly and unwavering. A rush of emotion flooded her conscience, smooth and fluid as a river. Approval. She smiled sadly. So cool and cold, unfeeling and callous; you would have me be my father. And then the tiger's gaze was gone; her skin was unmarred, smooth as marble, and the pressure building in her mind relented. The great sea of emotion receded back to the tide's of Itzal's own consciousness until only echoes of a roaring sea remained behind, as if it had never been there at all.
"Careful," she warned, as the boy leaned curiously towards Itzal, who pretended to slumber, the thick cluster of eyelashes fluttering against his pale cheek like the whisper of butterfly wings. One whisker twitched, then two. Yseulte knew better. Life was a game to him, and the boy was a new toy for him to play with. "Itzal has atrocious manners."
She considered the winged-boy thoughtfully as he spoke to her. His voice was as gentle as the sigh of wind through dry grass and deep as a cold, dark pool; unusually deep for such a young boy, like the very hum of the earth thrummed through his veins. His wisdom, too, ran deep, so deep that she could not tell where the well of knowledge began and ended. A bottomless well, perhaps, to be filled evermore throughout his journey in life.
She hoped they would meet again some day.
"Friends will not always be there, no matter the quality of friend you may or may not be in return. In the end, life has a cruel way of repaying friendship." Death changed everything. She thought of Torasin then, and the grief in her heart was suddenly raw and chaffed once more. Iron. I am the iron maiden. I am my father's daughter. I feel nothing. She looked at the boy keenly, feeling her pale velvet lips curl into the shadow of a cruel sneer. "After all, where is your friend now, boy?"
He would thank her one day, she told herself fervently, for teaching him to rely on no one but himself. |
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