The water is cool against my skin, so much so that it smarts and prickles as the gentle waves reach up to submerge me, pull me into their light. But I don’t care. I only want the world to be washed away with the dirt and pain of the past. For a moment I am so blinded by my need to forget that I slowly dip my face toward the water’s surface, wondering whether or not I can drown myself in the days to come. Everything else around me falls from my shoulders like a blanket being shed before the heat of day and, oh, how I wish I could reject it all.
I listen to Romul as he grunts and snaps at the water, sometimes crooning to the retriever in hopes that she will rejoin him. Yet I cannot find it within myself to look at anything in particular, lost as I am to the tranquility I’ve discovered in the cavern with those who have no names. But names would only ruin what we’ve created; they would shatter the fantasy we’ve drawn onto the rocks with our secrets and I’m not quite ready to admit my tragedies. I only want to relive my childhood, here and now.
When at last the waterfall and its spray become a part of the essence that nurtures not only my body, but my mind, I turn without guilt or fear toward the stallion and his scars. He appears so far away as he studies the lapping of the current and I am somehow amazed by it. I want to go there, I tell myself silently. But where did he go when his mind was set to wander? Would I ever have the courage to ask?
Instead, I press further into the pool, surpassing even the brute and his companion. In a way I seek to hide the longing that plagues my heart and the questions that dry my tongue. I have never seen anything like him, never encountered such an enigma. I feel as though I am trying to touch something intangible and give it breath where it can no longer subsist. But it does not keep me from wondering whether he would feel should I run my muzzle along his back. Or would he simply dissipate and shatter, a black shadow incapable of traversing the light that drove men from madness?
Perhaps I am the only one touched by hysteria’s sorrow this day, as mindless and distracted as I’ve become. Yet, I cannot mistake his interest when two eyes made of the summer sky turn my ghosts into sunlight. But I’m afraid to fool myself and believe in a lie that I’ve told myself time after time. He’ll leave just like all the rest, I whisper internally. What would it matter? Romul interjects, pausing to study me mid-romp. Ess, you’re never alone, he whimpers. But I am. I’ve always been this way.
The wolf’s protests are voiced openly and the timbre of his cries becomes a quiet wolf-song that carries over the waters and makes me smile. How many times had this symphony soothed the aching that slowly turned to my heart to stone? Like a disease, my disappointments sculpted a beautiful disaster from within. They were the mason and I the rock from which they forged a wall. Soon the wall would become too tall to mount. Soon, I thought, I will never get out.
"She has been with me too, since I was young."
I am torn from my self-pity like a child from the womb and I can see again the stallion’s distorted reflection in the water. It ripples and dances like a dream that I can never have and when I have watched it for too long, I turn my eyes back toward the retriever. However, the creature I find is not the one I remember. She is changed slightly, somehow unrecognizable from before, and I cannot tell if it is my own perception that has replaced her or if there was something truly different in the way she appeared. “Would you really call her a friend? It seems like a term unsuited for what they really are… They are so much more,” I reply wistfully while regarding Romul with an adoring smile. When I finally gather the nerve enough to recover from my daydreaming, I find that the retriever has bent toward the water seeking to acquaint herself with my scent. Slowly, I approach the pair with my neck arched low enough to catch an errant wave or two.
When I am close enough to inhale the scent of both companion and master, I breathe in deeply, nostrils flaring and trying to place such a fragrant mixture of earth and dust into a memory that has seen so little. As if content with the exchange, I lift my head as cautiously as I’d arrived. I am suddenly struck by our proximity but am comfortable with our closeness, even without Romul at my side. “I am careful enough to allow him what I have… even if I am left bare,” I answer in response to the stallion’s advice while looking again at the wolf, lost in his oblivion. “We are by no means unbreakable if the past has served any indication. I merely find it unjust to rob him of what little illusion is left.”
I listen as the brute regales me with his wisdom and I am saddened to admit that what he says is true. I have made Romul the protective guardian of my soul and in return have fed him only weakness. However, I cannot force myself to confess to this and simply nod in agreement. I feel heavy with so many memories in which I have left the wolf to fumble and carry the slack from my inabilities. Have I ever been strong? I ask him internally. For a time there is no reply, but when it comes, I feel only worse for wondering. Always Essetia… you are always strong for me. I love him for his forgiveness and his strength to overlook what I cannot. I wish I was able to forgive like him.
"Your eyes,"
"-it is as if he was borne from them."
Again I am caught off guard by the stallion’s words, as if I have forgotten his company. I know that what he says is meant to comfort me or compliment… but it devastates me. I am so gone from who I once was that no amount of pretending will ever award me my childhood again or the love lost… “He is the only reminder that I was ever someone else.” |
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