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GULL
let an angel swing and make you swoon
She pauses her caresses to let you brush her forelock from her face, and as she looks at you with such trust in her violet eyes, it seems to you that you have found an angel amongst the pits of hell. So steady is her gaze, so open her affection, so different she is from anyone you’ve ever met…privately, you wonder how Muriel can afford it, to embrace the world with the joy and intensity that she does. Has she never been hurt, felt loss? For she trusts so readily, finds the good in all and everything in a way that you can never do. That sense of optimistic innocence was squashed early in you, murdered in your youth along with the bodies of your brethren. Cavalier as you may be, you are an inherently wary soul, and there is a part of you that cannot comprehend her easy acceptance of the world for what it is. Yet it isn’t merely acceptance, but a concept so foreign to you that you cannot even recognize it for what it is: the choice to love unyieldingly, even in the face of utter desolation.
Still, this unidentified sense of wholeness radiates from her, and though you cannot understand it, it doesn’t stop you from pushing closer, gobbling it up like a meat-starved dog in the streets. Her peace soothes your neverending restlessness, if only when you are with her, and you will gladly escape into a simpler world, one with no worries, one where only you and she exist. Except…suddenly her eyes are clouding as she tells you that she was on the boat with— Her faltering assurance goes unnoticed, for you are concerned with the look in those violet irises and the shadows that have begun to swirl behind them. Have you made it to heaven only to have the gates creak shut in your face?
It is as if she senses your suspicion. It is interesting how easily she reads you after the brief weeks you spent together; while you may wear your heart on your sleeve, it is almost as if she anticipates your emotions before even you do—perhaps a little trick she learned from the rather…intimate nature of your short-lived romance. And then, though you’re silently begging for her not to do it, arrives the confession. "I've been...” she trails off. Your chest constricts against your will. Why is she looking at you like that? “Oh Gull, please don't freak out” –too late— “but...we uhm...when we met, well..." The words don’t come and she shifts her weight uncomfortably, and with it, your world begins to shift as well. Idiot! You would never learn, would you? Had you made the mistake of leaving yourself vulnerable, cracking the door of your vaulted heart to her without remembering that doing so would also give her access to ransack the place? You’d told yourself that this time was different, that she was different, somehow hoped against hope that she would never—“We have a son.”
The words come so unexpected that you cannot process them in time to react. All you can manage is shocked silence, until finally, your eyes dart away from hers and rake over the decidedly foal-free surroundings. We have a son. The announcement echoes in your ears, We have a son. A son! A son? But…where is he? Immediately, your mind rockets to the worst: a tiny corpse, fine baby fluff stretched grotesquely tight over jutting ribs—no. No, this was not then, this was not home…but you are still powerless, breathing shallow as Muriel explains with words that all sound foreign and tinny to your ears. She’d said have, hadn’t she? He wasn’t…he couldn’t be. But oh gods, why is Muriel looking so tearful, and why—“Where is he.”
The voice that comes out of your mouth is one you do not recognize, one that is eerily calm. One that, as you turn to the pink mare, repeats a little more loudly, “Muriel, where is he?”
@[Muriel]
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