Atlas

He recognized her judgement and confusion toward his less-than-conventional way of life. It was not uncommon for brutes to travel afar, from coast to coast, to see the sights and to hear the stories of lives they might live. Atlas had certainly enjoyed his fair share of splendor and indulgence—nights spent beneath the very stars he was named for—and had discovered his love of freedom back then. He’d met so many faces, the thieves and the merchants, the aristocrats and the royals, and none of it seemed to strike his broad fancies… not like Helovia had. In fact, he still didn’t feel the urgent need to proclaim himself to any one thing or pastime, because what sense would it make now? What would he become as crafter or a healer, a mundane cog in the figurative machine? It didn’t feel natural to abide by someone else’s set of rules, day in and day out, persistently sewing or salving toward an end unseen. Perhaps that was why he had wandered for so long, lost in the infinite possibilities of a nomad. Atlas could learn a great many things from roadside gypsies and their common whores. He’d learned to live and to enjoy that living until it didn’t feel so much like simply surviving anymore.

Helovia was a great deal different than the societies he’d come across as a youth. They had structure and civilization where Atlas was content to merely subsist. If he wanted to spend his nights by the sea then he could do so. If he wanted to lose himself in the Labyrinth then he could do so without the wagging of curious tongues trying to locate his whereabouts. Perhaps that was another part of Lena that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around, her sense of duty, but it was something he also knew that she would come to accept about him if time allowed.

They had only skirted one another during his time in the Basin and though the Mender spoke about lost moments and missed chances, Atlas couldn’t convince himself to agree. If he had met her then, he would have become just like everyone else in her life. He would have left before the good parts had even begun to bloom. In a show of understanding he nodded solemnly, but followed shortly after with some regret, “It would have been a shame if we had.”

In some ways, Atlas wanted to tell her the reasons he’d been so unreliable in the past, but none of them seemed to truly make sense. So instead of trying to put words to his demons, he moved toward the Mender, intent on reclaiming the space she’d originally put between them.

As the truth of his previous behaviors sank in and Atlas attempted to soften the blow with a tender nudge against a small dip in Lena’s neck, he worried. He worried what she would make of him now, even if he wasn’t exactly who he had been back then. Yet, that was a good part, his transformation, and it appeared more concrete now than ever before. It took him a solid minute to fully receive her next question without trying to find a way around it like before, but to sate Lena’s curiosity, he allowed himself to choose a path different than the one before. “Well, the things I’ve wanted to do have already been done. It’s not so much what motivates me, but what motivates someone else. I want to encourage those like you to be inspired or to see outside of the boxes they’ve built themselves. Everyone spends too much time fretting about responsibility when they should be enjoying the life they feel they are so responsible for… That’s what I want to do—I want to encourage and inspire.”

Atlas had done a great many things. He had spent nights on the shore listening to an exotic sea. He had explored ancient ruins and made up fantastical stories of their destruction. He had climbed mountains until the air was too thin to go any higher. Yet, those things were just desires he’d achieved by living; they weren’t exactly what he wanted to do with his life, because there wasn’t really a name for it… at least not in his opinion. As the stallion absently traced soft figures into Lena’s neck, he listened while she regaled him about her many trades. He imagined she had made a great Emissary, somehow managing to survive wars against enemies… and friends. He imagined how the darkness of night might find her awake during those periods of unrest and how alive she must have felt. The image of her, flushed and anxious, brooding over what might happen when the sun peaked the horizon, made his heart race. Did it frighten her to recall such vivid memories? Even as she looked to him, the stories a moving picture across her face, Atlas couldn’t find the words to remove himself from the surreal and the fantasy she had created.

However, his dream-like state quickly transformed into a more subtle version of Lena as she was now—a healer. She had chosen a safer path for herself and the long life she intended to lead. It was an admirable decision he supposed, but he did wonder what had compelled her to change her mind… Wartime situations didn’t often spare room for the soft-hearted and yet Lena hadn’t always been the gentle dove she was now. It made Atlas curious. “I imagine the art of healing is a… tedious skill? Especially considering you only desire purpose?” he questioned more inquisitively than vindictively. The way that she had expressed it sounded more habitual than it was gratifying. Was there something else she wanted more— something that didn’t hold a title within the structural expectations of herd life?

Then she was off again, surely trying to cool whatever heat he’d attempted to bring to the surface. She appeared so wild and carefree as she wandered from copse to grove, losing herself in the shadows and splendor of the labyrinth. Would she miss this when she returned to the North and the cold and her routine? Atlas imaged her encased in glass then –forever frozen like a rose that couldn’t be touched— while he remained in the mountains and valleys, by the rivers and oceans, wandering until he could only hear his heartbeat on the summer breeze. “Then don’t,” he called from behind with a lopsided smile full of mischief, “Just don’t carry them at all.”