The proposal
She cried terribly hard last night—— she didn’t know exactly why herself: some darting pain, springing from underground; they are impulsive, she couldn’t possibly control, could she; some tremendous——guilt, She cried with faces buried in her hand. She cried until the footsteps fade and she too fainted from the guilt, and she wouldn’t tell anyone the reason with no one forcing and threatening her, that how the guilt hurt and why did she cry exactly. She wouldn't tell, and the man did not know. The next day he hesitated greatly, to decide if he would still go to the island, dismissing every possible inquiring gaze on the meeting, ignoring the least hinting question, and only responding to those that addressed him directly, with the most insinuating answer he could come up with, the result of which even brought him a mysterious sense of wit, contrary to his usual reputation as a brainless butcher. “Where did you go yesterday, my lord?” His wife was provoked by this ambitious curiosity, giving an intellectual inquisition to his whereabouts, after he had performed himself a farce via an insobriety after a cup of blood. She concluded that since all women right in age were then present in the TOWER, so he didn’t go out in pursuit of women. Nonetheless, when he returned to the suite late into the night, she embraced him with her soft and slender arms, inhaling around his neck, to discern the smell and perfume, and detecting traces of odor from women, which was all strange smell. indeed. When he fell asleep she was pondering the identity of the smell. It smelt more like the wilderness, the decrepit village, devastated by ice that burned harder than fire, inducing a permanent omission and disregarding, rotting more than death; it could well be the death itself, Why couldn’t it be? She thus joked with him, that he might have been hungry, after skipping dinner and going out to join some grave-diggers; her lovely husband. She laughed indulgingly when she dressed herself in the ultimate style and manner, that he might be having searched some corpses on the great plain, north to the TOWER. Or he might as well be chasing some girls—— heaven knows he loved girls. She was a girl when he courted her, and, she chuckled, look at him now!
“I did not.” To all her jokes and bantering, he simply said such. She took him to the halls, answering questions for him, exchanging wisecracks with his political rivals, while he felt dizzy, wondering why the woman cried and whether he should go. After noon his wife decided that he could rest now, staring at his face. “You look horrible, my lord.” She observed, knowing it very well for she enjoyed his complexion greatly in its normal state, while then it bore devastating fatigue. “Go and have some rest. You have barely slept, after you went out for fun, did you, my dear husband?”
He looked up at her with some veneration. She slept even less, keeping spiraling. When he nodded and was about to go, the Dominion with the white hair came, passing him by, tapping on his shoulder, then passing his wife, kissing her cheek. “Well met, madam. The TOWER has just informed me that we have one outlaw—— this one little vagabond left the TOWER before the meeting should end. If you have any idea? ”
“No.” She answered, gazing at her husband. He left quickly, falling into sleep in a blink. The sleep was turbulent, and when he woke he realized he was dreaming of her crying. Outside the window the sun fell off, leaving traces of blood. He then decided that he should go without much struggle.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV5elunLBxq
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvoCz36SxGo
And then when he arrived at dusk where the falling sun was crimson as blood seen from the TOWER yet remaining the same pale and sallow as viewed from the island, leaving a long trail of the shadow of his own figure, longer than usual, he hovered on the air for a few minutes more thinking to himself that the reflection printed on the shore was indeed uncanny, a disagreeable intruder, of course, and he took his own reason to expect that he wouldn’t see her for a while. Looking down from the air, there was not a spot on the white sand, so he waited, when the sun died bloodlessly, by the stone cave, to see her appear moments later, from the corner of his sight.
She was carrying wood, looking at him with a gesture of welcome mixed with blankness:” I thought you wouldn’t come! It’s late today, isn’t it?” He saw the red lines in her eyes and unbonded hair resting on her shoulder, pieces of wood char falling on her clothes, knowing she didn’t stop crying.
“I must have embarrassed you last night.” She told him, ashamedly. “I didn’t do that out of purpose. Our kind is timid, in nature, pardon me, my lord, I am not trying to excuse myself…”
He sighed, daren’t move; they thus froze mutually on the spot, with him clutching his quickly-fetched present and her carrying the wood for the night. He was clutching his arm truly hard for he was unconsciously nervous, that she couldn’t help but look in the direction, eyes inquiring the unspeakable: are you mad at me? Do you want to hit me, my lord?
“Just some books.” He quit pretending and handed them over; he fetched from his past rooms in TOWER, choosing not topics, making them seem barely ceremonial, “I suppose this one is about cooking, thinking that you might enjoy cooking living alone here…in this beautiful and serene island.” There was a certain grave level of folly in his search for language, which his lady wife tried to address but in vain. She looked up at him, eyes blinking heavily such that he needed to elude them, battling for sentences, winning some, losing more, “This one is for plants. We talked about plants last time, didn’t we?” He said hopefully, to which she apparently trembled, and then he decided that he should hold his tongue for as long as he could.
“Take some rest, my lord?”
She simply smiled. He nodded. She put down the wood, pleading with him to wait while she cleaned the room and sent wood into the hearth, She had a small hearth; smaller even than the one he himself could remember: that one was for two, after all. Two however small the other one might be. Is that alright for you, my lord? Do you need some tea, my lord?
“I would like to appeal to your kindness. ” He spoke such after preparing for a long film of watching; watching her move and feeling his memory bite. He spoke with huge pain and perhaps a shade of cowardice. with his scale-covered fingers shaking. She stopped the movement of her hands, turning, gazing at him—— a disastrous gaze, that she could see him pause and pin that scary yet scared emerald eyes on her. Overall it had been quite unpleasant for anyone to be located by this pair of eyes for so long, through the years had come, yet how could she ever deny when the fear grew into numbness, all she felt, she felt that inescapable sadness, to which no methodology of escapism would apply perfectly, for combining them into one secure, safe and senseless whole? No doubt. late into the night that had passed when neither of them was sleeping but both pretending that the hissing tranquility of the fabricated rhythm of breath, which resembled some war mechanics the man thought to himself that no doubt he had produced a disaster upon his final seeing her again. and she was overwhelmed by her own guilt, inside the enclosed cave where she lay towards the wall, to taste her own sentence to the lightless pit that she had abandoned that child for she had no power for what he was meant for. She was a perity and he was Vansiyr, and what could harm him could have destroyed her.
(
So frequently she only turned her back to him, back to him, again, or more, like what had always been among them since his earliest memory. He certainly had etched that line of the curve of her into his memory, that motion of her doing the work or tending the matter or when he simply followed her down the road, out of the city into the more sparse villages. She was never happy in the city. She turned her back to him when she cooked and she turned her back to him now when she feigned sleep. Every time he produced a slight move she would be startled, like, and so he knew that she never did quite sleep. He considered calling her but restrained from the idea. That tremendous happiness on the tower of the merry never soared so high in the legends that tell what ultimate bliss would there be should one climb up to the supreme sky seemed to be dawned on him for the first time when he met her gaze, now faded acerbically. It was delicate, though. He never thought that she wouldn’t change. She changed quite when they last parted and he had quit the idea to find her ever entering the top tier of the tower. They could both utter the word, that when I thought of you, I thought of death. And I thought of you throughout my life so the death had followed me all along so long as I am alive.
)
“Anything, my lord.” She told him, “Ask me anything I am capable of.”
“Then I should like you quitting calling me lord, and I you madam.”
He whispered. To his surprise, she didn’t falter and she smiled, at the inevitability.
“But I should address you. What shall I address you, then?”
“Nothing.” He said tentatively, as a weak proposition, trying to smile at her, too, not knowing if he had succeeded to do so. He tried to tell, hardly, from her eyes, that mirror, to know if he had smiled correctly, which he had forgotten the way.
Perhaps he had, for she laughed and chuckled with tears. She diverted her eyes from the laughing, as he saw her tears fall along her cheek. She had to hold herself against the counter in the room lest she should fall, and he dared not to move. “Nothing?” She repeated to herself feebly and gently, where tears tease the word.
“Nothing.” He said, clumsily, “There are only two of us. We might as well talk without names—— names aren’t necessary here.”
He tried to explain, and she was wiping her face. Finally, she nodded, gently, and turned to him, giving him a smile, speaking with several stammering and choking by the grief: “We shall.” “Come, please,” she said. Said again seeing him hesitating. “Come. It’s boring to watch. Would you like to prepare with me? I have plants. I have my seaweed. Do you like to taste some?”
He stood up. She was standing on the brighter side of the room, and he was sitting in the niche amid the darkness. So he rose, taking out a step for the thing unknown; it grotesquely reminded him of his first crowning in the TOWER, the maddening of the crowd and the strange gaze, but he was devastated amid the pageant, for he was searching for the fruitless, and the results then doomed. He walked on that day with the regal suit and crown, heavier than usual clothes, but not as heavy as now, when he could sense the time drag long and hard in the space and dimensions, that she stood there and he couldn’t tell if this was real; he walked with step trodding and onerous. He arrived at her side, with a moment of complete deadpan masked visage, till she smiled; and he smiled, too, touching the counter, feeling it more real than the scepter and sword, and he had mustered more courage than ever to walk to her. “What shall I do, then?” He inquired, gently, seeing her shaking her head, “No. You needn’t do anything.” She washed the materials for a meal, while he was standing there; this time she was not trembling, her movements steady.
“It’s just it’s warmer and brighter here, in the light.” She explained, “And I feel bad to let a guest alone in the darkness.”
He complimented her kindness: You are very considerate of me. “I did feel somehow lonely. I would be even less lonely if you would like to assign me some tasks. ”
She chuckled and gave him a bowl of sanded seaweed to wash. He did so with sleeves wrapped and she lowering her head for chores.
“Speaking of loneliness,” he was in a rare, even, an unprecedented fine mood, such that he was as if drunken in a merry ocean of wine, asking her the casual question otherwise he wouldn’t touch, “I truly think this is a beautiful island, but it is lonely. Don’t you feel the loneliness to strong to bear?”
To which she replied light-heartedly: yes, she does. “I do.” The voice was gentle, dancing in the air. “Then why would you?”
He had asked an irresponsible question which he knew the instant he spoke out and turned at her apologetically. But she was already obsessed and slowed her movement, in a melodic rhythm, like an automaton, chirping out with a certain dead harmony, that she does, that she enjoyed, somehow. He watched her move, and tears fall, while she smiled, and turned, to meet his eyes, to clear the cloud and dreamy haze inside the eyes of hers for the first time they met, whispering, that she did. “I do enjoy here. It felt right.”
For a moment he felt as if she was meant to touch him; her gaze already having done that, lingering on his face, with the dose of pain strong to kill thousands of birds, showering their soft feathers from the sky.
“It felt right.” She said, into his eyes, “Cause it felt like death. I thought you were certainly dead, so I like here.”
Then she lowered her head, and till the dinner was ready, none of them said anything.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoa2h6U8QTP
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKH1p3nT4vC
The door of the upmost floor of the TOWER was flung open when the lord walked in, with a mesmerizing smile. “Look at him.” Seeing his face the Dominion said, “Who knew which ocean he is drowning into today?” He indulged the way the lord walked in, with a rare, reposeful manner, not quite aware of their presence; The lord in black saw the high window then opened wide to him, displaying a wide strand of pure sky, floating with a massive stack of cloud, both greatly to his preference, that they burned white, against the pallied sky. He smiled with quiet tranquility, till the crimson lord chucked to his obsession to the things not being there: “Woman, I suppose. Something tamer, something weaker. Nothing new. Aren’ you, my friend?”
He was thus stirred from the wandering, gliding his gaze between two of the participants, as he drew near the table, touching unconsciously on the chair’s edge and the profile of the table, with his hard, petrous fingertips, strong with scales, inquiring the reason of them being alone in the room.
“I thought it would be a full council.” The black lord said, cautiously.
The crimison lord laughed. He said nothing.
The white lord, the Dominion smiled. “Take a seat.” He proposed, taking one out warmly for him, placing him right to the open sky. These two were more intimate than the other one, one could tell, from the way the Dominion touched the black lord’s shoulder, and the way he arranged and sedated him; somehow one would recall his wife from this silver man’s movement, but more sleek and more forceful; he exerted a even greater force over this black lord, inducing that typically confused look from him.
“Why should there be only three of us?” He asked, to which he asked gently: “For this is the true meeting, my dear friend.”
“You do not expect matters be discussed when others are present.” The crimson lord sighed. “Or you might. You never discuss anything. Others do for you. Your wife, your master by your side. I never could quite understand you can ascend the throne. four-time. You played a team trick on me, didn’t you?”
The seated one was at a loss. The white lord giggled. He didn’t respond to the obvious statement but addressed to the stunned one again: “For the TOWER has chosen us.” He lifted a finger and to the finger, his eyes followed; it was as if flying, commanding, the trace of the whole world, with such mighty power that could thudder the star with a gentle move.
We are the chosen; only three of us have ever ascended the throne in the past century. “Oh, dear.” He laughed merrily, “We are TOWER’s darling. TOWER’s true love.” He then turned to the standing lord in the blood-red robe, laughing out loud: this is a love meeting. Love meeting, truly, to which he responded with some admiration, leaving the sitting one alone in a loss. That was his usual doing. He thought about leaving, and preparing a boat for himself… he shall row the boat to the island, this time when he was released from the meeting and TOWER. For his gargantuan body did frighten her anyway, and it was indeed too conspicuous, She wouldn’t be happy to be found, so why won’t he go anonymously, amid a layer of breaking wave, being thrown up and down, from vast expanse to a known shore, in a limit body.
“But anyway you are big.” It turned out they were thinking the same, the crimson lord and him. He concluded the reason that he was there. His size. It was striking and unprecedented. “The world hasn’t seen such a thing that you have produced. What a heart do you have, I thought to myself, once. It isn’t anything peculiar, truly. But you are huge.”
“Yes, he is.” The Dominion said, agreeably, with a hint of pride, as if displaying a collection of his.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPmPcjb0QcM
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFQp11UxMrG
And so he came, in the rest of five days, out of the all seven, via boat, rowing it and steering it at the mercy of the great roaring sea, like trekking over a bleach desert of diamond sand, feeling it rise and fall, and seeing the line of shore appear then fade. He brought her wine and seasoning, anything that he could fetch from TOWER, in a bizarre and random selection, to show the luxurious poverty he was in. “I don’t drink wine.” At first she said. She didn’t drink, like he didn’t eat, yet in the end she drank and he ate; they even dined together for once, on the sixth night, as if they were dining on something created by their mutual presence, with these losing and failing strength in bodily defense and a loose on the tip of lip; when they froze in emotionless face they looked both young, in their wintry prime, preserved in an amber of tear, never to age yet never to be freed till the end of world, whereas they wrinkled and aged when they smiled.
“I shouldn’t have drunk.” She said, feebly, swaying slightly, feeling the flush of blood to her surface, and that burning warmth. “Do you drink often?”
“Sometimes.” He admitted. “But I actually prefer milk. Please don’t force me tell the reason—— wine is too bitter for me. I need sweetness. I add great amount of sugar into the milk cup. She couldn’t stand it, I can tell. Even hard for my baby. It confused my baby.”
He smiled; and he erased the smile. seeing her look at him attentively.
“You are married. ”She said, gently. “You have your baby now.”
He put down the cup of bitter, thick wine. He shouldn’t have eaten. His scales were moving and twitching, his clothes clutching his body and he slacked his collar. He was afraid that she might have discovered something in him thus he looked up, secretly in her direction, yet in such a small space there was no secret, He was lain bare in her blinking, shining eyes.
“Yes.” So he confirmed in a low voice, “Have you seen her?” “Not really.” She replied, “She was standing across the fire and I was blinded by the ash. How is she like?“
He looked deeply into her eyes. The smiles faded, and she lowered her gaze; he saw her fingers tremble a little. He confessed in that low and painful voice, that the lady was like the woman.
“You might have known that she looked like you.” She didn’t say anything, so he had to continue. “I bought her from her former master when she was younger. That was a mistake; I never have bought any slave but her, for she looked like you. I made her my wife with my privilege, thus I cannot complain at anything about her. She is a great figure, and I am happy that she enjoys her present life.”
She crossed her fingers, for a while, nobody did speak. He bent his body, in waiting for her punishment and scolding——Confessions, in great amount, that he had: for how heavy should one’s sin weigh to be infatuated to the shape of slaves? If so he had sinned heavily…. the collections of statues he had gathered in Wein since the enclosure of main hall grew in a steady pace.. overgrowing, rampantly in an uncouth rate….all in an effeminate curve——He was startled with a prick when she reached her hand, unraveling her fingers, to touch his face.
…that he had tried millions of times, since he survived the academy, trying to find her… but later he stoped trying… some part in him he feared also that she might have changed and he might not even portray her clear enough and he surely doubted that she had died…
“I bedded with women…slaves, mostly.” In her hands, he confessed. “I saw visage of you in some of them….”he admitted in a low voice, not hiding, simply bending. “When I saw it I bed with them if they consent. All have consented for they knew I would reward them, which I did, and I sinned with the acts.”
She moved her fingers, caressing his face; with no blinks of eyes he teared, without a change of expression. For what was he crying for, and what was the worth and right that he teared? “I have sinned, greatly, mother.” He simply narrated, “In academy I killed hundreds, for my baby I killed one, on throne I have killed thousands. My lady forced me to the TOWER again, but I wouldn’t, yet she had the power; my sin had the power over me, as barely anything still retains with me but my sin.”
He turned away from her hand, to wipe his tear, yet to his great astonishment she tenderly, and determindedly followed him, with her fingers and gaze, to force his wet face to her. “May I?” The voice rang, in his mind; He looked at her. She gazed him for a while without fear or hatred, only tending near, “May I?”
He didn’t answer, and she took him, kissing on his face, to drink his tears. There came the blast pain of hunger, which he maintained with great constraint, for her to finish the tender torture; she kissed his cheekbone, his forehand, his lips; lightly, gently. He felt himslef amid darkness, that when he emerged with light, they were both tearing, a flush on the face, like blood tainted porcelain.
“I have abandoned you to your fate.” She touched his hair, “I was there when you left the academy. I saw you win and I cried, leaving the mainland and never to return. It have been so long, like many lifetimes before.”
It was hard, after he had consumed some blood and flesh, and her being so near and the flesh undulating, warming and gentle, hard for him to let the hand stroking his face go; and she did not intend to withdraw. She fell on him, in a way superficially resembling his wife but to the utmost contrary, to fall in a tender, loving craze, in the ultimate renouncement of herself, her own life, to look at him, inviting. “No.” He declared, hand clutching her waist, “No.” The voice seemed only to roar in his mind like wave roared too dully outside, never could be as real as her flesh and brimming soul——that some have wanted me to kiss them but kiss was a thing I would not do—— he might have some ridiculous impulse to vindicate himself, to vain and to his own dejection, and she kissed him, touching and caressing his lips with hers, that his heart burned and blood ruled.
“No.” He struggled hard, forcing her slightly up, seeing her tears fall, sobbing. “Mother.” He pleaded, with heavy breath, “I did not come for this. I would never do this to you, much as I have sinned and disgraced you. I came only for——”
“It doesn’t matter.” She muttered, in a half-trance, “It doesn’t matter, my——”
She choked, letting go the phrase she couldn’t possibly finish. My. What? She looked at him with that desperation and hope. “I do not know how could I ever undone the things I have done to you.” She moaned a little,when he exerted overly force on her wrist. He let go quickly such that she again collapsed into his arms, whispering to his lip.
“I am all yours to take, my lord. How couldn’t I?” She said, like an explanation, “I am afraid of you, a Dominion. You could kill me with a sling of claw, and you might as well do so. You could take me, kill me, and consume me. I would not complain or whine. I wouldn’t.”
They stared at each other; with her tears falling. My——he closed his eyes, hearing his heart pound painfully and his blood eroding his flesh, yet with fervor.
“My baby.” She whispered, tears like a cloud of melancholic rain.
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWADQC8up8E
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCC9Nj8FVAr
“What is the topic?” He asked. He was agitated to go, confused and irritated. “Is it the next term? If so, I would clearly to your reverend lord that I intends not to participate, in any possible level.”
“Your lady would not be happy.” The red lord smiled. “But it was not about the term. The term has been too small; a spot seen from the highest peak from the TOWER.”
He stood,leading his gaze upward——that they indeed had stood high, flying to the peak as far as one could desire, for the living clan. “Yet it is meaningless, my friend, to compete with the crowd. Are we high enough?”
“...Always never.” He sighed. “What the academy has told us…but what does it——”
“It has everything to do with the topic, my dear friend.” The white lord added. “Look at the cloud, look at it. So lowly present, soon losing its flavor. We need to climb, if you don’t mind,” he knocked the desk, “Always higher. There shall be no next term, my friend, time-honoured ally. The epoch has ended and the TOWER expects a great lift, with the greatest spirit, purest blood…”
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzVEf1A2g5f
10Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRCycCqAy5h
“I do not intend to claim you.” He was breathing heavily, and they clung together, in tears and chaos, that he said brokenly, with difficulty. “Yet if you let me, I did have one proposal…”
He was gasping too greatly from his pain and she was too shaking her head——she shouldn’t have drunk and he shouldn’t have eaten. Nonetheless, they did and she gently pushed his shoulder, leading him into the small stone bed, curling in his arm, enclosing his shoulder, out of her clear conscious, to drive them into a mutual sleep. “A proposal, mother.” He struggled, “You are not safe, not anymore, living here alone. The TOWER has decided a great war for its new ascending. I wish you to come with me and live in Wein. It is dangerous for you to live this far.”
She wasn’t even slightly moved by his proposal, only burying her face in his bosom. Death that she was familiar with; she had been learning the way of death since she was born. It was an ordinary fate for a slave to die, and she was a normal slave. What was her difference, after all, but an incidence with a swelling belly, a flesh born out her own.
“But I am sleepy. You know I am.” She told him in her old, tiring way when she tried to put him to sleep. She knew his flesh well enough, after all, only its frame was slightly large, its flesh tighter and tougher. “Let’s talk it tomorrow, or let talk about it in dreams…”
If I meet you in my dream—— you know I do. And I was pained. She didn’t finish, to which he sighed and held her to him, saying no more words. He didn’t return the TOWER, feeling it call. but he thought not of the TOWER. He gazed at the full moon, so bright and large on the sky—— surely larger than his figure—— for a while; he then lowered his head to kiss her forehead for once and thought of his own baby, tearing and smiling before fell asleep, never thinking about the TOWER.
ns216.73.216.82da2
