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Michalis never stays.
He is a tempest incarnate, a whirlwind of fire and ash; he is the wind beneath Macedon’s wings, a furious gust that cannot—will not be denied, sweeping everything towards the glorious future that only he can even dare imagine. He has never been one to stay still, always changing, always surging forward, a wildfire devouring anything and everything too weak to face him; he has always sought higher skies.
There is always something, somewhere, that requires attending to. He throws himself into meetings, studies, exercises, from dawn until dusk, never ending. Michalis seems to thrive under their weight, burning brighter and brighter with every challenge met. And yet, Maria can see it beneath the burning flame, hidden deep within the heart of his hearth—that trepid wavering of his soul, the fear buried beneath the fury that threatens to still his advance until he inevitably flickers out.
But at four years old, she does not know how to say that she is scared for him.
Michalis never stays.
Not even Father’s death can clip the wings of the mighty Michalis of Macedon. He is a titan in his own right, bending to no one’s will but his own, wading steadily upstream through the current of chaos that threatens to swallow their kingdom whole. It does not seem to so much as shake him, and though his eyes grow solemn and the furrow of his brows grows deeper by the day, he shakes the title of prince and ascends the throne with a grace so effortless and sure that the people remember that long-forgotten thing called ‘hope,’ the whispers of legends on their tongues. Their sovereign meets them with cool silver on his tongue and a searing fire alight within his eyes; it is in those moments, Maria thinks, that Michalis looks most alive.
The eyes of the king never waver. With every hope placed within his hands and every dream piled upon his shoulders, he seems to rise higher than before. They are not weights to bring him down, but fuel to burn all the brighter—but sometimes, when the candlelight is low and the king has gone to rest and only her brother still remains, Michalis’ eyes tremble with a pain Maria does not know how to ease. She tries, in the beginning, with her love and the words she uses to give it shape, and though it tempers that suffering that churns stormily in his eyes into something gentler, it also paints it darker. She is no fool; she knows when she is only making things worse, and so as the days pass and his eyes turn wearier, darker, sadder, she settles for holding his hand in silence. Perhaps her efforts are worthless, but it is all that she can do.
Eventually, she cannot even do so much as that; for her kingdom, and for her brother whom she holds so dear, Maria lets herself be taken away. Perhaps the storm in Michalis’ heart had finally grown too great for him then, because his cape billows behind him as he seems to almost sprint away.
As her home disappears over the horizon, only Minerva waves goodbye.
Michalis never stays.
He cannot, now that they no longer share hearth and home; that much Maria understands. It is enough, then, that he visits her (and though the times when he is not there feel as though they stretch on through eternity, she knows he does his best to make time for her). She is too young to talk to him about strategy and politics and the world he walks in, but he is never slow to lean over and talk to her about fairytales and window plants and the world she watches from her window way up high. He lets her tangle her fingers in his hair as they chat, clumsy at first, the braids always lopsided or frizzy, but though he is a man of meticulous grooming, he never seems to mind. His voice is always gentle, that big brother of hers, as he compliments her work, tells her how proud he is of all her growth. One day, she even manages to braid a rose into his hair, and though it is a lopsided and loosely bound thing, he joins her in her celebration; when it is time again for him to go, he leaves with the braid still woven proudly into his hair.
She does not ever tell him, but that day, she was so happy that she cried.
Then the day comes that a prince arrives at her door instead. He is a bright-eyed boy named Marth with a gentle voice and promises of freedom who whisks her away to her sister’s side. For a short while, she is joyous, relishing the company of her sister in the world outside the tower… but that joy is short lived, for the homecoming she has long dreamed of is not in a party, but in a war. She is too slow to keep up with her sister on the battlefield—bound to the land and hampered by the terrain—but when she finally finds her sister in her sky, she sees her brother falling out of it. He meets the ground with little resistance in a mess of splayed limbs and crimson, her name on his lips as she cradles his head in her arms.
But she has known since long ago that one day, his flame would begin to flicker out—
—so she holds the embers within her palms and keeps him safe, and she takes her brother home.
Michalis never stays.
Maria cries when he wakes up, throwing her arms around his neck and sobbing into his shoulder; he says nothing to her save for her name, but she can hear all he wants to say in the way he hugs her tight. It does not keep him from leaving again, though, but of course, she did not expect it to. Not too long after, Maria packs her bags and travels to Khadein to forget the space Michalis left behind. Perhaps her sorrow left her careless, for no sooner does she arrive than she is swept up by the man of a thousand nightmares. The last she remembers is Michalis reaching for her, fingers outstretched and yet too far away, always too far away—and the world goes dark.
She wakes up to somber smiles and shaking fingers and the celebration of a battle won and a war well fought. When she asks where their brother is, Minerva answers her with no answer at all, and Maria knows better than to push. The answer is always the same, anyways; this she knows as well. Time and time again, she has seen their brother (the tempest, the whirlwind of fire and ash, the wildfire blazing so bright) draw away from them without a word… But at thirteen, she knows how to recognize that he was afraid of his untamable fire—afraid of hurting his family with his flame. Through all his mistakes and resignation, he has always been her kind big brother, after all.
So she squeezes her sister’s hand and celebrates the end of the war with everyone else, and makes plans to build a fireplace.
Michalis never stays.
Maria is the definition of eternal, of an unchanging presence and unwavering emotions. In some ways, she is stronger than Michalis could ever be—every mistake, every consequence, every ounce of pain—she accepts them face on. And like that, she will save him one day.
She always does.
Michalis never stays, but Maria always does.
And one day, he will come home.