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The ring its self was easy to find. It was nothing but a circle of cold iron. It was made once by a blacksmith and then remade twice, once in a pot of boiling salt water collected from the sea in a bottle older than Arrell himself and once in a pool of moonlight that he had tricked and cajoled into being, if only for a few moments, liquid.
It was the inscription on it that was harder. It wasn’t even the carving that gave him trouble. All Arrell had to do was touch the ring with enough intent built up and it would shiver and change for him. It was the question of what that got him.
Any words from the Creed of Samothese would, from him, ring false. But the words of the philosophers and poets that he and Alyosha traded in seemed so thin and weak compared to Alyosha himself, who went each day to pray in the pews of the sun and yet carried so much light inside himself that it spilled out through his paper skin. No words that Arrell could think of were equal to that.
Yet there had to be an inscription. Words would seal the protections he had woven into the iron. And so he carried the ring around in his pocket like a lead height and thought.
“What’s this?” Alyosha asked.
He stood in the middle of Arrell’s room, his initiates robes trailing from one hand and a plain iron ring in the other. He held the ring up so that it caught the sun pouring in through the windows. He held it like it would burn him, as if he wasn’t the only person in the world who the cold iron wouldn’t burn.
“It’s nothing” Arrell said firmly, even as shame filled him like a slow flood. Of course it was not nothing. Alyosha stared at Arrell, similarly incredulous at the idiocy of his answer.
“It’s not nothing,” he sighed, “It’s a ring.”
Arrell sat up slowly, “I meant it’s nothing you need concern yourself with.”
This made Alyosha’s eyebrows climb even further up his pale forehead, “Did you not teach me The Parable of Lio, which states that no single item in the universe is below our notice or study?”
“You can’t,” Arrell said, now equally amazed, “argue that the Parable of Lio includes a fundamental a misunderstanding about the nature of our universe and then no more than a day later use it against me.”
“Ah,” Alyosha smiled, “but I wasn’t trying to prove Lio right I was merely trying to prove your hypocrisy.”
Alyosha was always most beautiful like this, with sharp words in his sharp mouth. He was always most alive like this, too, with his initiates robes discarded and his thin body free to speak whatever he wishes. When he saw Alyosha at the covenant, head bent over the book of the creed or kneeling to talk to a penitent, Arrell wished that he could share this Alyosha with them.
Arrell looked at his hands, and then up at Alyosha. He rested for a moment on the edge of his bed and let the fear that ate at him rest too. He could be neither as sharp nor as kind as Alyosha could, who was blessed it seemed with limitless depths of everything Arrell lacked. Except, of course, fear.
“It’s for you,” he said, and felt brave saying it.
“What?”
“The ring,” he said again, “it’s for you.”
The slap when it came was resounding. It hurt. It was meant to. It echoed around the room and resonated through the the air between them. It was meant to do that, too. It was meant to stain the side of Arrell’s face red, and it was meant to be sharp, and it was meant to be cutting.
“Tutor,” Alyosha spat, “I asked you to marry me three years ago. I asked again and again, I explained that I needed you, I explained that I loved you and wanted to claim you in eyes of everyone and you said not now. You said I’m too busy, I can’t be tied down, my work is too important. You said I don’t care about silly traditions like marriage. I understood, because I understand you, Tutor, and I thought that maybe you understood me.”
Carrying the rings was the hard part. He couldn’t let it go or leave it behind as he traveled so he carried it and with each passing day, and with each of the letters that marked out his life, it became heavier.
Arrell found a young initiate of the creed in a market, preening over the fruit selection. He was younger than Alyosha, and sturdier with broad shoulders and dark hair so short as to be nonexistent.
“Brother,” he called out.
The initiate looked at him for a long moment, “I am not your brother, nor a brother at all. Not yet.”
He scrunched up his nose, “Initiate, may I ask you a question?”
The Initiate mirrored his scrunched face, “I am not a priest of the creed yet, and I am as you might say off duty.”
Arrel wants to snap at him with the words Alyosha had said to him more times than he could count. As long as our lord’s creation hangs in the sky we have a duty. He did not, though.
“I am not seeking advice or guidance,” he sniffed, “I have plenty of those for myself.”
The initiate looked him up and down in a raking motion, “I can see that.” He narrows his eyes even further, and made a judgement on something he saw in the fold of Arrell’s wizard robes and the way Arrell held his hands. “Ask your question.”
Arrel breathed out to steady himself, “What is the traditional way to ask somebody to marry you under The Creed
This made the Initiate smirk, “Your beau is a traditionalist then?”
“No,” Arrell said firmly, “my ‘beau’ is not a traditionalist, no.... But they are faithful.”
“Ah,” The initiate said, “I see. You want to impress them.”
“No,” Arrel said, this time with even more calm fury, but the initiate seemed unconvinced and barged along anyway.
“Well if you really want to be traditional and emulate Samothese from whom all light shines,” The initiate said ignoring the look on Arrell’s face, “then you should make a necklace of iron in the shape of your sister’s teeth and present it to him on the Planes of Celebration.”
“I do not have a sister,” Arrell snapped. This made The Initiates smile go from a careful quirk of the lips to a wide smirk and suddenly Arrell realized he was being had. His face flush and his eyebrows snapped down in a sharp v. “If you are going to be no help I will take my question to a more helpful order.”
“Relax,” The Initiate laughed, “the truth is that there is no traditional way to do it. But when Samothese asked the prince to marry him, he gave him a bit of knowledge that he had not shared before and in doing so gave him a bit of his heart. Maybe, just try telling them the truth.”
When he next saw Alyosha he had traded the plane cream of initiates robes for the gold edged silver of a full Priest. His hair was in that awkward stage when his initiates close crop had grown out but was not yet long enough that he could tie it into the traditional brother’s braid. He looked older, but no less bright, like a small blaze which had settled in for a long burn.
Arrell stood in the south transept of the church and watched Alyosha kneel to speak to a small, crying child. Even from there Arrell could see the set of Arrells hands, deliberately soft rather than the fits he wore to speak to Arrell. It was simple leaving Aloyosha in the heat of an argument but it was easier coming home to him. If he would have him.
Alyosha saw him then, over the child’s shoulder. He made a small motion of his hand that Arrell, having seen it many times before, took to mean that he was not to speak a word of his philosophy under the roof of the sun creed. He was of course welcome to speak any words in favor of the creed if he so wished, which he didn’t. It was not an order from Alyosha wo appreciated an argument more than anybody else Arrell had ever meant, but merely part of their truce. Sub clause one stated that Arrell was to say nothing that might get him banned barred or thrown out of the halls which Alyosha called home.
Eventually Alyosha slipped out of the crowd of people who sought his advice and the comfort that the Creed could offer and made his way to Arrell. He did not look at Arrell as he walked but rather looked through him in the firm and serious manner he had when considering questions of the cosmos.
When he reached Arrell they turned and in silence walked together out of the Church and into the square. They had long ago learned to match their strides so that they could talk together as they went, but today they said nothing. They said quite a lot of nothing, so that it became a dialog of silence, a whole argument told without a twitch of the lips. After they walked for some time Alyosha breathed out the last of the claustrophobic silence and turned to Arrell.
“You came back,” He stated flatly.
“Of course I did,” Arrell snorted, indignant.
“I’m never sure if you will.”
“I always will,” Arrell said, as firmly as he had ever said anything. Still, he knew Alyosha did not believe him; he could see the hard ice of doubt in Alyosha’s pale eyes. Alyosha smiled anyway. The ice didn’t melt but Arrell couldn’t bring himself to care.
He had been thumbing the ring in his pocket since he had returned to the city. Over the year and change since he had procured it, the outside had grown smooth with the oil from his worrying fingers. He knew its shape perfectly, just as he knew the shape of Alyosha’s fingers. It would fit he knew if Alyosha ever choose to wear it.
He took Alyosha’s hand gently as he could and opened Alyosha’s clasped fingers one by one. He kissed the pale palm presented. Arrell always marveled at Alyosha’s hands, which were clearly not strangers to work and yet were so soft. He drew away then, so that he could peer up at Alyosha’s thin face. Alyosha had not thawed, but his lips now turned up rather than down and his brows were not so closely knit.
Arrell laid the ring in Alyosha’s hand.
“I was wrong to presume,” Arrell said.
Alyosha threw his head back and cackled, “Did that hurt you, Tutor?”
“Yes,” Arrell responded, “Let me tell you a secret.”
Alyosha said nothing, so Arrell thought of The Initiate in the fruit market and steadied himself.
“I wasn’t going to ask you to marry me,” Arrel plowed on, despite the fact that with each consecutive word Alyosha’s eyebrows grew higher, “I made the ring to protect you. I was… scared for you. I am… still. But when you thought that I was going to ask you I realized that had been the plan all along, that I wanted that. So I didn’t know what to say. I was scared.
“Look you don’t have to wear it. You don’t have to marry me, but please wear it round your neck it will protect you there without… meaning anything.”
Alyosha touched Arrell’s check softly. His fingers stained with the ink of writing that days chronical left little black kisses on Arrell’s skin.
“Lio’s Parable teaches us that everything means something.”
“It will mean that you are safe. It will mean nothing that you do not want it to.”
Arrell tilted his head so he could kiss the palm that did not hold the ring.
“Read the inscription, Alyosha,” Arrel asked, and without removing his hand from Arrell’s cheek he did.
“For your questions, always truth.”