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If only you could have been born with some grand purpose.
It’s in all those books he reads, right? The fictional ones, at least. (Do they still keep fiction in the House of Daena? Does he even care?)
“The Hero’s Journey”. In all the epics you’ve ever been told – through Alhaitham’s hand-translated runes, through Cyno’s desert-cultivated dances, through the history of flowers garnered by Tighnari –
There’s a hero with a journey. There’s a god with a mission. There’s a great calamity to overcome. There’s a pox-spreading evil and only the wisdom of Greater Lord Kusanali to keep it at bay… only the sacrifice of Al-Amar to spare the people a dark and twisted fate.
What a perfect thing: an assured way to help others.
You will never confess it, but when you are drained of inspiration, curled over your latest mess of a design plan, you study the spackled wall at the other end of your room.
You’ll study the spackled wall at the other end of your room and dream about becoming a martyr. The fantasies will lift you from your skin and put all your agony to good use. You could be a gorgeous rose pinned to a cross, or a broken corpse with the sword of destiny plunged through your own breast.
You will never confess it, but when you are alone, you dream desperately of atoning all at once and in the most beautiful way.
Then the curtains on the doorway will sway and you’ll panic, pack all of yourself back into the small space you leave in your heart for yourself. If it’s Tighnari who’s entered the room, he’ll sigh, moving immediately to organise your carefully-chaotic surroundings.
Your voice will always rise in a plea as you trail behind him, trying to keep your system of organisation… but the truth is, you will always love and resent his presence at those moments.
For you, the one chained to things like magnificence and manhood and genius and dark secrets: a little part of you believes that if you imagine hard enough, all those fettering bonds will simply float away.
Reality is not so kind. Alhaitham is not so kind.
He who lives in absolutes refuses to give you absolutes. You are awaiting the Sword of Damocles, dangling above your head, to fall and do its bloody work.
One of these days, he will toss you out. He will find the blueprints for the house you have been designing for the four of you and do something much worse than rip them apart: he will say no.
He’s always been stubborn, hasn’t he. He’s always been unfair and unjust, happy to leave people to their misery. He looks away from all kinds of cruelty without an ounce of compassion to spare. That fact has never changed.
And when you are lightheaded and your hands are trembling so hard because you cannot force yourself through the impossible task of eating – he’s there, dispassionate ringmaster that he is.
The weight of his stare upon you pins you in place, and he tunes out the worst of your rage. He puts one of those soups he detests in front of you and looks you in the eye until you’ve had it all.
Then, without another word, he sweeps the bowl out from under you and leaves the room.
(Every night you wake in a cold sweat and reach instinctively for the blueprints tucked away beneath your bed.
You cannot trust a person who never tells you how he wants to use you.
You want to shout at him, Just get it over with, and Why won’t you tell me what this is all about?
… Scared to confront the chance that this is, perhaps, all it is.)
You can charm anyone and everyone with your lies. Such is the power of a prestigious reputation. It greases palms and locks cold shackles around your wrists. Even the twist of the indulgent grin in your mouth is painful.
You can fool underclassmen and fellow alumni easily, but… it takes more than a few pretty words to trick your husband Mahamatra.
You see him, don’t you? You see the way he is always trying to put others at ease. You see the minute crease in his brow when he is unable to discern what about his presence causes so much upset. He understands the sheer weight of his title, but not the reverence, nor the fear it inspires in others.
It is Cyno who brings forth the words you’ve tried so hard to keep buried. When you and he lay beneath the stars at the edge of a siltwater oasis, you’ll link pinkies. The inside of his thigh will brush your knee, and you’ll gather his head beneath your chin.
And you’ll speak. Without provocation, you will speak. Cyno’s silence lays there to absorb all of the thoughts that brand your mind. You’ll say things like, I was never meant to make it this far, and I don’t deserve the three of you; I’m waiting for you to find out and I am just so lonely, Cyno. Surrounded by people, and the terrible truth is that I am so lonely.
Cyno’s body is always warm against yours. Sometimes the callused soles of his feet scrape your shins. Occasionally, when you reach out to cup his face, you will feel the suggestion of a soft jawline. Or: you will trace the scars on his chest, overflowing with pride for the way he took destiny into his own two hands.
But he feels as chained as you do. He is chained by rules, and order, for he is a blind man feeling his way across a sheer drop, clutching the thin braided rope of a rickety bridge.
(And though he does not comprehend all you are, he clutches your hand as a lifeline.)
Tighnari is deaf to the song of the Sumerian people. He will never win awards or accolades. It is all he can do to help the people of his dominion – his chosen family, those of Gandharva Ville – and exert control over the one thing he thinks he can change.
(And though his emotions do not run as deep as yours, he lends you an ear, regardless.)
Alhaitham… infuriates you.
Such a man of clear-cut rules keeping you in fear.
Such a man. Such a self-made man. Such a coward, refusing even the kisses you try to offer as payment.
(And then, when you have turned your back, he runs a finger down the rungs of your spine, making you shiver.
He says something disgustingly simple, like, You are irreplaceable, and he scatters your thoughts like children’s marbles.)
Someone like you wishes only to atone. You’ve known the pain of utter loss and the cold terror of being left behind. You struggle to say no. You struggle to struggle to struggle. You are a candle constantly on the verge of burning out.
Again and again, your three spouses stoke the coals inside of you.
Sometimes this is torture. You want the hero’s journey. The hero’s death.
Are you even deserving of a trifold happiness?
Every day, you confront a reality as soft as dreams.
