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Thus it came to pass that the king of the in-between Jeramie Idmonarak ne Brasieri offered up himself and his people’s hard-won peace for the greater sake of peace on all of Terra, and with his people slipped back into the ignominious cleft in society that he had occupied for millennia, accepting this price and awaiting the day when that peace would once again return to his mismatched hands; and thus it came to pass that the Kings of Terra in great sorrow and anger at the plight of their friend drew swords in unison and soundly defeated the trickster and liar that had so forced his hand; and the king of the in-between Jeramie Idmonarak ne Brasieri personally appreciated this gesture, really, though it was but a cry of futile rage against the unyielding reality of the circumstance. And so the Bugnarak with their half-and-half king retreated to the caves beneath Gokkan and hunkered down to wait out the storm of bad opinion, withdrawing from the outer world until such time as the humans were willing to think upon peace once more.
Jeramie had faith in his friends to overcome this setback and clear his name, and the name of all Bugnarak, for they were innocent of this particular crime. He had seen the shock and disbelief on their faces as their eyes stared over silenced mouths, and knew that they would not allow things to stand like this if they could help it; it was touching to him, and a comfort. But that same sight led him to sorrow that he had caused them pain. He had not had friends like this before. Since he had rid himself of that accursed mask, and the seal on his nature that lay behind it, life had taken on new and vivid color for him; his story had entered not only a new chapter, but a new act. It had been a sweet and free-breathing two years. Such comrades as these, who had helped him achieve his long-sought goal of peace, were hard to come by, and dearly won, and he felt within him the sacrifice of no longer being able to stand proudly by their side.
The caves of Gokkan were cold, and deep, and lonely. He carried in his chest the memory of their sleeping faces, that stolen fond look, and it warmed him like a flame. Gira’s murmured thank you, in that voice that had become so dear to him, was like a talisman he clutched with half-human hands.
Up on the surface, in the sunlight, Gira was faring less well. Bless his mortal heart, he had not the experience of weathering centuries of setbacks, had not the immortal knowledge that all things pass, the patience of a spider crouched in the web waiting for a fly. No, Gira was worried. His tender heart, not to mention—if one might be so bold as to assume—though of course, it is a narrator’s business to assume—his tender feelings for Jeramie, were driving him to sorrow and agitation. He hid it well, for he was ever the actor, and in any case there were many more pressing matters awaiting his attention: the material effects of the past week’s diplomatic crisis needed rectifying and smoothing over, even if their root causes had gone. It was a full and hectic week before Gira finally departed for Gokkan and made his way to the caves.
The Bugnarak had made themselves difficult to find. The cave opening was in a cliff face nestled in a stretch of bare tundra, and the cave network itself stretched and wound down and down and around, a fearsome maze that not even the Supreme Justice had bothered to challenge. But Gira was determined, and finally he emerged into the throne room where Jeramie sat, ruling in lonesome and austere exile as he always had.
“Gira,” said Jeramie, mildly surprised, and at the same time unsurprised, and at the same time touched.
“Jeramie,” said Gira desperately, and rushed up to the throne, and stopped awkwardly as Jeramie rose to meet him. “How... how have you been?”
The tender wistfulness in his voice would make any mortal heart weep.
“I’ve been well,” said Jeramie, whose shriveled immortal heart had, nonetheless, shed a few tears at the sight. “You forget that I have lived for two thousand years. With all I have seen and experienced, it would take more than this to unseat me.”
“But the peace you finally won is gone.”
“A temporary setback.” Jeramie smiled at Gira, and Gira was comforted by the sight, though only to a degree. “It saddens me, yes, but all is not lost. I have two thousand years of experience being patient, as well. And unlike everything else I have lived through, this time I have friends on my side.”
The emotion conveyed in that utterance was not lost on Gira; he felt touched, but his complicated emotions grew only more so. He swallowed and looked at the ground. “We’re not supposed to be on your side right now, though,” he said. “Not publicly. I don’t like that.”
“Ah... well, every gambit comes at a price.”
“I don’t like it,” repeated Gira wretchedly. “Everyone keeps talking about how heroically we defeated you. And everyone keeps talking about—about—how sad it is that you took advantage of our trust. About how we were nurturing a snake in our blossom—”
“Bosom.”
“Yeah, that. And that it was nice of us to try for the whole making up with the Bugnarak thing but we should have always known about them—and always known about you—” His voice was rising, pleading, plaintive. “And I have to sit there and agree with them!”
Poor, sweet thing. It would have been impossible for anyone to witness this tirade and not feel moved, and Jeramie felt moved indeed. He moved closer and took Gira’s face in his hands, ungloved now that he was among his own kind; Gira’s wide and pleading eyes stared out from between the frame of a human hand and a Bugnarak claw.
“Gira, Gira,” he said, “aren’t you an actor? Remember that we are telling a story, and I am the villain in it. I am used to it. There is no need to concern yourself with me; I am comfortable here in the in-between, where I have always lived. Shouldn’t you focus your energies on telling the story I want to have told? You spun a fine tale when it was you, the wicked king, uniting the Kings against him. Draw on that actor’s strength for me a little, will you?”
“It’s different when it’s me,” insisted Gira, and his hands came up to rest on Jeramie’s wrists. “Being the tyrant king was supposed to keep everyone else out of it.”
Jeramie could not help it; he grinned at the irony, and stroked his human thumb over Gira’s cheekbone. “And just what do you think I am doing right now?”
“I know,” said Gira unhappily, aware of the contradiction yet helpless in the face of its reality, and pulled Jeramie’s hands down off him. “I know! But it doesn’t feel good to watch.”
“A lesson for the future, don’t you think?” said Jeramie, imparting as he always did his storyteller’s wisdom, and as always his storyteller’s wisdom fell on deaf ears; Gira looked at him uncomprehendingly, for he had not been blessed with the ability to analyze a text for themes and message. An enduring pity. The conversation, perforce, turned to a different path. “Gira, my friend. You must be patient. It means more to me than you know to have a friend so unwilling to bear the whips and scorns upon my honor. But that honor was stained long ago—this is no different. I am used to this.” Gira started to say something; Jeramie pressed a clawed finger to his lips. “I was born of a union that should never have been, as a child that should never have existed. The curse of hatred has lain upon me from the moment I first drew breath. I am suited to bear this. You wield the role of villain as a weapon, and put it down when it grows too heavy for your kind soul—I was born into it. You need not worry about me.”
Hearing this, Gira’s expression had grown grave, solemn, and still with that tender sorrow that had not left his face since he walked in. It matched the emotions settling within him. Bless his kind heart, but he has always been focused on the immediate, on the now, on who is suffering in front of him and what can be done to alleviate it; and right now he saw only his friend reminding him of all the ways he had suffered before they met, and all the ways in which he was resigned to continue suffering. It weighed on him, and it pained him that the distant and lofty matters of statehood should take precedence over this simple anguish. But two years as a king had curbed his impulsiveness, and taught him the value of seeing the big picture, of all the many lives that rested on his shoulders. He breathed out.
“I’ll try not to worry about you,” he said, quietly. “But I can’t help it. I miss you.”
“Miss me?” Jeramie laughed. “Gira, my heart, it’s been a week. The blink of an eye! I am prepared to wait at least a decade for public trust in the Bugnarak to allow us back aboveground.”
“A decade!” cried Gira. “Maybe you can wait that long, but I can’t.” He gripped Jeramie’s hands fiercely. “We aren’t just going to abandon you like this, you hear me? We’re going to undo the damage that stinking leech caused and work to preserve peace between humans and Bugnarak. It’s not going to be a decade. You’ll be back aboveground before you know it!”
Jeramie smiled at him. Gira’s heart stuttered at the enduring warmth and reassurance of that smile, which—if one might be so bold—was a very flattering reaction. “Your confidence warms me,” he said. “I will place my faith in your efforts. But do not prioritize me and mine over the threat to our planet. Remember what I said—there can be no peace between humans and Bugnarak if all of us are dead.” He squeezed Gira’s hands, gently, softening Gira’s grip into a gentle hold. “Let your kind heart guide you in the matter of everyone’s happiness, not just my own.”
“Yours and everyone’s,” said Gira, with quiet fierceness. “I’ll make sure of it. We all miss you, you know? Everyone’s managing without you, but you’re part of the team now. We want you back by our side.”
Jeramie’s smile stretched wider to hear that. “That means more to me than you will ever know,” he said, and meant it. “But you should go. I’ll wager you have a mountain of far more pressing matters to attend to than to catch up with my humble self.”
“You’re always important,” said Gira, with such unselfconscious frankness that your average subtext enjoyer might well have no natural defenses against such a statement, and nearly experience emotional obliteration for a moment. “But, okay. I’ll go now.” They were still holding hands. “Take care of yourself. I miss you.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
“I hope,” said Gira softly, and then leaned in with that bold decisiveness of his, where once he has made up his mind to do something he does it wholeheartedly, in an instant, with his whole being, and what he did now was to catch Jeramie’s mouth in a kiss that ached with longing, and Jeramie caught and held that kiss with no great surprise, and yet with great wonder. It may indeed be admitted that both of them had at times contemplated such an action over the past two years that had drawn them close together, but never yet moved to complete it, though the possibility had oft hung warm and tangible in the air between them. But such it is that in moments of great change all things are laid bare, and old propriety may be thrown to the winds. They kissed breathlessly, grasping at each other, drawing it out as though it were their last chance. Which was silly. Jeramie knew better than anyone that they had all the time in the world.
Here the reader may recall two thousand years spent locked behind an iron mask and be unsurprised at the revelation that this was a novel experience for not just Gira, but Jeramie as well. For all the king of the in-between had lived and suffered and traveled and experienced for aeons longer than any human life, the simple warmth of a lover’s lips was vivid and new to him, and he found himself wanting to draw it in and hold it for as long as he could.
Well, there’s no need to look at me like that.
At last they separated, with reluctance. Jeramie smiled his warm, reassuring smile, a practiced expression to cover the sweet naive shock to his heart. “You’re very sweet,” he said, Gira’s hands clasped in his, close between their chests. “I hope to stand by your side before the world someday soon. In the meantime, do not trouble yourself with thoughts of my plight. Be a little longer my faithful actor, telling the tale of my great villainy, and someday that story will reach its natural close. We will see each other again. Now go.”
“All right,” said Gira, and stole one last kiss, gentle and lingering, and then made himself let go of Jeramie’s hands, though he sorely missed their warmth, and the by now dear to him feeling of Bugnarak chitin between his own fingers. Then he walked back across the throne room to the entrance of the tunnel that would take him back up to the surface. Wistfully, with that great heart of his that feels so lovingly and acutely, he looked back at Jeramie, took a moment to imprint into his eyes the sight of his smile, his fond wave. Then he plunged back into the tunnels, headed back up to the lonesome tundra of Gokkan’s countryside; still missing his friend, but with his heart fortified and warmed against his absence, and newfound determination beating in his breast.
Jeramie watched him go, then retreated to his throne and sat back in it. He was in high spirits; his friend had come to see him. Had clasped his hand, had sworn not to give up on him. And had even... well, no need to belabor the point. He leaned back in his cold hard throne, with one ankle propped up on one leg, and twiddled his thumbs in absent-minded joy, and the reader may forgive him for grinning a silly and childish grin up at the ceiling, and even humming a besotted little tune.
And so the first week of Jeramie Idmonarak ne Brasieri’s self-imposed exile, and that of his people, drew to a close; and dearly he was missed by Gira, and by all of his compatriots but by Gira most of all, for the love that had grown tender and new between them; and the two unfortunate kings resolved to turn their minds towards the fight for the preservation of Terra rather than dwell on their separation, for countless lives rested on their shoulders; and Gira would continue to quietly nod along when the populace eagerly recounted tales of Jeramie’s villainy, holding onto the lingering warmth on his lips as a shield. As for Jeramie himself, he was used to waiting, but there was newfound sweetness in the waiting, and the childish joy of first love to propel him onwards, like a light in the tunnel. And thus our story concludes, or rather this chapter, for the story of the defense of Terra is a longer and lengthier fable than can be recounted here, and the love story of Gira and Jeramie was only just beginning.
THE END