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Constantinople, the eastern remnant of the Roman Empire, exchanging marble for gold, Italy for Greece. A prize. Gulls caw, and bright light burnishes the great churches. A pair of Northern comrades enjoy coffee where the sea breeze can tousle their already tousled locks.
“Have you heard about Mariam and Kurya?” One asks the other.
“There's nothing going on.”
“No smoke without fire, Leif.”
“He'll never get over his wife. I wouldn't either, if she was taken from me in such a way.”
“Perhaps not. But I didn't say he and our dear mathematician were officially together.”
“What? You're saying they're messing about?”
“I'm saying someone has a crush, and someone else isn't stomping on it.”
“You can't expect a blind man to stomp on anything.”
“Please. You know as well as I do how dangerous our visually challenged friend can be.”
Elsewhere in Constantinople, a man, a blind man, takes care of the plants, exotic and mundane, by which he earns his bread, shuffling around a courtyard full of greenery, stick in one hand, gardening tool in the other. Being surrounded by living things imbued with a quiet energy, living things that love the water, that do not rush around and get under his feet, is more healing than he could've ever have imagined. It cannot bring his wife or his eyes back, but it does bring its own peace.
“Here, let me.” Hands much softer than his and free of his callouses, take the knife he's holding, and tend the plant he’s standing before, lopping off a dying limb.
The plant breathes easier through its pores, Kurya’s nostrils flaring, picking up the faint increase of moisture in the air and the slight change of scent. “Thank you.” He says, holding a hand out for the knife, which returns to his palm. Mariam, he drunkenly made a mistake with her, and now he can't get rid of her. Not that he wants to get rid of her, no, she's his friend, the best one he has out of a pool of very good ones, but she wants what he can't provide.
“We can never be together.” Said so many times it's lost any force it might have once held. They have been together, so whatever else he says is merely a lie, an excuse to cover for fear. A fear she understands, yet will not cease poking at. She will have her way. Under those warm smiles, she will have her way.
“This rose needs a dash of pest killer.” She says, tenderly brushing the velvet petals of a bright pink flower still dewy with morning mist.
“You know where it is.” He told himself he wasn't going to smile, but not only does he smile, but he cocks an eyebrow in the way she loves. He knows exactly what that looks like, and why she should like it. It was an expression that once upon a time his wife said she adored, an expression his brother hated, an expression he employed to make princesses fall for him, back when he could rank women by prettiness. Now that he cannot, he cares not at all about how a woman looks, yet is still sure that Mariam is beautiful.
“I do.” She says, walking past and brushing a hand across his cheek, across the silver scars which she, impossibly, finds lovely. Finds a proof of the strength of his will and the rare power of his mind. When she returns, she runs a hand over his shoulder, touching him without the hesitation, pity, or fear others do. So strange, when even hardened prisoners and the most desperate of fallen women recoiled from him and the contagion of a misfortune so great.
…His brother is dead. His brother is dead, his wife is avenged, is what her touch seems to say. His ears still work as well as they ever did.