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augustines2013-11-07 11:53 am
smithereens) wrote in augustines2013-11-07 11:53 am
Entry tags:
and anywhere, i would have followed you.
We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
.
“Stop the coach.”
It’s foolish. She knows it’s foolish. Edessa had never considered herself a very sentimental person before, but here she is, ordering the procession to a stop outside the capital, on the last ridge overlooking Melitena Imperia before it recedes behind the foothills. There she’d been, watching the servants pack up what belongings she could bring with her to Saarinen and thinking that the sum evidence of her life, lived, wasn’t very much at all. Running her fingers over the great harp in the conservatory one last time until Isidore laughed and asked for a happier song.
She then played a dirge, and they both laughed until they cried.
“Princess?” one of her new handmaids--Cressida--is staring at her with wide eyes, unsure how to react. Edessa feels her weariness sink tenfold, deep into her bones, but she doesn’t rap the roof of the carriage and yell her instructions to the drivers as she longs to do, if only for efficiency’s sake.
Princesses don’t knock on carriage roofs, and they certainly don’t raise their voices for something as mundane as giving orders.
“Dess?” Augustina says, her voice brimming with concern. Edessa doesn’t look at her.
“Stop the coach,” she repeats. “Please.”
The order goes out, by way of one of the junior maids. Edessa had very suddenly acquired a great many superfluous maids, as befitting her royal personage, and they all had precedence even amongst themselves. It would only last up until her wedding, after which her retinue would be determined by her husband, and even Augustina, her friend foremost and handmaid second, would return to Melitene without her.
The moment they lurch to a stop, Crassius, head of her equally-suddenly-acquired guard, swings the door open and sticks his grizzled head inside, his eyes scanning until they alight on her.
“Is everything alright, Princess?” he asks, scanning her as if for injuries now.
Somehow, the single track of his mind comforts her, she who has been given into a simple man’s care for safekeeping.
“I’m fine, Captain. I recognize this hill.” She smiles as much as she’s able, wanly, and makes her way towards the door, forcing him to reach out and hand her down from the carriage. “Just a moment,” she adds, in reply to the searching look on his face.
Foolish. Very foolish. Her boots sink into the damp earth off the road, grass springy with early morning dew, and she lifts her skirts so they do not drag and dirty. She’s glad she thought to grab a shawl on her way out; she wraps the pashmina tightly around her shoulders as she scales the hill, her breath puffing visibly. It’s a chilly late autumn morning, so that her heart is pounding hard with effort by the time she reaches the crest and the little world around Melitena Imperia unfurls before her.
The first city was built over a thousand years ago, at the zenith of a hill in the middle of Tyress valley, a small collection of rough buildings that did very little to promise the future splendor of the imperial city. The palace, whose spires and obelisks seemed to extend into the heavens itself, was the first official building of the new capital, built upon the ruins of a crumbling temple. The rest of the city radiates out from the palace like a pinwheel, from the opulent palazzos of the upper ring through the color wheel walls and drapings of the marketplaces and houses, down to the vast stretches of farmland cutting sharp lines through the valley.
Melitena Imperia has survived fires and floods and sieges, its people plagues and famines and war; it would survive her leaving, and it would not miss her.
She does not turn to peer at her convoy, nearly a dozen carriages and wagon bestowed upon her by her uncle, to escort her to Saarinen with all due pomp. It would not make her feel any less small, or any less lonely, less stripped of her city, her home, her family. Lysander. Her uncle and aunt. Her friends. Her dogs, who had cocked their heads in confusion as she kissed them goodbye, and licked the salt from her cheeks.
She watches the city instead, hours awake even though the sun still hangs half-shrouded by the palazzos’ domes and towers, and pictures in her mind the vendors setting up their shops and carts, loudly hawking their wares; sees the noblemen and women turn in their sleep while their servants shuffle through the hallways; imagines children running through the streets, laughing as they duck under carts and carriages.
She imagines Lysander when he wakes and heads to the practice fields first, the consummate warrior-prince. He’d said goodbye to her last night, clutching her hands together in his larger ones, and wished her such love that her heart ached with his good intentions. Such good, oblivious intentions. She’d taken the feel of the sword calluses on his hands, the strength in them, the earnest line of his brow, and tucked them somewhere deep inside her, where it would not reflect in her eyes, where she hoarded all her stolen memories of him.
It would have been the time to confess, now when she had nothing to lose. But maybe she’s a sentimental, foolish thing after all, because all she could think of was his face when he looked at his betrothed, like his entire soul was in his eyes, and so she only wished him well, love and happiness for his future, and the longest reign Melitene has ever seen. Her smile seemed to break her in half, while the squeeze of his hands pulled her back together again and dashed her upon the rocks all at once.
“I wish you could be here for the wedding,” he said, wistful.
There was nowhere she’d rather be less. She would’ve be in Saarinen yesterday if it would get her as far as possible from his wedding, and the thought made her feel selfish and petty.
“I must go quickly,” she said instead. “You know we can’t miss this chance.”
“Yes,” he said, releasing her to run a hand over his handsome face, then peered at her through his spread fingers. “I’ll miss you, cousin.”
Gently, as if the moment was made of glass, she took ahold of his wrist and pried his hand from his face, her fingers curling slowly around his. She pressed her hands into his as if she was giving over her heart, but Lysander, beautiful, careless Lysander, only squeezed her fingers one last time before dropping them.
“I’ll miss you too,” she said.
Her brother and sisters were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes when they said goodbye, all of them woken unceremoniously early to see her off. Dominic was tall enough now that his head cleared her elbows, and she wondered if he would be far taller than her when she next saw him. They all wept, sniffling and rubbing their unfocused eyes and hugging her all the harder when she told them they would give themselves headaches.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, resting her hand on top of their heads in turn. They all had the same dark hair and skin, care of their father, but their eyes were their mother’s, in varying shades of the water on all sides of Melitene, from the sparkling cerulean blue of the rivers to the shadowed green of the deep ocean.
“I hear the king is a very good king, and very handsome,” she said to Damiane, before turning to Dominic. “They say he is very brave and skilled with the blade, and he has probably hundreds of horses.”
This brought watery smiles to their faces, and she hugged them all again, lingering while they all echoed their love, how much they would miss her. She wiped Isidore’s tear-stained cheeks with her sleeve, and couldn’t help but think that her sister was pretty even when she cried, her skin ruddy and eyes bloodshot. Isidore would’ve been told to go, if Edessa had refused. Isidore would charm the Saarinen king within five minutes of their meeting.
“If you all behave, maybe you can come to visit me,” she said, straightening her chiton and smiling wryly at her sisters. “And you can wear trousers and ride horses like true desert women.”
“Edessa,” her mother admonished, but the smile on her face was wry too, and her hug was enough to take the breath from Edessa’s lungs. Her father pressed a very gentle kiss to her forehead, and held her far too long for her to think it was so brief.
“I’m very proud of you, daughter,” he said, and her heart swelled almost to burst, with love and pride and sadness and shame. She couldn’t tell him that her reasons were cowardly above all, that she could tell herself she was doing this as much for her sisters’ sake and the empire’s sake and her family’s sake without making it true.
“Goodbye, everybody,” she said. “I love you all very much.”
They waved and waved until she disappeared around a bend in the road and lost sight of her home. She’d refused to look back after that, closing her eyes as her coach rattled through the sloping streets of the capital.
Regretting is not in her nature. A political marriage isn’t a death sentence, after all, even if she would’ve preferred to stay near her family. If the Saarinen king’s reputation is true, she would be blessed to have such a judicious, well-loved husband. She’s already blessed: she has two doting parents that yet live; she loves her siblings dearly, and they only sometimes try her patience; and she lives a comfortable, leisurely life.
That’s far more than most women her age have.
Regretting is not in her nature, and yet she looks upon the city that raised her and wonders if this is the right decision. It certainly wasn’t made for the right reasons--not entirely--and it wasn’t very fair either, to resign herself to mere affection at most when her husband could be expecting love. It certainly was the easier path, compared to enduring the ache in her chest when she watches Lysander and his new bride, listens to his far-flung hopes for the happy future.
She would not be partner to his happy future.
It hurts. It hurts more than she ever would’ve thought possible, even almost a year later, and she is little more than a silly, cowardly fool, willing to uproot herself and move halfway around the world to escape it.
The chill has settled into her very bones, and she pulls the pashmina even more tightly around her shoulders as she memorizes the sight of Melitena Imperia. She wonders if she will ever see the city again.
“Be well,” she says softly, a prayer to all her precious people. “Please be well.”
Her breath puffs around her head like smoke as she sighs, and she quietly turns and heads back down the hill, where Augustina and Crassius are waiting for her alongside her coaches, her guards, and her new life.
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
.
“Stop the coach.”
It’s foolish. She knows it’s foolish. Edessa had never considered herself a very sentimental person before, but here she is, ordering the procession to a stop outside the capital, on the last ridge overlooking Melitena Imperia before it recedes behind the foothills. There she’d been, watching the servants pack up what belongings she could bring with her to Saarinen and thinking that the sum evidence of her life, lived, wasn’t very much at all. Running her fingers over the great harp in the conservatory one last time until Isidore laughed and asked for a happier song.
She then played a dirge, and they both laughed until they cried.
“Princess?” one of her new handmaids--Cressida--is staring at her with wide eyes, unsure how to react. Edessa feels her weariness sink tenfold, deep into her bones, but she doesn’t rap the roof of the carriage and yell her instructions to the drivers as she longs to do, if only for efficiency’s sake.
Princesses don’t knock on carriage roofs, and they certainly don’t raise their voices for something as mundane as giving orders.
“Dess?” Augustina says, her voice brimming with concern. Edessa doesn’t look at her.
“Stop the coach,” she repeats. “Please.”
The order goes out, by way of one of the junior maids. Edessa had very suddenly acquired a great many superfluous maids, as befitting her royal personage, and they all had precedence even amongst themselves. It would only last up until her wedding, after which her retinue would be determined by her husband, and even Augustina, her friend foremost and handmaid second, would return to Melitene without her.
The moment they lurch to a stop, Crassius, head of her equally-suddenly-acquired guard, swings the door open and sticks his grizzled head inside, his eyes scanning until they alight on her.
“Is everything alright, Princess?” he asks, scanning her as if for injuries now.
Somehow, the single track of his mind comforts her, she who has been given into a simple man’s care for safekeeping.
“I’m fine, Captain. I recognize this hill.” She smiles as much as she’s able, wanly, and makes her way towards the door, forcing him to reach out and hand her down from the carriage. “Just a moment,” she adds, in reply to the searching look on his face.
Foolish. Very foolish. Her boots sink into the damp earth off the road, grass springy with early morning dew, and she lifts her skirts so they do not drag and dirty. She’s glad she thought to grab a shawl on her way out; she wraps the pashmina tightly around her shoulders as she scales the hill, her breath puffing visibly. It’s a chilly late autumn morning, so that her heart is pounding hard with effort by the time she reaches the crest and the little world around Melitena Imperia unfurls before her.
The first city was built over a thousand years ago, at the zenith of a hill in the middle of Tyress valley, a small collection of rough buildings that did very little to promise the future splendor of the imperial city. The palace, whose spires and obelisks seemed to extend into the heavens itself, was the first official building of the new capital, built upon the ruins of a crumbling temple. The rest of the city radiates out from the palace like a pinwheel, from the opulent palazzos of the upper ring through the color wheel walls and drapings of the marketplaces and houses, down to the vast stretches of farmland cutting sharp lines through the valley.
Melitena Imperia has survived fires and floods and sieges, its people plagues and famines and war; it would survive her leaving, and it would not miss her.
She does not turn to peer at her convoy, nearly a dozen carriages and wagon bestowed upon her by her uncle, to escort her to Saarinen with all due pomp. It would not make her feel any less small, or any less lonely, less stripped of her city, her home, her family. Lysander. Her uncle and aunt. Her friends. Her dogs, who had cocked their heads in confusion as she kissed them goodbye, and licked the salt from her cheeks.
She watches the city instead, hours awake even though the sun still hangs half-shrouded by the palazzos’ domes and towers, and pictures in her mind the vendors setting up their shops and carts, loudly hawking their wares; sees the noblemen and women turn in their sleep while their servants shuffle through the hallways; imagines children running through the streets, laughing as they duck under carts and carriages.
She imagines Lysander when he wakes and heads to the practice fields first, the consummate warrior-prince. He’d said goodbye to her last night, clutching her hands together in his larger ones, and wished her such love that her heart ached with his good intentions. Such good, oblivious intentions. She’d taken the feel of the sword calluses on his hands, the strength in them, the earnest line of his brow, and tucked them somewhere deep inside her, where it would not reflect in her eyes, where she hoarded all her stolen memories of him.
It would have been the time to confess, now when she had nothing to lose. But maybe she’s a sentimental, foolish thing after all, because all she could think of was his face when he looked at his betrothed, like his entire soul was in his eyes, and so she only wished him well, love and happiness for his future, and the longest reign Melitene has ever seen. Her smile seemed to break her in half, while the squeeze of his hands pulled her back together again and dashed her upon the rocks all at once.
“I wish you could be here for the wedding,” he said, wistful.
There was nowhere she’d rather be less. She would’ve be in Saarinen yesterday if it would get her as far as possible from his wedding, and the thought made her feel selfish and petty.
“I must go quickly,” she said instead. “You know we can’t miss this chance.”
“Yes,” he said, releasing her to run a hand over his handsome face, then peered at her through his spread fingers. “I’ll miss you, cousin.”
Gently, as if the moment was made of glass, she took ahold of his wrist and pried his hand from his face, her fingers curling slowly around his. She pressed her hands into his as if she was giving over her heart, but Lysander, beautiful, careless Lysander, only squeezed her fingers one last time before dropping them.
“I’ll miss you too,” she said.
Her brother and sisters were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes when they said goodbye, all of them woken unceremoniously early to see her off. Dominic was tall enough now that his head cleared her elbows, and she wondered if he would be far taller than her when she next saw him. They all wept, sniffling and rubbing their unfocused eyes and hugging her all the harder when she told them they would give themselves headaches.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, resting her hand on top of their heads in turn. They all had the same dark hair and skin, care of their father, but their eyes were their mother’s, in varying shades of the water on all sides of Melitene, from the sparkling cerulean blue of the rivers to the shadowed green of the deep ocean.
“I hear the king is a very good king, and very handsome,” she said to Damiane, before turning to Dominic. “They say he is very brave and skilled with the blade, and he has probably hundreds of horses.”
This brought watery smiles to their faces, and she hugged them all again, lingering while they all echoed their love, how much they would miss her. She wiped Isidore’s tear-stained cheeks with her sleeve, and couldn’t help but think that her sister was pretty even when she cried, her skin ruddy and eyes bloodshot. Isidore would’ve been told to go, if Edessa had refused. Isidore would charm the Saarinen king within five minutes of their meeting.
“If you all behave, maybe you can come to visit me,” she said, straightening her chiton and smiling wryly at her sisters. “And you can wear trousers and ride horses like true desert women.”
“Edessa,” her mother admonished, but the smile on her face was wry too, and her hug was enough to take the breath from Edessa’s lungs. Her father pressed a very gentle kiss to her forehead, and held her far too long for her to think it was so brief.
“I’m very proud of you, daughter,” he said, and her heart swelled almost to burst, with love and pride and sadness and shame. She couldn’t tell him that her reasons were cowardly above all, that she could tell herself she was doing this as much for her sisters’ sake and the empire’s sake and her family’s sake without making it true.
“Goodbye, everybody,” she said. “I love you all very much.”
They waved and waved until she disappeared around a bend in the road and lost sight of her home. She’d refused to look back after that, closing her eyes as her coach rattled through the sloping streets of the capital.
Regretting is not in her nature. A political marriage isn’t a death sentence, after all, even if she would’ve preferred to stay near her family. If the Saarinen king’s reputation is true, she would be blessed to have such a judicious, well-loved husband. She’s already blessed: she has two doting parents that yet live; she loves her siblings dearly, and they only sometimes try her patience; and she lives a comfortable, leisurely life.
That’s far more than most women her age have.
Regretting is not in her nature, and yet she looks upon the city that raised her and wonders if this is the right decision. It certainly wasn’t made for the right reasons--not entirely--and it wasn’t very fair either, to resign herself to mere affection at most when her husband could be expecting love. It certainly was the easier path, compared to enduring the ache in her chest when she watches Lysander and his new bride, listens to his far-flung hopes for the happy future.
She would not be partner to his happy future.
It hurts. It hurts more than she ever would’ve thought possible, even almost a year later, and she is little more than a silly, cowardly fool, willing to uproot herself and move halfway around the world to escape it.
The chill has settled into her very bones, and she pulls the pashmina even more tightly around her shoulders as she memorizes the sight of Melitena Imperia. She wonders if she will ever see the city again.
“Be well,” she says softly, a prayer to all her precious people. “Please be well.”
Her breath puffs around her head like smoke as she sighs, and she quietly turns and heads back down the hill, where Augustina and Crassius are waiting for her alongside her coaches, her guards, and her new life.