07-07-2016, 03:07 PM
The air was wet and salty, the sun high and strong in the sky, long shadows cast by tall ancient stone buildings over narrow streets and alleys, wide plazas and marketplaces, the sounds of bustling crowds, honking cars and squawking seagulls in the air. To anyone else, it might have been the sound of home. Anyone but him.
Home wasn't a thing he understood. He lived where he lived, slept where he slept, and worked where he worked. Home, though, as a place where he belonged? He didn't know what that meant. If he ever had, he didn't remember it. Living on the streets, pick-pocketing strangers, snatching fruit or a freshly backed loaf of bread or sugary scone from an inattentive clerk; moving from place to place, as his mother plied her trade, brothel keep, house or flat or room or couch, wherever she could find room for them. None of that meant home to him. Nor was it the monasteries and universities that he had spent so much of his life in. Syracuse, Sicily was merely the place he was born and lived until he was 17.
So why was he here? Why had he traveled the long journey the slow way to get here? The memory kept playing in his mind. He'd rolled over in their blankets, feeling the cool empty place where she usually was warm and firm against him, the moonlit night that peaked through the now open flaps of the tent casting its blue shadows, to see her tying her belt on her waist. A word. What had he said? Where are you going? An assignment. They had hunted together for years. Why alone now? But he did not voice his question. Theirs was not to question. Dressed, she leaned down, kissed him on the lips, a long kiss, a good-bye until she returned, her sharp tilted amber eyes smiling at him, and he pulled her to him, felt pressed against him.
Perhaps that had been home. With Jova. As it had been with Gregorio long before. And dimly he remembered the feel of his mother, body sheltering him when he was a child.
And now they were all gone. And he was alone. Intellectually he was accepting of this. This was how things needed to be. In this life, ‘in the dream’ as the Atharii said, you accepted what was. But he had been with Jova a long time. And for some reason he felt the need to come here. Just as when he’d come after Gregorio died. Perhaps it reset his bearings, reminded him from what he came from, that his life had a purpose, each experience another test and shaping, beginning with it here.
The last time he had been here, it had been worse. The magnitude of Gregorio’s death, the image of his swaying body hanging in his simple quarters, that sweet smiling and tender face now bloated and purple, the stink of evacuated bowels filling the room, was something he had a hard time forgetting. Before his summons to Rome, before his trip into the desert, he had come here and for a moment, had felt the cleansing of the air and the salt of this place. It could have been anywhere. But it was here he came. And had met a girl from his youth, a childhood playmate, nothing more.
And for a week or two, he found warmth and a measure of peace in her arms. She was no substitute for Gregorio, nor did she imagine herself to be. Her mother, like his, had been a prostitute and it was what she knew. Both understood that for most men, it was not about sex. It was about connection. And so Armande allowed himself to mourn in his own way, with someone for whom he could casually care about, but not lean upon. It was what he had told himself, anyway. But Armande was not a youth anymore at 43, though physically was far stronger and deadlier than he had ever been. He was not here to find comfort in the arms of another. He had been weaker then, naïve.
Still, he walked the streets, passed through the ornate plazas and buildings whose history he could have given lectures on. The ancient weight of the city pressed in on him, these vestiges of time, left behind by long ago. The wide streets gradually gave way to narrow alleys, the further up the hills he walked, rabbit warrens of closely pressed houses and an apartments, laundry still hung across lines outside of windows, the sounds of families and people shouting or talking loudly. He knew where he was. The last place they’d lived when his mother died. The place from which he first escaped out into the world, despite the kindness and shelter of his mother’s old friends.
He closed his eyes and let his mind drift for a moment, remembering, seeing what was the same and what was different. “Do you need something?”
He opened his eyes to find a fierce green eyed girl watching him. Lissandra.
For a moment, his memory wavered as that first sight of her took him, everything warped and faded as if about to be swept away in a wind. His heart squeezed, anger and pain and hate compressing. He breathed, relaxed, firming everything to reality. Frozen in the memory, he looked at her. Now it was obvious. From that very moment he’d met her he felt a connection. He learned why soon after.
A daughter. He had a daughter. And yet, he was no father, no. He could never be a father. He was Atharim. He was his work. He felt no paternal affection for her. He had not attended her birth. He had not help raise her. He had not been there to see her grow into the young defensive woman that stood before him. He could see the hardness in her eyes- hardness that echoed his own, and yet forged in very different fires. But while he was no father, he felt a connection.
Jova was gone. But he was not alone, not completely. And as the months went by, he found in her the same fierceness and intelligence in himself, the same fearlessness and hunger. So he became, not a father, but a mentor, teaching her as he had been taught; and she became his pupil. And strangely, in doing so, he found that what had seemed a hole had been filled. He even dared to contemplate loving, though in a very different way. His purpose had changed. He had a legacy he could pass on.
Dark tendrils coiled around the memory, poisoning it. Lissandra’s face seem darker, warped, the fierceness to her eyes took on a demonic quality and he felt the pulsing of rage and horror.
Edited by Regus, Jul 7 2016, 04:19 PM.
Home wasn't a thing he understood. He lived where he lived, slept where he slept, and worked where he worked. Home, though, as a place where he belonged? He didn't know what that meant. If he ever had, he didn't remember it. Living on the streets, pick-pocketing strangers, snatching fruit or a freshly backed loaf of bread or sugary scone from an inattentive clerk; moving from place to place, as his mother plied her trade, brothel keep, house or flat or room or couch, wherever she could find room for them. None of that meant home to him. Nor was it the monasteries and universities that he had spent so much of his life in. Syracuse, Sicily was merely the place he was born and lived until he was 17.
So why was he here? Why had he traveled the long journey the slow way to get here? The memory kept playing in his mind. He'd rolled over in their blankets, feeling the cool empty place where she usually was warm and firm against him, the moonlit night that peaked through the now open flaps of the tent casting its blue shadows, to see her tying her belt on her waist. A word. What had he said? Where are you going? An assignment. They had hunted together for years. Why alone now? But he did not voice his question. Theirs was not to question. Dressed, she leaned down, kissed him on the lips, a long kiss, a good-bye until she returned, her sharp tilted amber eyes smiling at him, and he pulled her to him, felt pressed against him.
Perhaps that had been home. With Jova. As it had been with Gregorio long before. And dimly he remembered the feel of his mother, body sheltering him when he was a child.
And now they were all gone. And he was alone. Intellectually he was accepting of this. This was how things needed to be. In this life, ‘in the dream’ as the Atharii said, you accepted what was. But he had been with Jova a long time. And for some reason he felt the need to come here. Just as when he’d come after Gregorio died. Perhaps it reset his bearings, reminded him from what he came from, that his life had a purpose, each experience another test and shaping, beginning with it here.
The last time he had been here, it had been worse. The magnitude of Gregorio’s death, the image of his swaying body hanging in his simple quarters, that sweet smiling and tender face now bloated and purple, the stink of evacuated bowels filling the room, was something he had a hard time forgetting. Before his summons to Rome, before his trip into the desert, he had come here and for a moment, had felt the cleansing of the air and the salt of this place. It could have been anywhere. But it was here he came. And had met a girl from his youth, a childhood playmate, nothing more.
And for a week or two, he found warmth and a measure of peace in her arms. She was no substitute for Gregorio, nor did she imagine herself to be. Her mother, like his, had been a prostitute and it was what she knew. Both understood that for most men, it was not about sex. It was about connection. And so Armande allowed himself to mourn in his own way, with someone for whom he could casually care about, but not lean upon. It was what he had told himself, anyway. But Armande was not a youth anymore at 43, though physically was far stronger and deadlier than he had ever been. He was not here to find comfort in the arms of another. He had been weaker then, naïve.
Still, he walked the streets, passed through the ornate plazas and buildings whose history he could have given lectures on. The ancient weight of the city pressed in on him, these vestiges of time, left behind by long ago. The wide streets gradually gave way to narrow alleys, the further up the hills he walked, rabbit warrens of closely pressed houses and an apartments, laundry still hung across lines outside of windows, the sounds of families and people shouting or talking loudly. He knew where he was. The last place they’d lived when his mother died. The place from which he first escaped out into the world, despite the kindness and shelter of his mother’s old friends.
He closed his eyes and let his mind drift for a moment, remembering, seeing what was the same and what was different. “Do you need something?”
He opened his eyes to find a fierce green eyed girl watching him. Lissandra.
For a moment, his memory wavered as that first sight of her took him, everything warped and faded as if about to be swept away in a wind. His heart squeezed, anger and pain and hate compressing. He breathed, relaxed, firming everything to reality. Frozen in the memory, he looked at her. Now it was obvious. From that very moment he’d met her he felt a connection. He learned why soon after.
A daughter. He had a daughter. And yet, he was no father, no. He could never be a father. He was Atharim. He was his work. He felt no paternal affection for her. He had not attended her birth. He had not help raise her. He had not been there to see her grow into the young defensive woman that stood before him. He could see the hardness in her eyes- hardness that echoed his own, and yet forged in very different fires. But while he was no father, he felt a connection.
Jova was gone. But he was not alone, not completely. And as the months went by, he found in her the same fierceness and intelligence in himself, the same fearlessness and hunger. So he became, not a father, but a mentor, teaching her as he had been taught; and she became his pupil. And strangely, in doing so, he found that what had seemed a hole had been filled. He even dared to contemplate loving, though in a very different way. His purpose had changed. He had a legacy he could pass on.
Dark tendrils coiled around the memory, poisoning it. Lissandra’s face seem darker, warped, the fierceness to her eyes took on a demonic quality and he felt the pulsing of rage and horror.
Edited by Regus, Jul 7 2016, 04:19 PM.