DEIMOS
Heave the silver hollow sliver
“Was it?” He snickered – longing for those hours, those moments, those minutes, where they hadn’t been burdened with any irrepressible weight, where their heads weren’t reeling with the notion of incoming, forbidding calculations, or signing names, lives, away on pieces of paper. It’d been fun and diverting, amusements tangled up in naught but silliness and joviality, things he’d missed along the way, jumping from life to life, and now it felt like an entirely different world, as if it never happened, as if it had gone up in smoke, flames, air, and proclamations. He tucked away the sigh threatening to pulse from his chest, striving to discover delight in the here and now, soaking in the present, instead of wading into the past. So his eyes lingered on her, and found it again.
His actions were swift and certain, the acquired aptitude and precision long ingrained within his hands, the knife’s blade making quick and intricate work of the grouse, and he’d peel away layers at a time, applying the same patterns and intervals. He could feel her eyes on him, on his skin, on his movements, and while he never yearned to ascertain for much attention, he grasped and required hers, straightening out, a cheeky grin on his mouth until she sliced into her food. They worked together in silence for a time, a sense of ease and repose, serenity and tranquility; bobbing his head to her hums and croons. He didn’t have any of his own, except for the beats and trumpets of warfare, the blasts of cannons, the outcries of mayhem and dissolution, but he remained in hers, in her orbit, in her revolution.
She continued in her speech though, at his insistence, and he listened, always eager for another piece of her puzzle, another recollection of truth and veracity, another part of Amalia he’d yet to see, to understand. The baker mentioned her mother, her grandmother, and what he presumed was her grandfather, but no intonation of her sire, so he didn’t ask, didn’t pry, just a fervent ear, growing up within a house that perhaps no longer felt like a sanctuary, not after things dimmed. He could understand the notion, in a way – his parents’ deaths were another on the crescendo and pulse of devastation – and the house they’d always cherished had burned, gone to ash and soot. He had nothing left of them but memories, some tangled, some illustrious, some scalding, some wonderful. He’d had too many homes in the meantime: oceans, mountains, battlefields, and catacombs. “You could always make a home elsewhere.” If the burdens were too great, and the stairs too steep, and the weight too heavy – not an escape, but something new, something fresh, something hers.
Unite and spread the heart apart
