03-06-2009, 10:43 PM
75. Mirror
"I grow weary of your silence, o far-sighted one!" I yelled at him once we were alone again. He sat in the chair I had helped him into, his lay unfocused staring into some distant or past time that I could not see. "Look at me!" I shouted with more venom than I intended as I grabbed him by the front of his dirty shirt and tried to make him see me.
His eyes roved wildly around the room, searching in that maze of times and scenes for me and where we were now. A chill ran up my spine with blackened orbs finally rested on my own eyes staring back at him. They seemed to vibrate there, as if something was trying to tear them away. He lifted a shaking hand up to my face, even though I could see how it pained him, and brushed the soft fingertips against my cheek. "I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice cracked under the weight of one left unused. His hand dropped like a dead weight in his lap. I looked at it sitting there, the fingertips twitched as his last bit of control seeped from them. When I looked back to his face, his eyes had gone distant again, they no longer looked at me. My reflection starred back at me in those eyes, they looked like polished, black glass.
I at once felt guilty for what I had said to him. What could he do with the curse hanging over him? This curse that rendered him unable to speak, to see, to even move. This curse that pained him in the night when Flamoya's eye starred down from the heaven's, searching for him. How I hated seeing him in the night, when he lay with eyes starring wide and his mouth lain open in a silent scream. I tightened my grip on the collar of his shirt and pressed my forehead to his. Was that my sweat on my brow, or his? Then I screamed as loud as I could, and didn't stop until I was light-headed with lack of air. I wanted to scream for all the time that he had been unable to, until it made him better, woke him from this dreadful waking slumber full of pain.
As the door to our room opened behind me, I could feel my limbs quaking as I stood breathing heavily into Heso's unseeing face. "Shonasha," I looked over my shoulder at the raven haired youth standing wide-eyed in the doorway. It was the first time I had ever seen Cato's boy look scared in the least, he was usually so brazen. Of course, this was the first time he had seen me lose control either.
"Do not look so concerned my friend," I said as I let go of Heso's collar and let him slide back into his seat. My fingers were stiffed from holding so tightly. I straightened up, but did not dare look at him for fear my voice would break.
"You should get some rest, you look exhausted," He said, carefully, as if his voice was treading on ice.
Damn the boy for his thoughts of kindness, so like his mother, "I will not submit myself to rest when Heso suffers on. I refuse to leave him abandoned like that."
"Very well then," he said softly, though I could tell in his voice he wanted to deny it of me, and damn me for the fool that I was being. Bless him for not speaking those words that he wanted to.
As the door closed after him, I gripped the side of Heso's face, turned it towards me. Reflected in those blackened orbs, I wept.
|