(addendum)

“Look at me. Through my eyes, contemplate the soul that once cringed from even the touch of light; expose me, reveal all that I once fought so hard to keep concealed even from myself. Today, now, my pride is in ruins, forfeited, no longer important; my loyalty and soul are yours until they eventually pale and wither in the face of countless eternities. But my purpose is renewed, and I have no need for any such other petty luxuries as ‘hope’ or ‘faith’. Tonight, now, I have you. And that knowledge alone will suffice to keep me standing firm and unyielding in the face of even God.”

“You...you beautiful blasphemer,” he smiled, touched. His throat was on fire. Something hurt. He kept the source in check. “You wish to know what your example does to me?”

Her eyes were fastened on him above, in absolute silence. He smiled weakly at the childlike reverence he beheld in them. A mortal god haunts my dreams.

“You reduce this man’s will to water. Nothing exists in the way of hesitation, and rebuttal is as meaningless as fear in the face of such an impersonal desire to please you. This vile friend you’ve come to know for ages can be held contemptible for deluding himself in dreams such as the like of rising from beyond a living grave in more than bright armor and glory to rescue you every time, but despairs that he cannot sprout wings to carry you from the breathing threat of pain and misery, from this world altogether, into the promise of an everlasting, lush and utopical, unreachable, garden of Eden.”
[..Eden is for anybody who ever happened to wish, want, dream, need, crave, fight, bleed and (or) die for it.]
....
“We were thrown from paradise for a good reason, Melkiah. We didn’t know how to cherish it. We really don’t know how to be happy. We don’t understand; we only treasure to despair when we lose something. It is sad to find that we are not at all unlike the simplest of animals; not at all, not by far.”

The fire from before changed. It would consume him if he would choose now to remain silent. Play the coward, it said, breathing into his ear. Be selfish, play the coward now, and forever after rot in regret. It moved him to act, to speak, to condemn the mediocre peace of mind they both acknowledged in the face of unspoken truce, a pact known only to long-ago lovers. “We’ve been there more than once, the two of us, and still we seek it. Do you think I can allow us to forsake this path?”

She muttered again senseless fragments of his words to herself, something or somewhere close to a delirium. “We’ve already been there...”

“We’ve already been there, after being cast from it. Is it in you to yield and acknowledge a futile struggle against the forces of destiny and God?”

“No...”

“Then, beloved, don’t renounce to the dream, either. The dream heals, feeds, clothes, arms, and drives us; it bestows hope to the lost, power to the weak, valor to the fearful; it compels us forward when our wounds and the darkness bolt us to the ground. We have no need or use for wings then, you see, for the dream facilitates us with them and so much more.”

She shuddered. The sigh that followed spoke of the current weakened state of both. The subtle change in subject saved them both from further heartache, at least for the time being. “I would cry, Melkiah. I did not know that you were a poet.”

He sighed in turn. He shrugged. “Neither did I, child. Love fuels my speech.”

“What love is yours that holds such power in only one small extract from its repertoire?” she posed the question, not necessarily thinking ahead for an answer, the answer she received.

He contemplated the question for a moment. “Would that I could describe all that it is in words.”

An excruciating analytical mind struggled desperately to coil itself around such a concept. It failed, miserably.

“...That I could fathom something of the like,” she whispered, sobered by the significance of her failure.


..Fear and loathing in the Pieces of my Memory that remain...Pain in the Sacred Fragments I am without.

A