Soryk woke in agony—a gaping wound in his chest. He grappled upward through the fog of the changing sleep, aware only of pain. Stinging, unappeasable ache in his heart, like an acid-dipped thorn lodged there. Grief strangled him, stole his air. She was gone. Sidra. His little elfin queen. Her body become ashes scattered to the winds, an offering taken upon hundreds of half-human tongues. He marveled at the depth and complexity of the grief. He longed for her the way a falling man longs for wings. How was it possible to feel so bad? Hollow as if gutted, scooped out and eviscerated while at the same time, he carried within him a dreadful, sinking weight. His heart was a stone—heavy, gravid and cold. All the while, sorrow burned and flailed behind his eyes. My love, my love, my love.
He’d been cheated of a last kiss or final farewell. He had not bent to draw in the last of her failing breath or lick up the tears that seeped from her eyes. Had he been there at the end he’d have drunk of her blood, eaten her flesh, to keep her with him. But the wound would have been too profound; he would have lost his senses. Strangled himself with her hair. Drunk of death’s poison in a frenzy of madness. How could she be no longer when he could still smell the musk of her sex in his head, when he could still differentiate the scent of her hair (wood smoke, sap, flowers and faint tinge of sweat) from that of her neck (something deliriously sweet) or her palms (honey, fertile soil, the static entrapped in animal fur)? He could close his eyes and feel the press of her mouth, the ridges and curvature of her lips, the flexion of their creases, the slippery smooth pink of their delicate hills. The long, strong muscles of her thighs gripping his hips, the whisper of her breath in his ear. Agony. Loss sprang up fresh and decimated him, yet again.
Adrift, he floated on the dark and endless sea. She was his light—snuffed. His rose—wilted. His home—destroyed. Theirs was an island paradise, gleaming and gold. Yet death had banished him from that isle, pushed him with unforgiving, angry hands into a reckless surf. For a short while, he could still catch the perfume of its profuse blossoms, but the waves tugged him away. For an even longer while, he could see the whitecaps washing its pristine shores, but then no more. At last, he lost sight of the outline of its trees, hazed and gray, against the perfect summer sky. Then nothing but waves and a sea of tears to drown in. He could pore over every strange and archaic map, visit every soothsayer in the land and consult every oracle, mystical or nautical, but he knew the island lost to him forever. The thought that it had once existed, the most beautiful of places, the most tamed of savage wilds, was enough to ruin him. He was an exile banished from everything beloved. That he woke in a world of white, surrounded by strangeness, mattered not. That blood did not stain the frosty sheets beneath him was a wonder. How could his injury be so profound and yet leave no mark?
--Kirsten Imani Kasai
We've all been here before, yes? Read Tattoo to learn what forces tore these lovers apart.
