08-24-2015, 10:20 PM
Wayra’s eyes grew wide and round as saucers, her expression shifting between one of exhilaration and fear. In all her wildest dreams she had never considered that the Chamber’s heartbeat could have once belong to someone else.She stayed quiet and listened to the heavy thud, thud. It was there, as real and consistent as her own, now hammering a little faster in her breast.
Is that what it meant to love as you loved yourself?
Wayra shivered. She couldn’t imagine feeling passion like that. She couldn’t imagine taking out her heart and handing it to another. Was that love? Taking your heart from your chest and letting it run around? Is that what Vercingetorix’s mother saw when she looked at him? Is that what Wayra’s father saw when he looked at her? Is that what Atrox had seen when he looked at the Chamber?
She was glad that Vercingetorix stood beside her. His heart she could trust, for it still beat in its rightful place. If he didn’t seem so utterly without deceit, Wayra might have thought he was teasing her.
“What will happen," she begins, a little breathless, “if Atrox takes his heart back?” She imagined the undead stallion digging deep within the Chamber and pulling out a heart that had grown ten times its original size. The heart of a kingdom could not possibly be as feeble as the heart of a man, it would have grown in order to carry the burden.
Would Atrox tear open his ribcage and shove it back inside?
Wayra couldn’t repress a shudder. She gave her head a shake, blue mane flapping, to try and clear the image. She was going to have nightmares.
But Vercingetorix was speaking again, and his confessions, not at all fantastical, were for that reason, all the more interesting, all the more real. They paralleled her own in some ways, though his thoughts didn’t seem to burden him the ways hers did. He was content with maybe one day. Wayra felt uncertainty as an itch she couldn’t scratch.
She felt him beside her, asking the questions she had asked herself over and over again. But, when he asked them, they didn’t seem so horrible. They seemed less impossible to answer. If love was ripping out your heart and watching it run around, was friendship shouldering the burden when you had a shoulder free to do so?
“I have never really made plans for myself.”Wayra laughed self-deprecatingly.
“I guess a part of me thought that everything would always be the way it had been.” Even anything it sounded foolish. She was beginning to understand that change was the only constant in life. Autumn had been such a roller coaster, what would winter hold?
"I think you’re right. Life is nothing but surprises. I think I would like to know that I could handle those surprises. Whatever they were. I’d like to know that, no matter what happened, it would just be one more thing I could handle.” She knew she sounded like a fool. How could she ever be prepared to handle all of life’s surprises?
She looked at Vercingetorix curiously, wondering if the assumptions she had made about him were wrong. He had chased down the ravens with such fervor, such ferocity, that she had assumed him a little warrior. But then he had counseled her with wisdom and patience. Perhaps a diplomat then? Both? She smiled at him, eyes warm.
“And what of you, Vercingetorix? Do you want to slay dragons as well as ravens? Maybe rescue a damsel or two?” She was teasing him, but it was done with an affection that seemed possible to ignore.
Wayra
not all who wander are lost