[As Olivia pulls away from him, his lips part that he might sway her once more.
He wants to tell her of how he needs both her love and Patroclus' to hold steady his heart. Man requires the sun that he may live, for without its light he is lost in the thick shroud of darkness through which he cannot see, and from the barren soil no fruits are borne upon which he can sate his hunger. Yet so too does he require a hearth to which to return at the day's close, upon which dances a hearty fire that keeps him warm and wreathes him in comfort. How is he meant to endure absent either?
He wants to tell her too of how he loves her as never he has loved a woman. This he learned as their love unfolded like a flower that as it blooms reveals more of its petals: for while he had loved Deidamia, and Briseis, and other girls whom he had taken to bed, these were as strangers when compared to Olivia. Each had been someone whom he was with, but never something he was a part of. Each was someone whom he lay beside but to whose heart he never listened closely while his own beat so fiercely.
Yet his tongue in this moment is a dullard of a smith, in whose forge no tools of any utility are shaped, and in the silence she turns and flees.
On the night when appeared Lucina, that emissary of a far future, that portent of a life beyond their too ephemeral embrace, they had later lain together, Olivia and he. Then his name had broken upon her lips in the way that the blessed blood spilled of oxen's throats is poured upon an altar, as if to promise that such reverence was reserved for him alone, and in this love Achilles had exulted.
There is nothing he might say now to breathe into her heart the same feeling, the feeling that he is hers alone to love, for such a feeling is naught but a lie when behind him waits Patroclus, now more than mere ashes sealed within an urn, more than a memory that beats within his breast. When he tries her name nonetheless, it is weak as it unfurls from his tongue. In the sterile silence of the snow, its flight seems cut short.]
Olivia!
[On she runs, and were he to give chase he would easily catch her. Yet what can he say that she might return with him to what he had hoped to make into their home? What more can he say when already he has exhausted all his words?]
Olivia, wait!
[While she fades ever smaller, his swift feet stay frozen like tree trunks rooted in the earth. Left upon his palm is the soft memory of her hip, and in his fingers the ghost of her hair where once he stroked it. Achilles does not watch her vanish from his sight, for he turns and goes to his tent. Like the wine-dark waves when lashed by wind he moves, and his grief is plain upon his countenance as would be the imprint of lightning where it strikes against the storm-bruised sky.]
no subject
He wants to tell her of how he needs both her love and Patroclus' to hold steady his heart. Man requires the sun that he may live, for without its light he is lost in the thick shroud of darkness through which he cannot see, and from the barren soil no fruits are borne upon which he can sate his hunger. Yet so too does he require a hearth to which to return at the day's close, upon which dances a hearty fire that keeps him warm and wreathes him in comfort. How is he meant to endure absent either?
He wants to tell her too of how he loves her as never he has loved a woman. This he learned as their love unfolded like a flower that as it blooms reveals more of its petals: for while he had loved Deidamia, and Briseis, and other girls whom he had taken to bed, these were as strangers when compared to Olivia. Each had been someone whom he was with, but never something he was a part of. Each was someone whom he lay beside but to whose heart he never listened closely while his own beat so fiercely.
Yet his tongue in this moment is a dullard of a smith, in whose forge no tools of any utility are shaped, and in the silence she turns and flees.
On the night when appeared Lucina, that emissary of a far future, that portent of a life beyond their too ephemeral embrace, they had later lain together, Olivia and he. Then his name had broken upon her lips in the way that the blessed blood spilled of oxen's throats is poured upon an altar, as if to promise that such reverence was reserved for him alone, and in this love Achilles had exulted.
There is nothing he might say now to breathe into her heart the same feeling, the feeling that he is hers alone to love, for such a feeling is naught but a lie when behind him waits Patroclus, now more than mere ashes sealed within an urn, more than a memory that beats within his breast. When he tries her name nonetheless, it is weak as it unfurls from his tongue. In the sterile silence of the snow, its flight seems cut short.]
Olivia!
[On she runs, and were he to give chase he would easily catch her. Yet what can he say that she might return with him to what he had hoped to make into their home? What more can he say when already he has exhausted all his words?]
Olivia, wait!
[While she fades ever smaller, his swift feet stay frozen like tree trunks rooted in the earth. Left upon his palm is the soft memory of her hip, and in his fingers the ghost of her hair where once he stroked it. Achilles does not watch her vanish from his sight, for he turns and goes to his tent. Like the wine-dark waves when lashed by wind he moves, and his grief is plain upon his countenance as would be the imprint of lightning where it strikes against the storm-bruised sky.]