I looked at those blue eyed boys and felt regretful for the first time in my life.
The other day, one of the boys came to Sanctuary, dressed in rags and covered in mud. The only thing that shone from him was his gaze. It was a piercing blue gaze that burnt right into my mind and engraved itself there till the day my weary old mind rested.
I knew that that boy would become a knight one day. Soon.
He was an innocent boy, and barely a man when he had attained sainthood. As I told him for that first time that he could serve our goddess, Athena, and could die fighting as a warrior, his eyes lit up the shade of the sky. A sincere smile appeared on his stone hard countenance and his whole face lit up in delight and joy. I could not believe I was sending this bright eyed boy to his death.
Then another blue eyed boy came along, his hair green as the sea and his eyes a deep indigo. The boy wore fine silk and ruffled collars, his skin smooth and his glasses gleaming. He was the utter opposite of the other boy, yet there was still one thing that I picked up at the first sight of the well-dressed aspirant: their piercing blue gazes were the same. Different colours, perhaps, but identical all the same.
Why are you here, boy, I asked. The boy only looked at me with that look of his and thinned his lips into a line. Yes, that boy too would become a knight; not French chivalry, only Greek.
The boys grew up together, yet they were never together. One was Greek, the other was French. One was wild, the other was noble. One was fire, the other was ice. They simply did not mix. And yet, they did in the end. The bond was more than a simple blue gaze, or was it?
One of those days, they were running on the plain, wind blowing through their loose hair and light bathing their young heads. Their identical smiles lit up the sky. They swayed and they swayed, hands never letting go of each other and eyes never straying from the same sight. And then they fell, still together. Their backs hit the green, green grass and their laughter echoed through the valleys and hills. Their blue, blue gaze were fixed on the far heavens with such longing I almost thought they were angels sent to us as blessings from some gods we were never allowed to worship.
Then the summers came and went, as swiftly as the swallow's wing gliding through the sky. The blue eyed boys became blue eyed young men. Fine young men. They let go of each other.
As they trained, the arena shook with the force of their cosmos'. When they walked, the wind danced around them in swirls and whispers, singing of their achievements and pride. Then they spoke, and people listened to them with bowed heads and respect in their eyes. One of the boys became the finest young man amongst the hordes of fine, fine men in Sanctuary. The other became the one with life so intense and violent no other could have matched, even amongst warriors whose lives were violence itself.
They were fine young men, men with a piercing blue gaze that should have belonged to a god. Yet they were humans, and so they erred, and they fell. Warriors did not need unnecessary emotions to add to their brotherly love. The laws stipulated that they kept themselves from such hindrance. They broke the laws. They broke one of the most sacrosanct laws within the whole of Sanctuary, and the whole sainthood.
The boys let go of each other in the light, where everyone was fooled and none were the wiser. They walked side by side, they trained as opponents, they talked about everything and nothing all at once. The stars bore witness to their nightly conversations, and numerous eyes bore witness to their fraternity. Mere fraternity, was it?
I wanted to smile at their follies.
At night, when the crickets tired of their songs and the air was still, when old men like myself would rather a moonlit stroll through the silent grounds of stone and stairs than suffocate in our chambers covered in dusty silk and draperies, one might perhaps hear an interesting thing or two from the hearts of those stony temples. Elite of the elite, crème de la crème, yet their voices rang through the heavens, reaching towards the moon and the stars like cries of the lone wolves not far from us and not unlike us. They sounded desperate. Perhaps they were.
I talked to them. And the young men with blue eyes looked at me with that blue, blue gaze of theirs. One of them laughed and said he did not give a damn, so I should not either. The other just looked away, abashed, but never with regret in his eyes. So much for being their Holy Father.
It never helped the situation that one of them had a heart so strong it was always on the verge of bursting, while the other was the only one whose power can save him for counted days on earth. Sometimes, just sometimes, Sanctuary shook with heat blasts so intense they scorched the whole area. Minutes later, though, it cooled down, and down, and then the sky seemed just a tad bit blue-er than before. Had people paid attention, perhaps they would have seen the pair of blue eyed boys lost in each other's embrace of fire and ice, with eyes only for each other. Fixed on the same sight, right, because blue was blue and everything was the same in their world.
On those days that the Sanctuary was particularly hot, I envied those blue eyed boys.
And then it all ended. Or did it begin? I had no idea. Perhaps our world had ended, and another world had begun. We all went out to the battleground, Bronze Saints, Gold Saints, Spectres, Judges… It became a great bloody mess. One golden silhouette fell, followed by many other shadows. What did I have to say about it, but all was a bloodbath after all. And then it was my turn to go to war.
The world indeed did terminate, for me at least.
Perhaps they never believed, but spirits were spirits after all. Then I thought the world had just begun, because those blue eyed boys were still standing tall with wind through their capes and eyes for the heavens. The late light of the day washed over their sun kissed skin and suddenly I caught their blue gazes.
Somewhere, sometime later, I thought I heard someone said the blue eyed boys were going to their death. Together.
Ah, foolish young boys.
I heard one of them died protecting the other. And then the protected died protecting something else. They died warriors' death.
I shed one tear for one, and another for the other.
And then I heard when they died, their blue, blue eyes were fixed at the sky. Eyes only for each other, huh? I wanted to smile for them, those blue eyed boys.