Title: Of Which Reason Knows Not
Characters: Eve, Much
Word Count: 500
Rating: PG (but only because there's blood)
Summary: "She has never been one to think with her heart. Emotions are too fickle, too dangerous. Other girls have to be warned not to let their heart govern their head, but not Eve. She is too smart for that."
"The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of." – Pascal
She has never been one to think with her heart. Emotions are too fickle, too dangerous. Other girls have to be warned not to let their heart govern their head, but not Eve. She is too smart for that.
Perhaps that has why she has never before been in love. Her whole life has been about surviving, about staying safe in unsafe times. Other girls have sacrificed that, but for what? Marriage to a man just as impractical as they, a rundown cottage with a leaky roof, a smoking fire, and crying children underfoot? That is not for her, although sometimes at night she thinks she would give it all up, the warmth, the comfort, the food, to feel someone's arms around her, to know what it is that she is missing out on.
But then, when the sun rises, she shakes such thoughts from her mind and goes on with her day. Daydreams waste time she can ill-afford to lose.
It isn't that she rejects the idea of love, or at least of marriage. In the back of her mind, the possibility has always been there and willing suitors have never been in short supply. Even now, already past her twenty second birthday, the men are still willing, but she is not. Less than a year ago her younger sister had died, Eve clinging tightly to her while their mother swaddled her new granddaughter. Her sister had married to escape home, their mother's hard whacks and harsh words. However tempting the idea of escape might once have seemed, Eve is now far from willing to find herself in that bed, lying in a pool of her blood, giving birth to the child of a man she doesn't love. She would rather stay a virgin her entire life than meet the same fate as her sister.
But….
Then there is Much, with who she hadn't meant to fall in love, hadn't meant to let creep into her dreams, hadn't meant to find herself worrying about whenever she hears that there has been another skirmish in Nottingham. But there he is, always on the edge of her subconscious.
When she hears that he is gone back to the Holy Land, her pillow is wet with tears for a week. Her mother slumbers peacefully beside her and Eve sobs more looking at her, sure now that this is the only bedmate she will ever know.
Months later, on market day, long after she has given up hope (but not her dreams) a hand grabs at her elbow as she walks past one of the many darkened alleyways, pulling her backwards into the darkness. Her basket goes flying, but she couldn't care less.
He looks gaunt and tired, the dark circles under his eyes pronounced even against his tanned. He smells like a wet dog and his clothes looked like they were washed in a mud hole. But he is smiling and kissing her, all the same.
And to her, he is perfection.