"The Winner" (As Told by Maximillion Pegasus)
There are some days, those lovely mornings and twilights, when I taste the beauty and essence of the sun, right on the tip of my tongue. I can savor it with all the deliciousness of a lemon pie, with whip cream and a plump cherry for extra flavor. On those days, that's when I feel like a winner.
I don't know exactly what it is I possess. Could it be charm? Appearance? Stature? All three? Whatever this delightful quality is, I find it can be quite useful in many fields, considering the special art it takes to put it fully into play. Ah, there are so many joys to be found in luxury, in the direction of credit to its due source. Little kisses I can blow from my fingers, and propel with the winds of my words, wherever I would prefer it to go. One can imagine, for sure, many of the delights woven into this charming business!
It seems I can bring anything into my favor. Any thing, any one. Just name it, and, if I find it permitting, I will certainly be able to provide. It never fails. In the midst of this unrelenting, spinning, whirling madness of company life, I am the creator. The controller. I'm ahead of the game.
So surely, one can understand my superior edge when the dealing comes toward the inner, more natural codes between men and women. I do revere those moments when flirting comes all too easily and I find myself adorned in women at my side. Such pretty gems, they are, glittering in the soft light of the finest, most expensive nightclubs. The greatest joy of them is, knowing how easily any of these jewels could be mine, with simply the snap of a slender finger and a light flick of sheen, of silver tresses.
Sadly, my sights never rested on them for long. You see, there was one gem I desired more than any found in these dazzling clubs. If all those who have lit the fire inside my dearly normal eye are diamonds, this fine specimen was dyed like the setting sun. But alas, it seems that destiny would want me to have a disadvantage with this particular young rogue... For the apple of my eye now was a man.
Not just any man, mind you. A steely youth, possessing a mind of clear-cut accuracy and a will to break iron, credit weighing down his pockets like lead and owning the most brilliant sapphire eyes I have ever set my sight upon... Even my wife, before she passed on and released me to the world of flirtation, her eyes could never match the life and emotion that burned constantly in these spheres of wonder and glory. Oh, oh how I yearned so badly to make him mine...
This boy... This wonderful example of my other half, of a clear-seeing and precise mind that so obviously needed an artistic soul like myself to complete him... Naturally, you understand, I did everything I would normally do to ensure victory over this young lad. Contracts. Associations. Dinner at fine restaurants, to discuss "business matters." All of my most time-tested methods of drawing the potential partners in, things that surely would not fail...
It's as though fate itself turned the tables on me.
He never took the hint. His eyes never lost that geometic glare about them, and he couldn't open his mind to the possibilities that lie beneath the opening gesture. Never once did he show any sign of willingness to explore a new road... The thought flitted through my mind a new times, that perhaps this was his way of showing affection, by concealing his feelings altogether, but surely that could not be it. What kind of a man wouldn't even outwardly express his own feelings? What use is it to lock oneself in a bottle, to seal off oneself from any emotion? Why, it's as though one is allowing the Fates to snip away their own string!*
(*Reference to Greek mythology; the Fates held everyone's certain "string of life," and if they chose to cut it, that person would die.)
Perhaps it was our blatant opposites that resulted not in a bonding, but in a treacherous downfall. My best work finally failed me. I'd never before experienced exactly what incompetence felt like before, but now I knew. It was an emptiness, a black hole in the pit of your stomach, a place where you finally realized... just how incomplete you are. I was... so incomplete.
And it drove me to madness.
If he would not accept me voluntarily, I was willing to take him by force. There were dirtier ways to play this game... I look back on it now, and all I can see through the blinding redness are haunting words: Kidnap. Capture. Soul Stealing. I took away the poor boy's soul... Only because he was unwilling to give it to me. A scoundrel, that's what I was. It's only now that I see how much of a greedy fool I am.
Eventually, I did release the boy, freed him from the bondages of living in a shadowy realm where all your nightmares come alive. But as I opened the cage and finally set him free, the days and nights of fury at my sins exploded in his once-metallic eyes, and I felt incinerated by the lightning force of my jewel's wrath. Perhaps, at a time long ago, he had genuinely felt that microscopic spark connecting us... After this moment, all connections had been severed. They could never be rebonded, that was certain.
As I relinquished the treasure I'd tried so hard to claim for myself, I understood that cheating does not give you what you desire. And I understood that, for once, I was not the winner.
No one wins all the time.
There are some days, those lovely mornings and twilights, when I taste the beauty and essence of the sun, right on the tip of my tongue. I can savor it with all the deliciousness of a lemon pie, with whip cream and a plump cherry for extra flavor. On those days, that's when I feel like a winner.
I don't know exactly what it is I possess. Could it be charm? Appearance? Stature? All three? Whatever this delightful quality is, I find it can be quite useful in many fields, considering the special art it takes to put it fully into play. Ah, there are so many joys to be found in luxury, in the direction of credit to its due source. Little kisses I can blow from my fingers, and propel with the winds of my words, wherever I would prefer it to go. One can imagine, for sure, many of the delights woven into this charming business!
It seems I can bring anything into my favor. Any thing, any one. Just name it, and, if I find it permitting, I will certainly be able to provide. It never fails. In the midst of this unrelenting, spinning, whirling madness of company life, I am the creator. The controller. I'm ahead of the game.
So surely, one can understand my superior edge when the dealing comes toward the inner, more natural codes between men and women. I do revere those moments when flirting comes all too easily and I find myself adorned in women at my side. Such pretty gems, they are, glittering in the soft light of the finest, most expensive nightclubs. The greatest joy of them is, knowing how easily any of these jewels could be mine, with simply the snap of a slender finger and a light flick of sheen, of silver tresses.
Sadly, my sights never rested on them for long. You see, there was one gem I desired more than any found in these dazzling clubs. If all those who have lit the fire inside my dearly normal eye are diamonds, this fine specimen was dyed like the setting sun. But alas, it seems that destiny would want me to have a disadvantage with this particular young rogue... For the apple of my eye now was a man.
Not just any man, mind you. A steely youth, possessing a mind of clear-cut accuracy and a will to break iron, credit weighing down his pockets like lead and owning the most brilliant sapphire eyes I have ever set my sight upon... Even my wife, before she passed on and released me to the world of flirtation, her eyes could never match the life and emotion that burned constantly in these spheres of wonder and glory. Oh, oh how I yearned so badly to make him mine...
This boy... This wonderful example of my other half, of a clear-seeing and precise mind that so obviously needed an artistic soul like myself to complete him... Naturally, you understand, I did everything I would normally do to ensure victory over this young lad. Contracts. Associations. Dinner at fine restaurants, to discuss "business matters." All of my most time-tested methods of drawing the potential partners in, things that surely would not fail...
It's as though fate itself turned the tables on me.
He never took the hint. His eyes never lost that geometic glare about them, and he couldn't open his mind to the possibilities that lie beneath the opening gesture. Never once did he show any sign of willingness to explore a new road... The thought flitted through my mind a new times, that perhaps this was his way of showing affection, by concealing his feelings altogether, but surely that could not be it. What kind of a man wouldn't even outwardly express his own feelings? What use is it to lock oneself in a bottle, to seal off oneself from any emotion? Why, it's as though one is allowing the Fates to snip away their own string!*
(*Reference to Greek mythology; the Fates held everyone's certain "string of life," and if they chose to cut it, that person would die.)
Perhaps it was our blatant opposites that resulted not in a bonding, but in a treacherous downfall. My best work finally failed me. I'd never before experienced exactly what incompetence felt like before, but now I knew. It was an emptiness, a black hole in the pit of your stomach, a place where you finally realized... just how incomplete you are. I was... so incomplete.
And it drove me to madness.
If he would not accept me voluntarily, I was willing to take him by force. There were dirtier ways to play this game... I look back on it now, and all I can see through the blinding redness are haunting words: Kidnap. Capture. Soul Stealing. I took away the poor boy's soul... Only because he was unwilling to give it to me. A scoundrel, that's what I was. It's only now that I see how much of a greedy fool I am.
Eventually, I did release the boy, freed him from the bondages of living in a shadowy realm where all your nightmares come alive. But as I opened the cage and finally set him free, the days and nights of fury at my sins exploded in his once-metallic eyes, and I felt incinerated by the lightning force of my jewel's wrath. Perhaps, at a time long ago, he had genuinely felt that microscopic spark connecting us... After this moment, all connections had been severed. They could never be rebonded, that was certain.
As I relinquished the treasure I'd tried so hard to claim for myself, I understood that cheating does not give you what you desire. And I understood that, for once, I was not the winner.
No one wins all the time.