he comes to me one evening
He comes to me one evening when the wind is howling and ice shards prick the backs of those who were not prepared. Cold gusts sniff around the crannies and cracks in the glacier and around the feet that leave charred footprints into the snow.
He comes to me one evening, tall, handsome, exotic, and with skin so dark it resembles the ashes he leaves in his wake.
It is forbidden, though, this evening that he comes, and I know it. We have been warned of this visitor and of the harm he could cause if the mood strikes him, but I am in possession of a rebellious spirit that heeds no warning or rule. It's forbidden and I know it, but the knowledge of my secret actions creates a stirring in my stomach of anticipation, a tingling in my—Oh!
Maybe that's just his hands.
This man leaves the island the next day, when the storm is over and the sky is a crystalline blue once more. He leaves as if he knows what he has done, and later, I will know that he understood. He has committed a miracle in me, a mixture of soot and snow.
He leaves with his back turned, and because I know, I am not sad to see him go. I smile and wave, bidding him a safe journey. This independent man does not respond, his bare back a symbol of sovereignty and regency. I am not sad to see him go, but I am devastated when he has gone: with him left the warmth and I am once again surrounded by pale faces and frozen seniority.
If the world underneath this ice floe is anything, I would imagine it to be a land of opportunity. My restless soul has had a taste and now it wants more.
I think I love him.
The elders tell me the sentence before it is ready to be carried out. The flame, they say to me, is no good here. It would defrost all the old and prevent the new. I am powerless to object, powerless to right the wrong I never intended.
"You should have foreseen this."
I note that Rui does not say could, but should.
"But I suppose you have always been a romantic at heart."
I know that they are generous to let me carry my two children to term, but I almost wish it were not so.
See, I have to shield my offspring not from the weather, but instead from the cold stares of those in love with the ice, for I am in love with the heat.
As I look upon them for the first time, they are perfect. They are pale, perhaps as pale as I am. I am sure of what will become of them now. They look unrelated, paradoxical, and yet I already grasp at an image of them that will undoubtedly become them in the future. It is a mother's intuition, which is oddly funny to say for a mother of about two minutes. The girl looks almost as monotonous as myself and the others, and the boy is tenebrous in his hue altogether.
Both of them have those smoldering eyes that duplicated the color of embers.
These eyes that they both have do not come from me. That is why they are my indication of hope; they symbolize the hidden power within them. These beautiful children of mine are destined to go down below where I have never gone, destined to hold the reigns of some great and mighty beast. Because they are their father's children, as well as my own.
Two tears roll off my smiling cheeks and make a pretty sound as they hit the floor.
fin.