Courting a Songstress

by merendina

In which we learn that love and desire are two very different things, and in which a vassal woos his lady. / Zhang Liao/Diao Chan drabble series as requested by Jianus. :D

2. Fallen Icons

Courting a Songstress
2: Fallen Icons

There are times when I don't believe in love. Sometimes, I feel that the most people get is lustful- lustful and afraid. When they find someone who fans the flames of that lust, and they become too afraid of what passes on the other side of drawn drapes and locked doors, they stay together and they call it love.

Such thoughts come most often in the stifling, sleepless hours before daybreak, ghosts of ghosts of ghosts long since departed, resurfacing from exhumed graves to remind me without mercy of the absence of you.

Then I begin to fear my own desire, the longing to possess you, despite the fact that I continuously tell myself that it is to treasure you, not hurt you as others have. My body aches to breathe your breath; if I allowed myself to, I would sink into your every word with the wild abandon of a man drowning. And I am afraid, though perhaps it is more shame than fear.

Yet, at other times, I can do nothing but believe in love. It is, after all, the one thing I can give you that they cannot.