II. Death to Death
haleysings's prompt: a scene from Karon's youth
Once upon a time, there was a woman who was meant to die and a poet who was meant to grieve her death so heart-brokenly that even the gods would have pity and give him the chance to steal her away from death; but he would turn and look and fail and lose her forever, or so the story goes. And so, poetry is born from unending sorrow.
Charon closed the book mid-story, and considered again the sleeping child before him, grateful that those green eyes that still seemed stunned by pain had eased into even a fitful sleep. In a gesture that was so foreign to him that he wondered at himself, he brushed back the thick dark hair on the small uneasy forehead, resting his calloused hand there a moment, before getting up and leaving, closing the door behind him quietly.
How had things come to this—him taking care of this small frail boy? His life, as far as he could remember it had always been wild, dissipated, lost in empty bottles of cheap vodka with nights—and as often days—he didn't remember until Cora in her pristine Academy uniform with her green eyes full of disappointment was there to drag him home to those pit-vipers she called parents.
He wasn't sure really how she was related to him, how that vicious, pinch-faced couple was related to him—how they had had a daughter like Cora, he would never know, but then didn't it just go to show how worthless blood, kinship, family and all that crap really was? All he knew really and all that mattered was that his own parents had died young, and there was nowhere else for him to go.
There was a curious history of mysterious deaths in his family. No one really knew, or wanted to. There were whispers of a blood curse, of a talent from the devil. Fools, the whole narrow-minded stupid town. Every miserable, wretched day was the same damn thing—listening to that miserable couple carp over how he ate them out of house and home, of trying to forget his anger in the burning fires of the forge and the sweet oblivion of drink. But he knew if it continued like this, soon he would explode or die smothered.
And then one day, when he was far gone in his cups as usual and the damn barkeeper kept calling his name and didn't the stupid man know to shut-up—
"We are both gods of death, it seems," a darkskinned stranger smiled at him, and Charon was caught in how the smile seemed to overflow from his lips, from his eyes, from his very being; looking at that smile, Charon felt, he had at last in a lifetime of never leaving that town, somehow finally come home. "Shiva," the man said, holding out a hand.
Charon laughed and shook that lined hand, and then, because it seemed the thing to do, held onto it. The man didn't pull away. "New in town?" Charon slurred out.
And the man smiled his same welcoming smile, without a trace of the usual judgment or scorn. "Yes. I'm a poor scholar, making my way through the world. But I think in these parts folks call me a gypsy, and expect their fortunes told."
"Do you? Tell fortunes?"
The smile had broken into a laugh, and Charon laughed too because it was impossible to hear it and not do so. "No—that would mean our fates are written out, spun like stories. Surely we write our own."
They were his props, Cora and Shiva, holding him up, holding him together. And somehow, in the process of doing so, they had fallen in love with each other and Charon wondered if this was the twisted fate he had somehow written for himself.
He forged their wedding bands, his tears burned away by the forge before they could even fall.
And now all that was left was that child, so frail and small, green eyes glazed with a pain he had never seen in Cora's, and Shiva's smile as if had never been. He leaned against the closed door, closing his eyes as tears streaked down his face.