You wait (patient, still), lost in a sea of silk, thoughts spinning downward in a lazy helix of misery, water, and blood.
The red has run, spilled in abundance in lands far and fabled, by your word in your land, oozing sticky-sweet between your fingers, staining your hands.
Your hands. You look down at them, soft courtier's hands, pallid and trembling. Your body under his hands, shy and yet longing for his touch, a thousand years ago.
Never will you be subject to such passion again. Life, with all its hot intensity, is not yours to live, no more than it was his. Not for you a living death alone amongst lickspittles; instead, you've embraced the passionless state of certain death.
The thought begs at you, lapping coldly against your feet, tugging at your heart. Moonlight reflects off the surface of the lake, white and still. And, still, you wait.
You take a step into death (into the looking glass), shivering at the gelid water. You consider weight, the unbearable weight of living, the weight of your clothing pulling you down into the depths.
You consider yourself in death; picture yourself growing colder, and colder, until you are freezing beneath the water. You picture him in death (still in a steam, blood at face and throat). As the lake embraces your chest, you think of death, of a heaven where there exists none but you and him. This is your penance for allowing things to go so terribly wrong, exile in a watery prison. This is the razor rasping against your skin.
Then the ground disappears, and the lake comes up to slap you. You pinwheel beneath the waves like a Zora, desperate for absolution. The penance is not enough, you know now. Racing thoughts. Lungs filled with cold water.
