Author's Note: I was listening to "When All Is Lost" by Timothy Shortell and half-dozing in my office chair when I suddenly 'saw' this story in my head, and I knew I had to write it.
I cried the whole time.
The Only Way Left to Hold You
The inn is quiet, the hour late. His friends are all asleep, snatching at what brief respite they can find before the following day, before a race that may cost some or all of them their lives.
Orym keeps his lonely vigil, guarding his friends' rest, but for a few stolen moments, he sneaks away, out of the dungeon-like room in the Undercarriage, up, up, up to the roof and the muted hum of night in Bassuras. He lifts his eyes longingly to the sky, where Catha makes its lazy way across the dome of stars, and Ruidus wanders its own strange path.
His legs give way beneath him without his notice, and he sinks to his knees, then he bows his head and looks down into the small earthen bowl of water he clutches in his small hands.
And sees Catha's pale radiance reflected in the surface of the water.
The reflection trembles imperceptibly as his hands shake, and his breath catches painfully in his throat. Tears turned silver in the moonlight mist his eyes and stain his cheeks. Cradling the bowl in one hand, he trails the fingers of his other hand across Catha's shimmering reflection with a touch as light as the brush of a moth's wings.
Gently, he dips his hand into the water and cradles the reflection in his palm, but then the memories overwhelm him and he closes his eyes, letting time spin backward and his touch caresses the warmth of tattooed skin instead of night-cooled water.
Tears escape his tightly-closed eyes and slide down his face and sparkle into the bowl, mingling with the water that holds Catha in its liquid grasp. He cups the bowl in his hands, bows his head, and sinks his face into the water.
I miss you so much.
It is a silent scream beneath the water's surface, and the pain burns in his chest just as hot and as heartbreaking as it did six years earlier. He holds his face beneath the water until his lungs scream for air as loudly as his heart screams for his lost love, and his grip tightens uncontrollably on the bowl until it shatters in his hands. He flings his head back and gasps deeply, inhaling the moonlight as though he needs it to survive, while the broken shards fall and the water spills, Catha's gleaming reflection lost amid the windswept sand and dust.
But still, as he stares upward, his heart yearning and his thoughts so very far away, the soft silvery rays caress his face and Catha's fullness is reflected in the moss-green wells of Orym's eyes.