Rifiuto: Non Miriena
A/N: Written: 2012. Rewritten: 2014. Found: 2018.- Licia
He stared at her, mouth agape, for it was the only thing he could do.
The frantic look in the young girl's eyes worried him. A warning of fever? Would delirium soon follow? Would sickness soon spread throughout the house, claiming every member of the family, including the Arjiki's princess?
"Miss Nessarose-"
"Please, Tibbett, how do I find them? The... Arjiki? My... my sister's tribe... your tribe... how do I find them?" She was frantic, near tears now, and he slowly shook his head.
"I don't know. I have spent many moons separated from our tribe-"
"But you were there, weren't you? You said so yourself, the day you went with the scouts... could... could they find the tribe? If you went with them?"
"Forgive me, Miss Nessarose, but I trust not the white who goes off willingly in search of the tribe I long to return to. The white man spreads disease, he carries it on the air he breathes; he brings death in the guns he carries, and the promises he makes. I will not see my tribe fall as others have for the white man's lies, no matter the desperate pleas of a little girl." He stood, yanking his wrist out of her grasp, and moved to return to the house. Nessa climbed to her feet, desperation filling her heart, for herself, or her sister, or Tibbett, or perhaps all three of them, she didn't know.
"Then take me!" He stopped, stunned by her words. "Take me as my sister was taken! Show me the desires only a man and woman know of! You were born of a white woman, but raised Arjiki. You are more of her world than mine, no matter the... the number of... moons you have spent away from them!"
He turned back to face her, the diamonds upon his face seeming to glimmer in the sunlight. There was no conceivable way this young girl... no, this... this teenager... was- He shook his head. No. She wasn't. She couldn't be. She was a child, no older than seventeen.
But the look in her eyes, the wild, feverish, spark, told him that she was, indeed, asking, and that she knew, on some level, of what she was asking for. He moved closer, carefully, the hunter he had been training to be coming out in him as he made his way towards her, this wild, beautiful animal, suffering from her own, silent kind of captivity. A captivity her sister had been lucky enough to escape.
"Please! Take me! I desire the sins of the flesh, to taste what she tasted, to feel as she felt... I desire to know all the secret moments shared between a man and woman! I want to be loved as she was- is- by her husband-"
He took her gently by the shoulders, shaking her tenderly. "Then you must wait until you yourself are to be married to feel such desires, you cannot just-"
"I don't want to, Tibbett! I wish to feel them now! By the time I am old enough for such a thing as marriage, I shall be a spinster!" She shook her head, turning her gaze away as fresh tears came to her eyes. "After Elia was stolen away, I promised myself that I would never marry. So that way, no matter how many years she was away, when she finally returned to us, I would be there. I would be home, when she returned home, no matter how many years fell in between. So that it would be familiar for her, something she remembered- us, the three of us, Shell and her and I, together, regardless of whether Mama and Papa had passed into the other world by then. At least, if Shell and I were still home, that part would still be familiar to her."
She met his gaze, the tears sliding rapidly down her cheeks. Suddenly, she seemed so much older, as though she were carrying the weight of the world upon her small, slender shoulders. Because she is. Her family's world.
"You're a child, Miss Nessarose. Children do not understand adult matters, adult desires-"
"I'm not a child, Tibbett. I am seventeen. I'm a grown woman, just like Elphaba is. Don't I have a right to discover the same desires she did? Just because I am not married and have not birthed children as she has, doesn't meant that I don't deserve or desire to feel the same things she has felt. I may be younger than her by two years, but I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm not the child left behind when she was stolen from us. I'm a woman. I feel desires similar to ones she feels." She reached up, taking his hands in hers. She glanced down, watching as their fingers slid into place slowly, lacing together perfectly. "In the seven years she was gone, Elphaba is not the only one to grow up."
She rose onto her toes, mouth inches from his. He pulled away, but she didn't move; instead she held his gaze, fresh tears glistening her eyes. "I grew up, too."
He pulled away from her, breaking the contact. He knew that in the white man's society, it was not uncommon for a young girl to marry once she reached seventeen or eighteen, and often, to a man many, many moons older than her. Often, they were married to men in their forties or fifties, men who had never taken a wife, or had lost a wife to the other world, and were desperate for one who could bear as many children as possible. He knew that often in the white man's society, a marriage was less about love and more about procreation and property- something the Arjiki did not see the value in. In the tribe, a marriage was sacred, as was the creation and birth of a child; they were precious things, things believed to bring good fortune. A match was often made between a man and woman because the Great Mother insisted, and her insistence was made clear through the shaman-
Tears misted his eyes, as his thoughts returned to Sarima, to the only mother he knew of, the only woman who truly looked upon him as her own. Oh, Madre, how I miss you so. Do you ever think of me?
"Oh, Tibbett, please, don't cry." He looked up at the feel of Nessarose's fingers brushing against his cheek, catching the tears as they slid down his skin. Softly, in a voice choked with tears, he whispered,
"You know not of what you ask for, Nessarose."
Gently, she reached down, taking his hands into hers, meeting his gaze, her voice soft, yet firm in her reasoning. "But I do."