Overhead the sky dipped down almost ready to touch the earth; pregnant with darkness. Stars gleamed in the sky, scattered, as though strewn across. Below them, fathoms and fathoms below, the grass rustled in the warm wind. Silence balanced delicately, hanging in the air as though upon a need-tip. Yet it was comforting and peaceful between the two lovers below, on their backs and staring up. Yao looked to his side where he met Ivan's eyes gleaming in the darkness. He smiled and kissed Ivan's forehead. He raised his arm, so he reached the other side of Ivan's head. They rested as such, their feet were in opposite directions and one appeared upside down to the other.
Yao wore one of his finest, reddest silks that splayed around him, fanning out and from up above down it looked like a drop of blood. Ivan wore simply clothing and dimmed in comparison. However, he didn't mind. He enjoyed Yao's beauty and wanted to preserve it in its glory, not taking away from it. They fell asleep, without uttering a word but enjoying the other's presence, listening to the wind and the soft breaths.
The month trickled by slowly and sweetly. Yao made an effort to enjoy every bit of it; to squeeze out every drop of enjoyment he could. Things would be changing very soon.
Ivan and Yao furthered their relationship, but refrained from anything more intimate than kisses. Ivan played his guitar several more times. They visited the neighbors a handful of times and managed to see the baby that was born of one of them. He was a healthy, red, weepy infant but a baby—pure and innocent—nonetheless.
As with all warm summers, this one too had to draw to an end. Katrina wept as she prepared her baggage, hugging Yao and Ivan, promising to visit one day. She stared at Yao happily, knowing full well that her wish had come true and that her brother had discovered his delicate swan with a milky-white neck and coal-black eyes. That was how she described it and she could not be shaken in her stance. She kissed Yao's cheek and Ivan's cheek, too, bidding them good-bye.
Natalia had tears brimmed her eyes and did not lift her gaze from the floor. Paris awaited her along with many hours of travel still. When she looked up finally, as her sister begged so they would not miss their cab back to Moscow, she began to cry. Her throat convulsed and made strange, high-pitched hiccupping sounds. She brought her shoulders up and covered her face shamefully, frightened by her own tears. The slid down, like glistening gems, and fell onto her shirt front. A coat was strung over one of her bony arms and shivered with her sobs. Ivan approached her and enveloped her in his arms, kissing the top of her head.
"Oh!" she cried out and pulled away, wiping her eyes and frowning deeply; "oh how horrible it is to cry!"
"Whatever made you do so, Natasha?" Katrina said, using Natalia's nickname. Her own voice trembled with foreboding sobs.
"I know I'll see none of you again," she said in a ghostly whisper, "Not you nor my sister nor Yao…"
"What do you mean? Surely you'll come back from Paris once you finish your studies," Yao argued.
"Well once I finish going abroad and hopefully completing my life's dream then I will return to Russia. But you all," she looked at all three of them before her, her shoulders dropping and her head tilting to the side, letting her silver hair fall into her face. "Ivan I know you have been called back to you regiment as the war burns on. I know they need a good commander and only you can supply that all. But you will die, I know it. Katrina I might see you again but by then we'll be so different and Yao—what I mean to say is that even if I do see you all again you won't be you anymore. You would have changed. Time both heals and damages. When I come back why Ivan you could have grown a beard, Katrina you could have children, Yao you could have gone back home! You won't be the same people. You'll have the same identity and the same bodies but you'll not have the same mind set as now. When I see you then I'll see ghosts of the past and I'll never be able to let that go, simply because so much time has elapsed since then. Ivan I saw you several months when you came home on leave. I could accommodate to you, though I treated you like a stranger, but that is only because your face still stood strong in my memory!" A fresh wave of tears poured down her cheeks and a strange peal of quivering laughter escaped her. Her lips remained parted once the strained and strangled sound died away. She slowly shut her mouth and looked away, further ashamed by her actions and her words.
"Perhaps we'll change for the better," Yao ventured, "Maybe when you come back you'll find us wiser and more likable. You'll find that our faults of the present had been effaced by experience. You'll find that all you found dislikable, at least most of it, will be gone or altered to some new form that suits you!"
"And don't forget, my dear sister," Katrina said soothingly, "You'll also change. For you it won't be noticeable. It'll come so gradually. It's how you see your siblings are changing but it's so slow and well-paced that you can hardly notice, unless you think back to some distant point in time. Natalia, you're young and still a docile, petite little creature that has yet to see the world. You are mature and wise as it is but you're hardly eighteen! Imagine what life has left to offer! Please don't weep, not yet. Until, and if, you see a letter with words declaring your brother's death you mustn't worry about him again. Make that promise to me! Because when I see you cry it hurts me so! Imagine how mother would have scolded you!"
Natalia agreed to the promise and hugged her brother and Yao, bidding them a muffled good bye and then leaving. They shut the door. And, just as how the final instrument cries out its last note and the orchestra comes to an end, a quiet and stillness engulfed the room. Yao felt the pressure of it and went into the study, shaken by Natalia's tears and words. He never expected her to be so emotional. In fact, he expected her to wave good-bye and not even near her lips to anyone's skin.
The next few days leading up to Ivan's deployment, the two packed up the house and locked the gates, gathering their belongings. Ivan planned to take Yao to his apartment, rightfully his, back in Moscow.
"What will I do there?" Yao asked, eating strawberries outside. His valises leaned against the wall inside, ready to be taken come that night. Autumn crept up on the country, turning the edges of leaves yellow and red and purple.
"Since everything has been cleared up back at home, you'll be going there."
"What?" Yao rounded on him, and not for the shock of the news.
It is said that when a child departs from her homeland and enters a new one, she picks up this new language and forgets her old one. This, Yao feared, must have happened to him. He brought up words and phrases from Mandarin. Painfully he recalled having forgotten to write back to Xiang. How he must have grown! But after a few words and phrases slithering through his mind, other soon tumbled afterwards and flooded his brain, reassuring him of their presence.
"You'll be in Moscow until October and then some travelers will arrive to pick you up and bring you home." Ivan said, turning cold and stoic.
Yao edged towards him, tears springing up in his eyes. "Why? Do you plan to leave me there forever? What do you plan to do when you come back home, live alone?" Yao cried, his voice rising in pitch.
"Don't shriek, it's improper," Ivan chastised, "And I told you the pains that are soon to come harbor the most grief. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…" his expression changed and he pulled Yao to his breast, holding him tight and pressing kisses to his head and face. "This will be the last time I'll see you. I'm sorry for springing all this on you without prior warning. My reasons for doing that were completely selfish. I wanted to save myself the sorrow and pain and I only brought more!"
Yao buried his head in Ivan's shirt front but did not cry.
Slowly, timidly, he said; "You aren't coming home, are you? At least, you don't think you are."
"No. I'm dying out in the battlefield, I know it."
Yao pulled back and reached up to kiss Ivan. Ivan kissed back limply.
Later that day, when Ivan hoisted Yao and his luggage into the cab, he kissed those pale lips and gazed deeply into Yao's eyes. Yao, seized by passion, leaped out from the cabby and, wrapping his arms around Ivan, thrust kisses upon kisses across Ivan's face and lips. Tears fled freely from his eyes and they moistened Ivan's face. Ivan kissed back and held him tightly. They remained so for a while yet, until the cabby turned impatiently at them and Yao climbed back aboard, apologizing. The cabby's nose was red and he seemed to be on the verge of tears himself.
"I love you more than anything, Ivan Braginsky!" Yao called, crying out and piercing the evening. The cabby had started moving and he strained his leg to look back at Ivan. His neck and head bobbed with the horses' even trot.
"I love you more than anything, Yao Wang! Let the sky be ripped from the earth and death approach me and I will never relinquish my love for you!"
"Promise, if you live, that you will always love me so!"
"I already promised myself a thousand times over!" Ivan now had to lightly jog to keep up. The cabby, bound by a schedule, tried his best to slow the horses enough for the event to unfurl.
"If not in life we'll meet in death!" Was the last thing Yao called out that Ivan could hear. The last thing Yao saw of Ivan were his luminescent eyes piercing the darkness and his hand pressed to his heart.
Yao turned away, burying himself in his seat, and sobbed softly. The cabby built up speed and the horses now galloped on towards Moscow, their brown and black hides glistening in the paling light. Yao shut his eyes and fell asleep.
He dreamed of the heavenly sky. Lying beside him was Ivan. They were younger, ten or twelve years old, before they ever met. Yao curled himself into Ivan's chest, his eyes still looking up at the sky. They were in an indefinite place—a plain outside of time and space and nonexistent in reality. There was nothing on this plain but that stretch of grass and the sky above them. The blue of the heavens was visible in bright strips between wispy, cotton-like clouds that slowly shifted and merged into one another. Sunlight pierced through each one, like swords stabbing through. The light lit up the darkness in Yao's heart and he felt at ease, absolutely at home in Ivan's arms and recalling fondly the short time they spent acknowledging the other's love. In his sleep, Yao smiled, shaded by the night's darkness.
To be honest, for a moment, I considered ending the story here. Then I remembered that I still had some plot points I wanted to play out and some scenes that I'm itching to write. So, it's not the end. At least, not of the story. I had a lot of fun writing this particular chapter and I hoped you all enjoyed reading it!
Thanks again for the reviews! Please keep 'em coming.