He heard the harp sweet music wafting through the air to temptingly caress his check. It was delicate, light, refreshing, and he knew with the purity of his being, that it came from her. He leaned into it, forcing the heavy rusting chains that shackled him to the dank wall to whine and moan out of their stillness. For a moment the plucking of the music, her music, was lost. He held his breath and prayed desperately that it did not leave him. Beads of sweat formed on his brow as he tried to will the music to come back to him. The looming threat of complete isolation slunked toward him from the dark corners like a giant ogre, ready to sit on him, until the weight on his chest was so unbearable that his lungs implode from loneliness. From being separated from her.
In his dreams they were together. Walking through a field on the edge of a village, he was free to look at her, stroke her hair, and touch the softness of her hand with the calloused one of his own. Sometimes in his dream, they would sit by the water, eating apples she gathered along the way and watching the water flow by. Each wondering where the stream of their own life would take them, and when it would feel like it would really begin.
He always hated waking from those dreams. It was as if the Gods themselves were trying to break him, but bringing him so close to all that he desired in his sleep, but when awake, stealing it viciously away. It felt unbearable.
Awake the guards tried ways of breaking him too. They brought her in, and stood her just beyond the reach of his chains. At first he tried with all his strength to reach her. They laughed and mocked him when he couldn’t. They held her as a prize over him to entice him to give in. But they didn’t know, she was not someone to give or take as a possession, as a thing. She was more. She knew it, as did he. He stopped his struggle and just looked straight into her eyes. Beautiful clear green eyes. Motionless she stared back at him, speaking all the words that they couldn’t aloud.
Next they attempted a different tactic, one to fill him with rage and jealousy. One of the guards, the large brutish one reached over and fondled her breast. Then the brute drew her roughly to him, forcing her to be pressed against him as he ran his thick hands over her. Not one shackle did he move while watching this. He did not move, or react in any way. The guards did not understand the power of their love, how could they? They knew nothing but slimy physical pleasures. She closed her eyes, and he felt a soft breath on his ear. She was not in her body which was being roughly handled by this brute, that was just a shell, an image of the real. She caressed his face with her spirit, and his spirit reached out to touch her. They embraced, drawing from each other strength, commitment, and hope.
They were held as one until another guard shoved her roughly to the ground. The force of the fall pulled her back into her body, her shell. He felt her departure like the grace of an exhale.
They didn’t show her to him after that. They knew it wouldn’t work. They kept her close though. They thought that him hearing her tears and whimpers would break him. But she made no such sound for the world to hear. All her cries were internal, and he would have heard them as clear as glass breaking if she were two feet from him, or two hundred miles.
That is why he strained so hard to hear the music, her music. He knew, with the surety of his soul, that she sat close by eyes closed. Imagining the field where they walked, or the barn where he first ventured a kiss, the ancient oak where they promised to meet, or any other golden memory that they created together. He knew she held out her hands before her, plucking gently at the harp of air creating sweet music. The chains silenced, and the gentle plucking caressed him once more as his tears formed a soft cadence.
No comments:
Post a Comment