The Goddess and the Bird

Oh, Taisiya

Oh, Taisiya.

If I could, I'd bathe in your laughter. I'd sleep wrapped in your words. I could hold your hand and look into your eyes until the end of time.

But that will never happen and this impossibility makes me weep through the night and walk the halls in the morning with my eyes shamefully painted a watery red.

The same red that your lips appeared after you kissed me. You'd kiss me so softly and sweetly I found myself floating among the clouds.

I never wanted to leave the clouds, to come back down to the dreadful, stony surface of the unforgiving earth. But you'd whisper in my ear.

If you've only ever got the clouds, you won't appreciate them. Think about how much nicer the warmth will be after the cold.

And me, drunk from the sugar on your lips, nodded and sighed and retreated down. For when you spoke, I listened. When you asked, I obliged.

You weren't wrong often, but this was a fatal mistake. The clouds were our final place. I knew it, but you were always restless. You didn't want to settle, to have an end, to be still.

I barely see you anymore, so you got what you wanted. You're never still now. Always flitting around, you act as if staying in one place for longer than a minute will kill you. And maybe it will.

Maybe that's why this is all a blessing after all, not a curse. Now you can be free of me, the chain trying to keep you in one place. Though you never acted as if I was a chain. But curses and blessings are often hard to distinguish.

Your beauty—always regarded as a blessing. You saw it as a curse. You always hated that all the boys in our grade would flock around you, trying to please you, trying to win you over. You especially despised it when it was the older boys, leering down at you. They suffocated you. But I was your oxygen and you breathed me in and used me up—and I was only too happy to be at your service.

For it was me that you wanted, out of all that wanted you, you chose me. I never understood, but I thought it wise not to question a goddess who had just graced me for life.

Of course, we couldn't let any of this be known. The list of why we couldn't be together stretched out among the stars. We were opposites in every way—you were a pureblood and I was a dirty muggleborn, you were crafted of honey and sunlight and I was scraped out of stone and thunder.

Though the one way we were the same was unacceptable. You were a girl, and so was I. We were both meant to marry a man, sit quietly in his house, and bear his children.

But we'd whisper stupid, wishful promises to each other in the cloaked, inky safety of the night.

One day we'll have a house together.

With the biggest garden you can imagine, just acres and acres of land. So we can explore.

We'll have an orchard with apples and peaches and oranges.

Don't forget the animals, I want a hippogriff... oh and mooncalves!

What about just a cat, or a dog.

Those too of course, we can have anything we want.

And you'd smile so that I could see all the teeth and your eyes and nose would scrunch up and your cheeks would turn rosy and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever experienced.

And then you'd grab my hand and hold it to your chest before you dozed off to sleep because one time I told you that otters hold hands as they sleep so as to not drift away and you always claimed it was so we'd stay together forever. And I believed you because it was so painfully easy.

I should've known, and part of me did. There was so much against us, we would have been ripped apart eventually. We were meant to be together, I knew it, you did too. But it was a cruel trick from the universe as it threw us into the same orbit and then sent meteors our way relentlessly.

We would wail into each other's arms sometimes when the onslaught became too much, when we seemed too close to being separated forever. There'd be a new proposal your parents had received and were seriously considering.

And we'd sob and weep and bawl until there was nothing left and we had to cling to each other to keep from scattering into a million beautiful pieces.

But our splitting was unforeseen and more painful than either of us imagined—I'm just glad all the hurt and anguish was handed to me.

In the beginning, when we were both still unsure and awkward and woefully unprepared for what lay ahead of us, sometimes you'd wish that you could forget me. You said it would be easier to just forget me and live a mundane life and then wither and die.

But is easy really what you want, Taisiya?

Oh Merlin, no, no, no it's not. I want you and—and... but it wont work! It can't?

I'll make it work, I'd do anything for you.

And then you'd blush and giggle and we'd be happy again. If only I could go back in time, I'd tell you to forget me then.

Because it would have been infinitely less painful than you forgetting me now.