The Saint That I Am (One-shot; GL)

The Saint That I Am

THEY SAID IT WAS A MISTAKE, locking gaze with the eyes of the most sublime creature on Earth.

My Father is at my side, wearing his clergy clothes and he made me wear mine. I can feel his scorching stare at the side of my face as I ignore the faint burning of the rosary in my throat that I can recognize as shame.

Perhaps it was truly a mistake, locking gaze with the eyes of the most sublime creature on Earth but I did not dare avert my eyes on her.

They made her kneel on the platform facing the cathedral before they tied her body at the stake. But even with a deep-bluish bruise on her chapped and pale lips, few scratches on her pale face, ragged clothes that have nothing of resemblance from her usual purple and scarlet coloured dresses, and unkempt thigh-length hair, she can still make men and women like me sin just by looking at her beauty.

And for that, they would gladly burn her without trial, without any second thoughts, and they would paint her as a witch, a mystery, Babylon the Great, Mother of harlots and all the abominations of the Earth—of course they will. My Father, the local priest, has already given his word. And she already admitted to the town's people that she is a witch. And it was all my fault.

Clementine is not a witch. That I can testify and prove but I cannot seem to open my mouth to speak. It was all my fault, I should've looked away; I should've lied instead of begging her to stay. I bite my tongue when my visions begin to blur. Absentmindedly, I grasp the cross in my chest.

"Thine sins hath reached Heaven and God hath remembered thy iniquities. How dost thou plead, witch?" my Father declared.

The same people who tied her at the stake lowered their flaming torches but not yet touching the cedar wood cluttered at her thighs to her waist as if to threaten her to speak. They do not need to do so.

Clementine let out a laugh that silenced the whole town. She turned her gaze from me to my Father, and smiled. With her raven hair let loose and unbraided, she reminds me of a flame that will devour her mortal body—unafraid, unashamed.

"Set me aflame in this stake, I care not," Clementine smiles like a cur ready to attack. "Grant me this favour and release me from mine humanity wert I couldst be purified, and bestow me the gust of yond hellfire thou liest about thine believers as a purifying flame."

"Burn the witch!" a commoner chants after the silence and the others echo.

This time, I closed my eyes. I am many things but mostly, I am a coward and I cannot witness her burn knowing that I should be there by her side if only my Father hadn't put the blame on one woman. I cannot witness her burn for something we did together.

"Gaze upon what a witch wouldst fain doth for the sake of corrupting someone as holy as us, Rose." My Father whispered a threat.

My jaw clenched as the guilt of being named after something considered holy and not living up to it weighed the rosary in my neck and worsened its burning. When I opened my eyes, she was the very first I saw before the tears in my eyes blurred and flooded my vision. She mouthed something familiar. I rub my eyes and then she mouths it again.

'I love thee.'

And by that, I knew what to do.

I freed myself from the rosary in my neck and the beads clattered on the floor, then I removed my cap to let my hair loose that gathered attention from the commoners. With heavy breaths, I force myself to meet the horrified eyes of my father. From this day on, no more shall I live that way—to be bound by another's beliefs.

"Forgive me, Father." I whispered.

Without looking back, I ran past the townsfolk to the platform so I could reach Clementine.

'Forgive me, Father.' My mind echoes while I run to where my heart is tied.

'Forgive me, for I am not daunted of mine own mortality. Forgive me when through her kisses is the way I speak sacraments without having to bite mine tongue and through twisted linen sheets, tangled limbs, and wet whispering mouths is where I hath found mine salvation without the fear of being damned. We didst all things thou declared abominable. But as I already foretold, dauntless I am of mine own mortality.

For if sin is what we are and impiety is the path I must take to be with her, then I shall never repent. No matter what flame awaits ahead, I wouldst fain dost it once more. For her, I shall dost it all again.

'Forgive me, if I love all things unbearable; if I am all things unbearable. Forgive me, but—'

When I arrived in front of the stake, they already ignited the woods. My senses were drowned with smoke, tears, and sorrow.

'Tis the kind of saint yond I am.'

Her raven hair was the first to be caught on fire. She couldn't find me in the crowd so she just closed her eyes and accepted her fate. Before I averted my eyes from her to climb the stairs on the platform, she mouthed those words again.

'I love thee.' But this time, as an act of surrender.

When I climbed the stairs, no one intervened. They just watched. Pity and marvel evident in their eyes as they witness two women burn in the same fire. The flame has already spread and it has already reached her waist but I do not care.

If I cannot save her, then I will burn with her.

I step on the blazing wood and it doesn't feel like anything I imagined, it is worse. But all that matters is not my burning flesh nor failing lungs, it's that I could be with Clementine again. I could be by her side in her dying breath. When I reached her, I kneeled in front of her and cupped her face. She gently opened her eyes and confusion filled her eyes for a moment. Then glee when she recognized me. Then fear when she realised.

"Rose, what art thou—"

She was cut with her scream and mine. All we could see was the flame and each other, and we didn't know nor care if they could see us. There is no use in speaking, so I held her as close as our burning mortal flesh allows. I sobbed in the embrace. The only time we could express our love in daylight was in death.

What's so wrong about having a love like ours?

If only God was here to witness the way we hold each other in shut windows and hindered breaths like how His devotees mutter their prayers on marble floors and glass windows, He would not command Moses to write in his tablet that this kind of love—that our love is forbidden.

Despite our burning flesh and failing lungs, I kissed her and she kissed me back. Letting them witness that there are kinds of love that are worth dying and burning for—and what we have is one of them.

In the end of our lives, I knew it wasn't a mistake: locking gaze with the eyes of the most sublimest creature that ever graced the Earth.