The TwiceBorn

The Gray

“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”--F. Scott Fitzgerald

  He believed, at times, that the moon spoke to him.  Oh, not in actual words.  More like sighs and imagined whispers,  nuances of need that he was unable to define.  It floated over him now, the brilliant silver of its cast reflected back in his white eyes.  He used to think that love was just another word for weakness. 

Men re-arranging their lives or pining away to suit some woman’s fancy.  But none of that was true.  Love was nothing but a hole.  A hole that had to be filled, was all.  Whether it was the hole you dug and threw your family’s bodies in, or the hole between some whore’s legs, it just needed to be filled. 

Behrin smiled, a queer little grimace.  He lay on his pallet and looked up at the stark magnificence of the moon.

He wanted her back. 

Because he kept riding down the same old road and the wheel of his wagon kept hitting the same deep hole. And it jarred him every time.  That sudden jolt that caused his teeth to painfully click together and sent a bolt of unexpectedness through all his nooks and crannies.

 And he thought it was the road he chose but he’d been coming around to finding out that it was the road who’d chosen him.  He watched a small cloud lazily skate its way across the moon.  That’s how roads...and holes... were. 

He sat up and gazed out over the clearing at his men as they lay about the fire, drinking and laughing. They were still quite a ways from the settlement.  He could hardly wait to step into that dim, dark forest that signaled the last leg of this trip.   The days had been so hot he’d sworn  his shadow had broken a sweat.  But he’d be home soon. 

“And then what?” He thought. 

He tilted his head back to look at the moon again.  And he was suddenly struck by what he would consider a great truth.  Love wasn't beautiful or happy.  It was ugly and vicious. It yearned for beauty and happiness because it did not have any of that for itself. It was a dark ugly hole that just kept getting a little bit deeper every time his wheels fell into it.

He watched as one of his men got up from the firelight and headed off into the brush.  He recognized the man’s slow purposeful walk and, just like that, decided what he was going to do.

                                       **************************************************************

“Gre.  Come over here.  I need to talk to you.”

                   Gre looked over at Behrin off by himself in the glow of the moonlight and grimaced. Taking a piss was going to have to wait. He walked over and gingerly took a seat on the ground by Behrin’s pallet.

He was getting a little long in the tooth for these slave expeditions.  Not the rounding up and the auctioning off but the simple affair of getting up off the ground and swinging a leg over a horse on a constant basis.  His name was Gregorius but the younger bucks had started calling him “The Gray” behind his back.  They’d only done it once to his face.  Still, the name stuck.  And he’d been called worse.

                    He eyed Behrin as the man ignored him and gazed up at the moon.  This trip had steadily gone south since Behrin had sold Islinn to The Twiceborn.  Gre knew that Behrin had always had a touch of the strange in him, but selling Islinn had sharpened it, honed it into a dark edge. 

“Where did that piece of filth say they were headed?”

Behrin’s voice was soft and contemplative as he continued to stare up at the moon.