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"When I turn the pages of what I write, among histories, and among conspiracies, I feel I'm exaggerating our story. But when I consider the affairs of the stars, so are they. I quite feel it is a conspiracy that we collided, not a story but another history."
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A Y D A D C T Y L, NILES
1 9 0 2 Nᓰ
IN MY EIGHT YEARS OF BIRTH, I HAD NEVER SEEN A SLAUGHTER BEFORE MY FATHER'S. It was a warm summer night. While I sat by mother on our magnolia coated peristyle, in ecstatic wind shouldering from the earthen ligatured courtyard. My father was seated beside the fountain with my brother, discussing the current crucial political state of the kingdom with him. By that time he'd called me countless times to settle with him. He often used to take me in his embrace and kiss my head.
Suddenly Leonidas was called from outside. It was uncalled.
"Who it might be?" Father exchanged a glance with my brother.
"I'll see," Leonidas said getting up, opening the door and stepping out. Then he was gone for minutes. No trace behind him.
The silence was thickening before father raised himself. "He is not back yet." He muttered himself, reaching for the lamp of the post. "Ara lock the door. I am going after Leon."
I followed him quickly, as he pulled the door and stood on the threshold, I was playing the door behind. Suddenly I noticed him stiff.
"What happened fa-" I couldn't complete because father suddenly pushed me onto the wall and went to slam the door quickly. However, the door flung open, hitting me. I heard countless men marching inside. Slowly, I peeked from the edge of the door and my stomach twirled suddenly as I saw a large crowd in the house. They all surrounded my father.
There was something terrible! Terrible!
Suddenly it was chaos. Loud and mad uproars pried in the house. The sound of furniture cracking aroused. Amidst this, Father shrieked. I couldn't see him for their bodies, I tried so hard. Those men even stripped from my father's last sight. All I could feel was salt in my eyes and lips.
I was never found by them. They searched the entire house and found my mother instead. She was an Assulian slave. Hence a slave had a change of master that night but I lost my mother in this.
They set the house on fire and locked the doors.
"Come back," I whispered the first thing when I crawled out. Reaching to tug his hands. But there it was a burning hand withering to ashes. His hands were so lovely, so peaceful. I felt the security of the world when I yielded his hands and walked in the paths of town.
I was so small, so naive that instead of trying to survive I was wishing my father would raise from the floor and save me. But he never stood again.
Perhaps it was the day, I started learning a bit of farewell.
