Nightmares and Nocturnes

The Reluctant Hero

Chapter 10: The Reluctant Hero

The day boy, having resolved to wade through the hazards of the dark, took a great blow from his efforts, brought low by his hazardous expeditions; the grand health, the blessed constitution over which the monster had taken such pains - blessing him with light, and showering him with favor - yielded, and he found himself in pain and misery, a victim of his own wandering. His fears grew rampant and unchecked, for he trembled in the prospect of the monster's rage; he feared that should the monster discover he had been victim to his own deficiencies, the monster might grow angry, and angrier still at the gaping fractures in his sun-drenched benediction. For the day boy's weakness would surely have meant the monster's own failure, and then the monster would slowly grow to hate and mistrust him, looking on him as an artist would his wretched canvas - enflamed with disappointment - and seek to destroy his own work.

This was the day boy's fear, but it was only one among many; he was hardly the live thunderbolt he had once been. For in his trials he had known companionship, and felt compelled to fealty in his afflictions; and as much as he feared the wretched shadows of the night, it was within the dark that he had come to know something, a truth brighter than any other he'd been taught; a glimmer of goodness, which lit his soul more radiantly than the sun; and it was the loss of this, out of any, that the day boy feared most.

The day boy, cast out of favor, looked upon the night girl, seemingly with new eyes, and wondered if in his fear he had wronged her; "Thank you," he said, though gratitude did not come easily, and had never been taught. "You are like live armor to my heart; you keep the fear off me."

. . . . . . . .

Out of everything he had endured, she was the purest form of torture, and he felt himself shatter, twisted and contorted in the delicateness of her grasp, the moment her lips meant his.

I want this, he thought, take me, lay me to waste, confine me to rubble, let me amount to nothing but this -

There was a sureness about her, a certainty that belied the exquisite fragility of her movements; she leaned into him as naturally as she breathed and he drew her in, and she was in his arms, and he held her like he could draw time to a close - like he could force it, kicking and screaming in its petulance, to trap him in its clutches and pull the shades around them, so that he'd never have to fucking feel anything else but her lips against his.

It was slow melancholy, syrupy sweetness; between the pounding in his chest and rushing in his ears he abandoned his capacity to think, her hands traveling slowly up his arms and over his shoulders, coming to rest around the carved edge of his cheek. There was a thoughtfulness to their placement, a spirit of intention, like she'd looked at his face before and wondered what would it be like to touch him? and finally given in, shivering as the pads of her fingers brushed against the strike of his jaw.

He pulled her against him. Lay me to waste.

She pulsed and shimmered in his arms. Confine me to rubble.

Every touch an apology, every breath a request - let me amount to nothing but this - and he yearned, and he ached, and for every kiss in his life that had been born of greed and selfishness and petty craving, each one was left a laughing sin in the wake of this. Of her.

There was a push then, a shift; a lurch. More, said her hands on his skin, more, said his hips against hers, more, begged the space between them - and then a voice that rang in his mind -

You don't know what she's made of.

A crushing truth. A remorseless bite of reality.

"Stop," he murmured, eyes still closed.