DALIA

CHP.2

Face to Face

The winds were brutal against my back, each strike audible as it rippled past me, billowing my dress. I was in a meadow, tall serrated grass welding to my thighs as we were collectively submitted to the blundering breeze. I'd been transported by a nameless creature into an unknown place.

Through the breaks of my tempestuous hair, I saw the backside of a man sitting a good distance away. I cupped my hand over my eyes. The sun mothered his hair, those precious laden curls, in a wreath of gold. Clad in linens, he appeared deceptively innocent. A painted figure at peace within a reverie. I could see the slope of his nape through the drift of his shirt, so human. Despite that, I could tell from the broad of his shoulders, and my remembrance of drowning captive in his arms, that he was large. A size that would dwarf a human man. He was wild, dangerous, and I would not be fooled by this comatose state procured in the sunkissed meadows.

The phantom of his hands harrowed my stomach, where I could still feel his touch, digging deep, sinking under my surface. The invisible welts, actively blistering.

Carried on by the flitting gusts, I blew closer, still keeping a cautious distance. I parted my solemn lips, cracked with hesitation. I watched what could've been an immortal scene, unless an interruptive sound escaped my throat, and his attention would zero in on me like before.

But the anger would not be suppressed, and I spoke, "Why have you brought me here?"

He was scarcely moved by my aggression, didn't even turn his head. I wanted to look the man who'd orchestrated such an offense in the face, to find some answer in the window of his anatomy. Instead, I spoke to an indifferent refusal, sat brazen in a picturesque landscape. At least he didn't drag me with him to the depths of hell.

"I was wondering when you would speak." His voice, the sound of a grave melody, thicker than the promise of a lover and every oath of worship alike.

I was paralyzed, somewhere in a rift between rage and fascination. My determination garnered results, as my snide broke through to speak once more, "Answer me." There was a scathing edge, sharper with each syllable.

To this he turned, but just barely. The line of his cheekbone thrown over his shoulder, a thin fissure of skin, blazing richer than honey. "This is my home," he said rather absentmindedly until his voice took a deeper, more fickle turn, "and concerning you...I've done this for your Moon. It's her attention I so desperately desire." The last sentence was drawled, dramatics soaked in dry amusement.

"What do you want with the Moon?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Tell me, now." My words amateurly concealed the depth of my boundless concern, the weighted ardor of my loyalties for Dima.

Before another word left his cursed lips, he turned to face me fully. He strangled me with the potency of his sickening gaze. There I saw it, in every curve of his face, every poor, and every finely placed hair, the evidence of an untouchable being. The tremor in the wind, the wholly natural compliance of the golden mead dropping into servitude, their shine offered to their sanctuary. The face of stone, birthed from a sacred essence, from the rut of nature's authority. A distant, but familiar splendor for an immortal such as myself.

His eyes, seething through my own in their unparalleled abyss, like the night sky poured its ink directly into his skull, where there was an absence of all dimensions.

Yet there was something off. His neck was marred with a gorrish, old affliction. What could've been a vertical knife wound, near the left end of his jaw. An imperfection.

His eyes were cast up to my own in heinous severity when he told me, "I want to kill her."

My eyes were coaxed wider than a goat's. I stood there unresponsive, waiting for his words to mean something, waiting for it to dawn on me and the contempt to propel my limbs into the offensive.

Instead I stood there, my jaw slack, like a fool as he watched my spectacle. My brain, for how fast it was running, produced nothing. All I could ask was one muted word, "Why?"

He stepped on the word, scoffing in disdain.

I was done meandering, I couldn't stay with this beast a second longer. I needed to get back to Dima, to warn her of this threat while he was still brooding, before he made another move.

My toes coiled, strands of grass twined in the splits between them. I backed up vigilantly, one step at a time, my eyes everwatchful, trained on the Beast surmounted on his toppled log. Holding my breath, I lent it as prayer to the Sun, for safekeeping. By my will, take me away from here.

With another heavy labor of my chest, inside bloomed a string, spanning across my organs, stretching through the caverns of my body, and plunging down into my toes, where it taunted them and acted the part of the catalyst. That same string cut the scission between our two bodies, as my feet beat a racing symphony. The blades of grass nicked my calves in spite.

My dress carved an image of my body, stark white silk illuminated me in opposition to the gold with each pulse of the wind and each surge of adrenaline lacerating my legs, tyrannically wielding my muscles. I was parting the mead quicker than the likes of the Red Sea.

I heard his call, spiking my ears from out of my field of vision, "If you're trying to escape, it's no use. Running won't do you any good."

Stumbling to a halt, my dress immobilizing me as the extended hand of the wind.

"My home is not connected to the outside world." This time he spoke softer in self amusement, "Certainly not to the place you're looking for."

My face distorted into a letter of bleak misfortune. "A separate realm...is this the truth?"

"More like a pocket, but yes, and we're very far from the Higher Realm. You're stranded."

I thought about the freedom of my wrists and ankles, the lack of restraints. Now it made sense; he didn't need them. Like a fish in a bowl, I was exactly where he wanted me. My knees buckled, and I perished from the eyes of the waking, lost among the grass. Faint, disorientating tickles played my back a harp, but my front was smothered silent into the ground.

A mutiny to my strongest wish, my eyelids were impertinent, begging to draw. As much as I pleaded with myself, my body was adamant, I had not slept in a long while. The persistence of my stacked sleepless nights and the drought of energy I endured after the shift rallied against the fortitude of my adrenaline. Laying down had flipped a switch in my subconsciousness. The howl of nature's song cupped my head and serenaded my lonesome ears. I melted into the earth.

Behind me, the faint thunder of footsteps was audible, the awakened Beast stalking closer, but when he sifted past my used body, let go. My attachment to thought released methodically as I turned anew in slumber.

Somewhere distant, the hands of a clock struck an hour.

———

Thank you for continuing to read my book,

-h