The Will [on hold]

4000s - Episode 2

4978

He rose with the sun. The sun seemed to rise on this day with new vigor and hope. Sunrise on Glorion was beautiful, but he wondered if the sunrises on distant shores were even brighter and more beautiful. He wondered, and the rising sun was mirrored in his wondering eyes. Eyes full of vigor and hope—because today, he was to set out on a journey seeking answers to everything he’d ever wondered.

“Crion.”

From where he sat upon the sands, he turned his head and met a beloved sea-blue gaze.

“Crion,” she repeated, kneeling fluidly beside him, reflecting his soft spousal smile. “I’ve always wondered what you see, when you look out upon the sea like this. Do those visionary eyes of yours see the horizon, or what lies beyond it?”

Crion’s smile subtly widened. He leant in to kiss Anorrah’s pale, smooth forehead. “I see both, love.”

She shifted nearer to him, her movements nimble with affection. Resting her chin on his shoulder, she followed his gaze out onto the vast open ocean. “Then tell me, Crion,” she breathed. “Beyond that bright horizon, tell me what you see.”

He laughed a silent, loving laugh. “I see a great many things. I see a world that seems straight out of a storybook.”

“Oh, but the storybooks,” Anorrah lifted her head from its perch on her husband’s strong shoulder, drawing back a bit to look at him, her face downturned in an exaggerated pout. She spoke in a purposely puerile voice, widening her blue eyes for effect. “The stories are not always so beautiful, you know. Some of them are horrifying! Do you think there might be monsters past the sea, and wars and kings and evil things?”

Another silent laugh, which twinkled in his eyes like distant starlight. “I do not think that anything upon this earth is truly evil. Even if there may be monsters past the sea, I would think that every monster, at bottom, is really just a man.”

“Or a woman,” Anorrah posited.

An audible laugh, this time. He kissed her again on the forehead. “Yes. Or a woman.”

The couple now shared in a pensive and serious silence. She encircled her lithe arms around him, her chin on his shoulder again. He embraced her halfway, one arm cradling her waist. She saw his other arm at his side, his left hand busy sifting sand between his fingers.

This was not the silence of Crion’s silent laughter. It was the silence of impending separation. For Anorrah, it was the silence of a soundless, tearless sob. Already Crion felt so distant, even when he was so near. He loved her, as well as he could ever love a woman, and she knew it well. But his heart was not content with the blue sea that lay in his wife’s loving eyes. That ocean was not vast enough for him. Those eyes did not hold a horizon, a horizon beyond which there awaited an unknown, exciting world. His wife would never be enough for him, not quite enough; this world would never be enough for him.

For Anorrah, this world and this man had always been more than enough. This was all that she needed. She loved him dearly, as much as she could love a man like Crion. She knew that there was more beyond the sea. More worlds to see. Mayhap more love to give, and to receive.

But this was enough, for her; he was enough.

“Don’t go,” she whispered at length. “If you can already envision what lies across the sea, already see what kinds of storybooks are brought to life, then why must you go? You can see everything from these very shores! And I can see you. If you stay, then I can see you.”

“And why is it important that you see me? What is so great about this face of mine?” he queried playfully, trying and failing to make light of something heavy. “Have you not seen enough of it, for all these years?”