Heart of Gladiator

A Ride In Spring

For the rest of the morning they rode at full gallop, with Aurelius being at Gwenor’s side. When noon got closer, and the sun rose higher up in the cloudless sky, they came to a moderate pace which they moved at for awhile to give some time for resting. It was a balmy weather, with a zephyr blowing through the forest time after time, keeping the air cool in a counterbalance with the growing heat of the day.

  This was their beginning, when the insistent squaw of seagulls crashing after urchins, buzz of bees flitting from one wildling to another, whispering grasses, sleepy frogs, the thin pitch of insects, and the dancing leaves was their music on a clear morning.

  And anon when an eagle shot for the vast openness of the sky, wandering in ecstasy like the conqueror of its surroundings, Gwenor’s eyes were pulled up to glance at it in mere admiration. How bold and beautiful it looked up there, above them and the perennial verdure that enveloped the soil. As the favonian gales blew in, perfuming the earth with the impending scent of spring, both Gwenor and Aurelius had a halcyon, salutatory feeling of juvenescence.

  “Let us stop here for awhile,” Gwenor after some time suggested, bringing her Arabian black beauty to a halt under a tree. “The air is cool under the shade.”

  Aurelius quickly got off his own horse and directed it towards the shade before assisting Gwenor off her saddle. He then took hold of both horses and tied their reigns to the trunk of the tree. “They need a rest, and so do you. Would you like me to get you some water?”

  “I’ve drank all what’s left in the bottle.”

  “I could refill,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a stream somewhere nearby.”

  She shook her head and gestured to him a seat beside her on the ground. “Do not worry about that. I am fine. Soon we will be back to the villa anyway.”

  “Are you certain?” he further asked, not sure of leaving her completely dehydrated on the way back.

  She let herself smile and say, “Is it my flushed face that troubles you? Don’t be too concerned. I’ve always been like that. Whenever there is some heat, I go red. I just have a sensitive and thin skin. For instance your skin is far thicker than mine, so the redness of your blood is less seen. Mine is more. That’s all.”

  “A face like yours would not only respond to the heat, but to your emotions too. They’d give you away all the time.”

  When he said this, a sweet, low laugh escaped her lips, light and pleasant to his ears yet rich and attractive to his heart.

  “I guess there are still some things I could keep hidden if I wanted to,” she admitted, offering him a smile.

  “I guess so,” he said, trying to find a way round what he let slip out from his mouth. “It’s just that I knew a guy who’d turn red every time he lied. I felt sorry for him.”

  Once again she laughed, emitting a blithesome nature, and for a moment he thought he could see her whole appearance glitter and shine. She was like an adret, the side of a mountain that always received direct sunlight. She was like the truly golden one, like no one ever could be her, but her.

  “What deiform creatures they are, aren’t they?” she thought out loud, pointing to their horses.

  Aurelius looked in the direction her stare followed, before taking a seat beside her. “They are,” he agreed. Taking a short and quick, timid glance at her face and noticing the same ardor burn in her eyes for this creature, he asked, “What makes you such a lover of horses?”

  “Probably it’s their loyalty and fearless beauty,” she answered in a soft murmur before turning to look at him. And when he turned to meet her gaze, their faces became unexpectedly contiguous, lips almost brushing, and eyelashes almost touching that they were frozen in that way for a time he couldn’t remember how long.

  All he could remember was this overwhelmingly strong need to kiss her, but by the time she brusquely turned away, ending the short-lived moment, his senses came back to him and he was so relieved he’d hadn’t done it. Where could it have left him?

  Once noticing the eagle cross the sky again, like a reminder of their time to leave, Gwenor got up on her feet and looked down at him with a gentle expression. “I believe we’ve rested enough. Let’s get back to the villa.”

  “As you desire,” he said, getting up on his feet as well and liberating the reigns.

  On their way back, they were both unusually quiet. None of them spoke a word, but they thought well enough. He kept wondering if she’d guessed that he’d wanted to kiss her. And she wondered if she’d turned red from the excitement of being so close to him. They were both inwardly embarrassed and none would agree to spell it out.

  “Sometimes I think I am the sunrise and you are the sunset. But sometimes I think you are both the sunrise and the sunset and I am just a lonesome soul drifting through the shadows cast by the sun.”

  He looked intensely at her, marveled and surprised by what she’d said, and confused of what to respond to it.

  But without her turning to glance at him, as if he was nonexistent suddenly, she quickly added, “It’s a pericope from a book I read once. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  A bit hesitantly he said, “Yes, it is.”

  “Someday I will write about you,” she told him. “It’s a promise.”

  “And what would you write about me?” he asked, riding now on the same level with her.

  “About your courage and strength,” she listed. “It will be lot about you as a gladiator,” then looking at him, “and as a man.”

  “You will need to hear my stories then,” he said, “if you want to write something true and real.”

  “If you don’t mind, I would. I am a rapt listener.”

  She then looked to her side and smiled at him. He also gave her a smile, but she didn’t miss the fact that that rident expression did nothing to alter the bleakness in his eyes. She only wondered what made it so, what thoughts roaming his mind, or memories that haunted him took that cheerfulness away.

  To him she was more than a rapt listener, a lover of great creatures, and a golden beauty, but a bel-esprit with a mind that scintillated with brilliance. Suddenly he wondered how he could’ve really escaped the realms of the gladiatorial world and be a part of hers, if he even had the privilege to be. In the first few seconds of that thought, an aching sadness wrenched his whole heart but it soon gave away to a feeling of sweet disquiet, the excitement of a gypsy wanderlust, one that would lead him closer and closer to her with every passing day.