Lucero #3
I lowered my camera and walked over to him, taking a seat at his side.
He didn’t move and neither did I, nor did we speak to one another.
We’d both hurt each other’s feelings and we were ruminating in the aftermath of harsh words. I wasn’t sure either of us meant them. Then again, maybe we had.
But several things could always be true at once.
This wasn’t my fault, because he hadn’t been the most forthcoming about his rituals. All he did was yell and roar and expect me to know a culture that wasn’t my own.
I’d gone over the line when I said I’d rather die than be married to him.
Especially because… it wasn’t true.
I found myself wondering if marriage to him would be so bad but tried to halt those thoughts before they arose. We barely knew each other and spent most of our time fighting, arguing.
Sure, he was big and strong, and from what I could tell protective and maybe even a little jealous.
I liked that.
But at the end of the day, he didn’t even want me. And I wasn’t sure I could live with the knowledge that he wanted somebody else, the one that everyone always passed me over for.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered finally. “I shouldn’t have said that.” I tossed a pebble into the fire.
After a moment, Qanek said, “I, too, apologize for my crass words.”
“I didn’t mean what I said. About preferring death to being your wife.”
“And I did not mean that you have no self-respect.” The light of the fire reflected in his mismatched eyes.
“We can divorce,” I suggested.
“What is divorce?”
“It’s when two people who are married don’t want to be married anymore, so they break their marriage off and–”
“No,” he growled dangerously low.
“No?”
“Marriage is sacred,” he said. “It is not entered lightly, and the threads of fate wind us tightly together. It cannot be broken.”
I swallowed. I’d almost feared that would be his answer, and now I had it. I tried, feebly, to argue. “But we haven’t completed the ritual.”
“It does not matter.” He tossed a pebble into the fire and watched it burn. “We have completed many important steps already. We are married in the eyes of my culture.” He looked at me. “We are tied.”
I wanted to groan, but forced myself to look away from him instead. He was so intense. Too intense, and looking at the truth of my actions hurt.
I scraped my finger into the dirt.
“You’ll resent me, eventually,” I whispered, hating how weak the confession made me sound.
“If we stay together, you will hate me. You will always wonder what could have been your life with someone else. You will look at me and you’ll hate me because I’m not who you want.
And what will our ‘marriage’ be then, huh? Nothing but hatred and resentment.”
He didn’t speak. I knew it, an ugly part of me said. He didn’t even have an argument to disprove my words because they were true and we both knew it.
“I do not pretend to understand what the future will hold,” Qanek said.
He placed his hand on the earth, dangerously close to mine, his claw touching my pinky.
“I do not know what I will feel. But I know myself, feral creature. I know that I respect the bonds of marriage and that I will dedicate my life to the woman I call ‘wife’. I will give you a home and a nest. I will give you sustenance and respect. I will give you protection and all of me and all that I have to offer.” His claw looped through my pinky and held.
I didn’t pull away, but I was sure he could feel the pulse beating wildly inside me at the brief contact alone.
“Those are heavy promises, Qanek.”
“Promises I mean to keep.”
I huffed a laugh. He was so serious, it was hard to even think he was lying. Because, what if he wasn’t?
This was real to him.
Whatever this was.
But I wasn’t ready.
I didn’t think I ever could be.
“My parents promised they would be with me forever.” The tears slipped from my eyes. I turned away, wiping them off with my shoulder. Too late, Qanek’s attention was already on the streaks they’d surely left behind. “But then they died and they left me all alone in the world.”
His claw tightened around my skin.
“Everybody always leaves me, Qanek. I have nobody.”
He stared at me, and it was like he was seeing me for the first time. And in his gaze, there was understanding.
Perhaps he really did know what this hollowness in my chest felt like.
“I…have brothers,” he whispered, the words a quiet confession that echoed through the chamber like a gunshot. “They abandoned me long ago.”
There was heartbreak in his words, and they caused me to slide the rest of my fingers between the spaces of his own. He appeared startled by the action, staring down at our joined hands, at my tight grip, before he gripped me back and continued.
“I am not like them. Nazzar and Xavir were forged from the fires of powerful, compassionate Kings of the Underworld. I was molded from revenge and anger.” His eyes appeared haunted.
“My earliest memory is the sound of screams. Of being bred for torture and violence. It lives in me and drives my actions. My brothers stopped trying to understand me and instead began to use me in our wars.”
I wanted to interrupt and ask him what he meant, but it seemed important he got all of this off his chest first, so I listened, holding onto his hand in case he needed me.
“I became their berserker in battle. I am nothing to them but a weapon to tear through armies and take the brunt force of their wrath.” His other hand swept up across his broken horn, down his scarred face, over his scarred chest.
His body was a testament to a life of brutality. Wars he’d been thrust into against his will. I squeezed his hand, feeling the sorrow gnaw at me all over.
“I, too, am alone,” he whispered. “Alone with the rage that overtakes me until I become it and know nothing and no one else. It has been my only companion for centuries.” His body turned, grasping a strand of hair and tucking it behind my ear, like he’d been watching me do it and wanted to try it as well.
“So you see, feral creature? I understand all too well. But you? You are not alone any longer.” His hand lifted, swiping at my tears, though I hadn’t even realized they’d fallen.
“You have a husband now. Do not forget.”
I chuckled, shaking my head back and forth. I wanted to know more about him and his life. He’d lived for so long and obviously had stories to tell, but maybe that was enough on the heavy topics for the day. “How about we start as friends?”
He pushed my hair over my shoulder, almost distracted as he took me in. “Friends?”
“I don’t have friends, either.”
Qanek contemplated this. “Neither do I.” He looked at me again. “Perhaps, then, we shall be friends as well.”
I lifted our joined hands, releasing my hold so only our pinkies met like a promise, and curled them tightly together.
“Friends,” I said.
A calm settled over the two of us and finally I felt like maybe, for once, things would be okay.
We weren’t quite husband and not quite wife.
We were something else entirely.
But something precious, just the same.