Reunion: Part 2

    He had healed quickly -- his flesh growing taut over where I had torn him open.  He did not wake up again, however.  

    His eyes were wide and staring, but they looked through me.  He no longer speak.  And he no longer move.  He was like a doll that had become lifeless -- crumpled bonelessly against the chair I had left him in.  

    "I'm sorry my love," I said softly as I slipped his arms through the white silk shirt I had chosen for him.  "I didn't mean to lose my temper and hurt you."

    His clear blue eyes, with all of its luster gone, stared at me.  I gave his mouth a small kiss and continued to button up the shirt.

    "Although I don't understand why you like to make me angry."

    I laid him back on the bed and fetched the black pants I had set to the side.  Gingerly, I threaded his legs through and pulled it up.  Before I fastened the waist band, I looked at the crescent shaped scar that was on his belly. That was the only blemish he had on his perfect body.  To me, it was the most beautiful thing.

    "Knives told me about the day I came to be," I said and gave the scar a small kiss.  I pressed my cheek against the flat of his belly -- drawing in the soft scent that was distinctly his.  "He told me about the terrible day you were split open by many blades to cut me out of your body."

    I traced the scar with my finger tip -- back and forth.  

    "Father had wanted you to live.... I knew his wish from his journal.  Perhaps because they had broken their promise to him, I did not feel anger toward you when you came back to destroy the clan.  I only felt sad -- and maybe fear, when I saw you weld that sword and cut down..."

    I didn't want to say "my people". They weren't.  The goatlings saw me nothing more than something that was my father. They never acknowledged Dante's blood inside me.  No one wanted to tell me where I had come from.  Even Knives.  It took him into his final days before he spoke the truth to me.  While I was glad for the answers, I hated him for keeping silent.  Perhaps he had taken even more secrets with him to his death. I would not know.

    "It doesn't matter," I said softly.  "We are together now, and that should be all that matters."

    I stroked the flat plain of his belly -- the velvet soft skin tight over the firm muscle there.

    "Poor thing -- you must have been in terrible pain...human skin's so fragile and sensitive.  Knives said it was necessary to cut you open.  They thought your devil trigger would have eventually overwhelm me and suffocate me inside," I said then smiled.  "But to die inside you, it would not be so bad,  I think."

    I sat up and buttoned the waist band of his pants together.  

    "Before the day you came," I said as I walked toward the dresser where I kept the best pieces of the jewelry.  The pieces I have kept for him.  "I only knew you in my mind as some kind of an ideal.  Father admired you.  His admiration nearly bordered love, dare I say.  He did not say those exact words but I felt it.  Just as I felt love a child could have for his mother."

    I rifled through the glittering stones and chains until I found a thick silver band.  It was a replica of the band I had seen him wear in the painting.  I spun around and held it up for him to see.

    "Father said he had this made because he said he didn't like rings.  Yet, he felt it was only appropriate that there should be a physical symbol of the union.  Like the human rituals."

    As I crossed the room toward him, I thought I caught a glimpse of the smallest glint of life in his dulled blue eyes.  It wasn't life.  It was something else.

    "This is only a copy," I said softly.  I bent down and kissed him on the forehead.  "Do not fear it...this meant something else to me.  To us."

    I slid the silver band around his throat and locked it around his throat.  

    "It does become you," I said, nodding as I backed away to admire him with the new band.  The silver contrasted wonderfully the paleness of his skin and his white hair and blue eyes and the lips that had the slightest dust of pink in them.  It brought to attention to his long slender throat.  "Your father chose the perfect human form when he made you..."

    He said nothing.  I did not expect him to. 

    "I would like to show you something," I said as I gathered him into my arms.  I pressed his head against my shoulder and walked him out of our bedroom.  "I hope you will like it."

    "You are the only person to ever see it," I said as I walked him toward my studio.  "It's my sanctuary.  I like to go there just to think about you."

 

    I pushed back the heavy door with my shoulder and stood at the doorway, letting him taking in the sweet scent of the oils in the paints first.  I clicked on the light and let him have a slow look at my studio.  My studio that had become a shrine.  

    "I studied relentlessly to perfect my arts since the day I laid my eyes on that beautiful painting..." I said and laid him in a half-sitting, half-lying position on a silk laden daybed.  "I want to be the only one that can capture your beauty...no, true beauty, that only I can see."

    I walked over to the prized painting that I had kept beneath the heavy velvet.  The slight acrid scent of the fire my beloved had set so long ago, coupled with the dusty scent of its age wafted through the thick fabric.  I ran my fingers along the frame of it.  Just the feel of its presence was comforting to me.

    "I am sorry to have taken this picture from you," I said as I lifted the  velvet from the canvass.  "I knew you wanted it too."

    I let the heavy crimson coverlet fall into a pile on the floor.  I took in a breath and held it -- beholding the picture as I've always done, as if I am looking at it for the first time.  And like the first time I laid my eyes on the painting, I felt a tremor move through me that carried a hint of arousal.  

    "For the first four years of my life, I was not allowed to see my own reflection," I said as I ran my fingertips along the surface of the painting.  "I learned why, much later - when I bent down to wash my face from a small stream.  My eye..."

    I turned to him and smiled.

    "My blue eye.  No one wanted me to know I had a blue eye.  However, even after I knew -- no one would tell me why it was blue.  I didn't mind it at all -- I thought the blue was the loveliest thing I had.  A bright gem in a dark place, inside something even darker."

    "Then Knives gave me father's journal and showed me this beautiful painting," I said.  "He wanted to be the one to tell me the truth, before I hear rumors and lies from the others.  I spent days reading and re-reading my father's journal.  With each thorough reading, I felt I knew you just a little more.  I read it so many times that I had memorized each word, page by page.  The painting...well, Knives only would show it to me once.  It had been kept in a sealed vault since the day father died.  The Elders wanted to destroy it but they could not, as the painting had traces of father's blood."

    I walked toward the other covered paintings I had kept in the opposite side of the room.

    "Although I only caught a quick glance of it -- I burned the image into my mind.  I think about it all the time, like some sweet memory that I felt if I did not try to recall it, it would slip away."

    "Then there was the day when you came," I said as I pulled the sheets from the covered canvasses, letting them fall into unkempt piles on the floor.  "One of my caretakers woke me from my sleep and said in a frightened voice "he has come.  The hunter has come."  He pulled me by my hands and ran me through the halls.  I have never heard such terrible cries and sounds of blade cutting into flesh -- it was quite frightening.  I was shoved into a hidden vault and told to remain there until someone came for me."

    I walked through the oil paintings I have done from the images I had gathered from my mind, as I read through father's journal.  In the painting, there were only images of him. My beloved.

    "I slipped out as soon as I was left alone.  I dashed through the halls, following the sounds until I saw you."

    I paused to smile at him again.  

    "Oh it was the most unusual sensation -- to be extremely frightened and excited.  You were the most beautiful thing -- with your white hair and your pale face with slightest smear of the blood.  Your large blue eyes were full of fire and blood lust.  Your movements were fluid, slashing your sword down, cutting the goatlings into halves with simple strokes.  I would have happily submit myself under your sword then.  The mere knowledge that I had come from you, was enough to satisfy me."

    "I followed you as you made your way through the halls," I said as I mimicked his sword-slashing movements.  "You were quite magnificent.  A demon trapped in the flesh of a human.  Beautiful..."

    I gathered him into my arms and let him dangle loosely in my embrace.  His head fell back, his dead eyes stared up into the ceiling.  

    "Sweeping through the palace like a wind," I said as I pivoted, swirling with my doll in my arms as we danced a soundless waltz.  "Until you broke through the door to the vault and saw the painting.  Oh, what I would have given to know your thoughts then."

    We circled, carefully maneuvering through the easels and canvasses.  Music of Chopin was loud in my mind, as I stepped and spun.  We danced until the music faded.  I bent down and gave him a kiss before I returned him to the daybed.  I walked to the table where I kept the brushes and the paints.  In the corner, I had an opened bottle of aged Merlot.

    "I was prepared to perish in the fire, along with the painting.  I clung onto it, the picture stood taller than me at that time," I said, laughing as I poured the wine into the silver goblet next to it.  "Knives came for me.  I allowed him to take me, only after he took the painting with us."

    I swirled the wine in the glass, letting it breathe before I took a tentative sip from it.

    "Sadly, that would be the last time I saw that painting...until four months ago."

    I took a long drink from the goblet, putting it down to refill after I drained it.

    "What you might have seen years ago, love," I said as I poured.  "Was a replica of the original I did from memory."

    "Knives thought the painting was cursed...that father's blood had cast an ill fate onto our clan.  He had, after all, made his heir with a thing that he had hunted all his life.  It was our God that ordered the demise of the goatlings, he said to me, that you had been dispatched to carry out the sentence for father's error."

    I rummaged through one of the drawers of the the desk until I found the folded pocket knife I had lodged beneath the papers.  The blade had dulled from lack of use but it can still cut.  I had tested it on my own wrist.

    "He told me the painting was destroyed.  He had seen to it.  Then he confessed to me before he died that he had given the painting back to the painter.  It took me nearly 20 years to find it -- stow away in the attic of some little church in lower London."

    "I hardly think the painting is cursed," I said as I walked toward him.  "It brought you here, to me."

    I bent down and kissed him, letting a little bit of wine I had in mouth flow into his.  The wine trickled out of the corner of his mouth in a thin line, staining his once pristine white shirt.  I laughed softly and licked up the wine he did not swallow.

    "Poor little thing," I said and emptied the rest of the wine from the cup.  "Not even well enough to enjoy some vintage wine."

    I brought up the knife and held it up to his throat.  I ran the tip along the columns of it, the point of the blade dimpled into the soft flesh.

    "I would like to start on a new painting," I said as I pressed the blade in slowly, plying pressure to until the skin broke and the first drop of blood sprung up and ran along the razor.  "So we would have something together."

    The blade sunk into his neck, deeper and deeper until the blood came in a steady stream -- wetting his shirt and the bed.  The heat of his blood was wonderful, as the thick crimson fluid flowed through my fingers.

    "I hope this does not hurt you too much, love," I whispered. The blade sunk in further, until I feel it against the soft bone of his throat.

    I drew in a breath and took in the sweet scent of his blood.  I continued to cut until the blade severed the carotid artery.  I pressed the empty goblet against it, catching the dark blood until the cup was full.  Already his wound was healing -- the opened flesh closing seamlessly. 

~TBC~