Page 35 of Thief of Roses
“If so, whatever did you do?”
XV.
Baró only announcedhis return by the offerings left on the kitchen table — more feathers, more mushrooms, two cleaned snakeskins and a strange posy of pinecones with their bottoms stripped bare, the bare cores replicating stems with the remaining top scales fanning out like rose petals.She hated the way her treacherous heart leaped at the sight.She despaired that her loneliness made her grateful for his return, or at least she blamed it on loneliness.Her reason demanded that she remain hardened against him.
Her arms remembered the furred hide she had taken to curling up with at night.
She sighed at the presents as she would at naughty children, still wanted but so distressing.Presents did not change things, but though she had not mentioned it to him, these sweet gestures resembled a Rivan courtship.For a wandering people who carried all that they possessed with them, gifts held great significance.Although people with multiple partners had to declare their intentions, anything given from one unwed person to another was considered, at least in the eyes of the Rivani, a gesture of non-platonic desire.Baró provided out of a sense of obligation, not out of passion, and if he understood the significance, he might stop due to embarrassment.She would just privately enjoy it.
She requested his return, but now that he had obeyed, she hesitated on how to talk to him.He expected her decision about leaving, after all.His revelations changed things between them and though she did not now, with some perspective, condemn him as harshly as he had condemned himself, their interactions would still be different.She understood now why he absented himself during her ovulation and why he took such pains to ensure that she did not feel threatened by him.If anything, understanding his diligence in protecting her had only made her feel more confident in his growth and improvement.Suffering may have been deserved, but some people never self-reflected and asked to be better.
She undid the scarf, re-braided her hair, and then tied it back up.She straightened her skirts.She stuck the feathers into the folds of the scarf.It was charming, even though he meant nothing by it, that he gave her both the pretty and the practical.She set off to find him and deliver the decision she had made in her time alone.
He could smell heras she came from the great hall.He could hear her too, although to most it would have been silent and imperceptible.She came to tell him that she wanted to leave.He had no question of her decision.She had touched him and tended him and called him “her Baró.”But that was before.He had never wanted to deceive her, but he longed for the days when she had desired his company, when her casual touches had been priceless gifts of acceptance and appreciation.
“Have you come to tell me of your departure?”He did not turn around to look at her.He deserved her look of disgust but was too cowardly to bear it.
“How long has it been since you did all that you recounted?”
“Does it matter?I did them.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but you give me no opportunity to put them in perspective.You have been punished, are being punished for them, and have spent so many years alone repenting for them.How many?”
He had not given her a precise number before, not wishing to partner himself with a timeline of human history outside of here lest she guess.But she was going to leave anyway.What matter if he made one more confession?
“Just over three hundred years.”
“Oh, Baró, you realize, no one is alive who still remembers any of those people.”
“But the Rivani still suffer because I stood passively by and condoned in silence the heartless destruction of your culture.I followed the orders of my king and family and promoted centuries of damage to your race.”He put his face in his hands.“And I remember.I lost everything because of it.I do not deserve the company, counsel, or comfort of mankind if I had willingly put myself so far beyond it.My one true consolation is that when I happen to see myself in some reflective surface, I see what I am and anyone else who encounters me does too.There is no pretty deception anymore.”
“Maybe,” she countered, “three centuries ago your form reflected your deeds.Such is said of the Fir’Darl.But the opportunity to reform is rarely a pleasure and if your appearance still matched your spirit, you would have further degraded with punishment, not used it instead as a means towards improvement.”
“Rivani, people do not change.We are born complete, like balls of clay.You can mold it, shape it, split it in two, turn it inside out, but it is still the same clay that you started with.”
“People are not balls of clay.We are seeds.You grew in bad soil, in twisted ways, until you were pruned and replanted elsewhere.Rather than giving in to the inclinations of your first planting, you took to the tending, even without the support you needed.That says something to me.”She moved towards him, putting her hands on the back of the chaise where he sat.“Believe me, Baró, I am not deceived.I want to hate you and condemn you.I have done both in your absence.I do not hold you blameless, but I know the power of familial obligation and the powerlessness of watching others make your decisions and needing to abide by them.I have had to weigh my horror of a story over three hundred years old against what I have come to know.You have been good to me.”
