The world ended at the edges of the hay bales that formed our bed within the goat shed. The prickle of straw through the blanket beneath hardly bothered me. With a sleeping bag completely unzipped to use as a blanket and folded clothes under my head as a pillow, I had never been so comfortable. I kept my eyes closed to linger on the sensation of Thaïs without any distractions. She slept with her head on my pillow, forehead touching mine. With every breath she took, I felt her life blossoming against my side as the simple expanding of ribs.
Her hand rested over the heart I gave the day before, fingers interlaced with my own. Everywhere we touched, warmth suffused me like the sun giving life to every growing thing.
There was no war, no struggle, no danger, no pain. The moment stretched so sweetly into eternity, even as the sun crept higher and higher, changing the angle of golden light falling through gaps in the slats until they fell on my face.
I turned my head to face the ceiling, basking in the soft brush of her hair against the side of my neck. If the war was crystallized in the amber of my heart, so too was this: my time, however brief, with my own angel.
How long passed before Thaïs awoke, I could not tell you. It was long enough that my love etched itself in my bones, that it put roots in every portion of my heart. She was right: the revolution would take me from this place, this safety, but it would never part me from Thaïs. We could exist in moments like these, however rare, and keep them forever.
Lips brushed against my ear. “Love you.” Not good morning, not worry, just a mumbled adoration.
I squeezed her hand where our fingers intertwined, well aware that my other arm was trapped under her side of the pillow and numb enough that I wasn’t sure I would ever feel my fingers again. I didn’t care. She could keep it forever. “I love you too.” I turned, letting my forehead touch hers. It was a closeness that nothing else could compare to. “You stole my arm.”
Thaïs smiled and regretfully unwound our fingers. Then she smoothed some of her hair out of her face. “And you stole my warmth.”
It was an unfortunate part of the privation I had endured: my body could no longer keep heat on its own. “Sorry.”
“Never be,” Thaïs murmured, combing her fingers through my hair. “I always want you to come to me.”
Something in my chest seemed to expand, pushing away every thought of the coming day. “I will,” I promised.
Thaïs’s expression turned pensive. “I wish we could be like this all day.”
“I have to tell Grandmother yes.” Regret lingered in every syllable I spoke. I wanted this closeness to last forever.
This time when Thaïs kissed me, it was with a gentle acceptance, not the desperate fire of the night before. “I’ll go with you,” she said softly when we broke apart. “This is ours, you know?” She levered herself up, hair falling like a curtain around her face. I could see all the sorrows and all the hopes she had playing across her expression. This was not the confident, invulnerable Thaïs. She was still hurting, but braced for the impact of the real world.
I reluctantly untangled myself, preparing for the pins and needles that would strike my arm now that it was free. It was more important to soothe Thaïs than anything else. “I promise—”
Thaïs shook her head. “We made the only promise that matters, Karsa. The only one that nothing can break.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said gently. “And I wouldn’t do this if there was another way.”
Her gaze flickered down, tracing the jutting collarbones and weakened muscles across my arms and torso. She ran fingers down my washboard ribs, eyelashes fluttering to keep tears at bay. “I know.”
Quiet stretched between us as we rose and dressed, strangely comfortable even with only the occasional glances towards each other. She took every opportunity to be close, helping me pull on a shirt and pants. You do not appreciate how much strength such simple actions take until starvation robs you of them.
Before I could step out the door, she caught me from behind, wrapping arms so delicately around my waist. Her lips touched the side of my neck and then lingered near my ear. “I’m proud of you, Karsa. This…hurts, but…you wouldn’t be heart I hold without it.”
I turned in the circle of her arms, lips curving into that faint, tired smile. “I could say the same. From what Zosime says, you’re half the face of Zelen all by yourself.”
Thaïs grimaced. “That just means I talk to a lot of people blowing hot air.”
I kissed the corner of her mouth. “Someone has to, and it certainly can’t be me.”
She laughed at that, good humor breaking through her worry. Just the sound lifted my spirits. “You’d get all fired up and probably punch one.”
“Precisely.”
She caught my hand in her own, smiling against my shoulder as we started out of our shed abode, moving through the little herd of goats. “I think I’d like to see it once or twice.”
“You’ll have to tell me who you want punched.”
“Oh do I have a list for you,” she teased. She was never far from me as we walked, bumping her shoulder against mine, keeping our hands linked like two halves meeting in perfect unison. “I think Gamal is at the top of that list, unfortunately, and you’ll have to deal with him more than I do.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Gamal?” I thought back to the verbal joust between Zosime and the rigid Captain Gamal, the way he wanted deep down to control our every move. “I thought he was more military than political.”
Thaïs exaggerated the face of a woman biting into a lemon. “He has a habit of not reining in his soldiers’ catcalls.”
A fierce protectiveness surged up in my chest. “If you point them out to me…”
“You’re in no condition to go brawling, tiger.”
I squeezed her hand. “Is that your name for me now?” I could not say that I was a stranger to love, not with a loving family and comrades who meant the world to me, but Thaïs brought together all the broken parts of me and bound them together with her heartstrings. It existed without conditions, without the abstraction of love I had read of in books where all the world was in rose.
We still faced down war, but I knew that even if the fragile world we had created was dashed to splinters, I would have this in my chest. Even as I returned to dust.
Thaïs bumped me with her hip. “Would you prefer another? I’ve got lots I want to try.”
“Oh?”
She winked at me. “I don’t think you’d put up with something too sweet.”
“From anyone else, no.” I glanced around as I spoke, checking the rooftops for snipers even here, even in our relative safety.
“Oh, so I have special permission?” Thaïs’s grin was wicked. “Kitten, maybe? You’re more that than a tiger with me.”
“Better than I thought you would go.”
“Honey bear and sweetness don’t fit you, Karsa. I like kitten.”
“I still have claws with that one, you know.”
Thaïs kissed my cheek. “But you wouldn’t use them on me, would you?” She fluttered her eyelashes to devastating effect.
“Not unless you asked.”
She grinned. “Good answer. Now, what about me?”
I took my time as we walked down the path, closer and closer to the bloody future with every step. It took me a long moment of searching to come up with an answer. “Mesme.” Forgive me, but this is a word that does not translate well. It is from an old fable, the name worn by a type of rose born at the beginning of the world and persisting until its end.
Thaïs blushed like I had never seen her, starting at her ears and spreading almost instantly, until her cheeks had to be burning. “I forgot I was dealing with a poet. That is entirely unfair, Karsa.”
I turned and pulled her into the circle of my arms. “You love it.”
“I do,” she admitted, ducking her head slightly even as she linked her arms around my neck. “Not what you would expect from a madame, I suppose.”
I touched my forehead to hers. “I see you as clear as crystal, mesme.”
“Keep saying that and I’m going to spontaneously combust.”
I laughed and kissed her, lingering close for a long moment. “You shouldn’t have said that, Thaïs. Now I want to use it all the time.”
She sighed dramatically. “I suppose when one messes with a kitten, they should expect claws.”
“Just between us?”
The blush intensified again. “If you’re so certain it applies.”
“I am.” Watching the softness and vulnerability in her expression, I knew that this was a side of Thaïs only I would be allowed to see. Love to her had been no less abstract than to me. Perhaps as a result of her profession, she had seen it as an impossibility. I wouldn’t know unless I asked, but I felt no need to. In the war, there was only the present and neither past nor future extended far.
There was a small crowd gathered around Zosime’s goat shed, at the center of Zelen. Somehow it still had the air of a little village, even as it sprawled into a sizable town with the influx of refugees. Most of those present were soldiers. Those who had been on the northern front were easy to spot, thin and worn to almost to pieces like weathered scarecrows.
Zosime stepped out, a small sick goat tucked protectively in her arms. Captain Gamal emerged behind her, looking something between amused and exasperated. It was a strange study in contrasts, even how they moved. Grandmother walked delicately on the earth, setting the sick kid down with care. Gamal strode confidently in his military boots, thoughtless of the delicate grass beneath his feet.
Thaïs went still at my side, so I gave her hand a squeeze of reassurance. We both knew at least vaguely what was coming next. Gamal pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and flicked it open with one sharp movement of his wrist. “We have the names of those who will be charged with the command of units, so long as they consent.” Gamal spoke with the barest hint of reluctance. “These commanders will be assigned an advisor from my own unit, until such a time as we are not needed.”
“Zosime must have worked him like a boxer,” Thaïs murmured near my ear. “She is a woman of steel behind wool.”
“He will dig in his heels.” I knew soon I would have to let go of her hand, which honestly seemed the most daunting part of all this in that moment.
Thaïs’s expression hardened like flint and she spoke with the certainty of stone. “Let him. It will get him nowhere. Zelen is independent and is going to stay that way.”
Gamal rattled through the list, calling people forward. Cheers of support rang out through the crowd, drawing more and more people from the town. Soon there were so many that I thought I would pass out. Everyone who had been chosen lined up while Gamal’s men pinned small silver laurel leaves to the collar of whatever shirt was closest to a uniform.
“Karsa Zafieri!”
“I love you,” Thaïs whispered in my ear. Even though I knew it was torture for her, she let go of my hand.
The crowd parted for me as I made my way forward, straight towards Grandmother. She was the source of wisdom and strength in this place, not Gamal and his soldiers.
Zosime smiled at me, teeth yellowed by tobacco. In that moment, her age seemed to radiate from her like the light of a sun. I was touched by the lines in her face, the coarse calluses on her hands. She had weathered so much, like a great tree scarred by flame and drought, yet stood here beside Gamal very much an equal. “I know we spoke of this already, Karsa, but you do not have to agree,” she said gently.
There was such a knowing in her eyes. In her hands glimmered a pin of silver laurel leaves.
“I accept the offer of command,” I said with all the maturity I could muster. “With all its responsibilities and duties to the revolution, to our people, and to those above and beneath.”
She reached out and pinned the leaves to my collar. For such light little pieces of metal, never have I worn a heavier weight.
The symbolism of Grandmother being the one to hand them to me was clearly not lost on Gamal. When I turned to face him, he fixed me with a piercing gaze, as if evaluating how malleable I would be. I met him with a thousand-yard stare, every ghost of every lost comrade standing at my shoulders. Perhaps he did not believe in them, but many times when I had faced death, I felt them there.
“I will be taking Commander Zafieri under my own wing,” Gamal announced. “Now, we have a great deal to do to prepare for the Burning Star. Everyone is dismissed to their duties.”
I saw Mnason and Seleme both looking at me, silver leaves on their own collars. Clearly Zosime had also spoken to them about the danger inherent in Gamal and his men leading instead of advising.
I gave them a subtle nod. “Captain Gamal is right,” I said, voice crisp and clear in the morning air as the weight settled onto my shoulders like a yoke pulling a boulder. “We have to be ready. Get to it.”
No one saluted, but the soldiers mixed into the crowd bowed their heads before scattering to their various meeting points. Both Seleme and Mnason strode forward, calling to their own units. I would have to check the roster to know who would be with me.
I caught Gamal sizing me up again out of the corner of my eye. “Something wrong, Captain?”
“I see why Zosime chose you.”
I knew well enough to read between the lines: he thought I would be trouble, a threat to his chance at control.
He was absolutely right.