Plain

He was gone before I knew him. His life was nothing more than black roses wilted from too much darkness and ebony tears heavy as ivory. He was above the petty ideals of silver and gold. Of lion and serpent, above even those of Montague and Capulet, and though he was strong enough to conquer these prejudices he could not bring his weak mind to forget the heredity wrought into him by an ancient grandfather he never knew.

He could not bring himself to rise above scarlet.

He was just the same as every tyrant before him, as biased and broken as Jewish Hitler, as arrogant as the Spartan Alexander, and as pathetic as adulterous Zeus was. Perfection was his quest, and it ruined him just as fate ruined the hunt for the white sage, as it ruined the Knights of Templar, and his impertinence against fate dethroned him just as that of every predecessor with the obvious exceptions of the Catholic church and the Illuminati.

He was no better or worse than every oxymoron before him. It took time, I suppose, for him to whittle away at his soul until there was hardly any left to wrap the wounds in. But by the time I knew him the bandages and stitches were rendered useless, for he was more than blood. I tried to fix his Mr. Hyde, tried to bring back the real youth of Dorian Grey, but it reached a point where there was nothing I could offer him except for words and potions, and abstracted hints at what was to come.

He changed me though. I came back so different than when I'd left. I still read and I still ate, but now there were more secret smiles at the misdemeanors. I came back and I just stopped fighting, because in the end I knew what would happen, I knew what would come, and I knew I wanted no part of it. Fate ruins people; Hercules, Gandhi, Harry, and I didn't want to see it when he became the next victim. If he hadn't shunned it then maybe his destiny would be ours, but I can't change him. He could only change me. A bit like Adam and Eve really.

There are times, when I'm pretending to be reading, that I stop and think about what we created. We held the blood of Christ in our chalice and in seconds it awoke the newest Satan. Before that was made he assured me of an escape, a way back, the cowards way. I took it as soon as the red (pause for irony) drink dribbled down the corners of his mouth, it didn't take much, just a slash of my wrists and I was home again.

Funny, how its death that brought me home when its death he wanted to evade. We were hunting immortals in the past when we knew they could only be had by casting the die. We were looking for immortals in death. I suppose for a moment my past must have met my present, kind of like the palm of William Blake's hand, except for the fact that I was eternity and not just observing it ruefully. If only to be eternity forever, and to be that in a way that would set me apart from the pagan gods and common heroes.

Sometimes I get odd sideways glances from past friends, and I know they wonder what happened to me. They don't know, they can't know, and I'm not going to tell them. My secrets shall come to the grave with me, Matra Hari you could say. A few ask me to pass the salt at dinner, but none dare more than that. They see the scars on my wrists, they notice the bags missing from under my eyes, can smell the snake venom (Perhaps I'll die a Pharaoh's death) in my milk, and can sense where my loyalties lie.

I think it peculiar that they can pretend they know me, when in fact all they want are condiments. Everything is red to me now, all a matter of blood, but its not as though I count myself inferior, I'm not Eleanor Roosevelt trying to mend my self-esteem. Quite the opposite, I think myself all the better because I have to walk through every day avoiding sharp daggers from Brutes, and I have to harbor an infatuation for the King of Hearts.

I was the past, I was the present, and now if only I could be assured of my future. I cast my mind daily, trying to find the fork where we shall meet again, the place when we will cross into forever. I must be lost in a daydream, wishing upon hapless stars and hunting the flowers of rotten leprechauns. People don't see me, I am not Alice and I don't even see myself in the looking glass, but I know someday I'll be whole again. I'll have his hand in mine, our shared misadventure will be more than myth, and we can pass into timeless peace.

However I am just Helen of Troy, a statue of Shakespeare waiting to awaken and forgive, the Trojan Horse must come and set me free. I raise black doves in my heart, and I wait as love bites away at me forever. Someday we will stop being meaningless characters of minor history. We'll stop dividing time because we will live in it until it stops. We will stop spilling our own dirty blood because we'll have them all caged away, we will no longer be at the hands of a pitiless Judgement but instead we will be the Lovers.

Someday we will be in the history books you read, we will be plain and triumphant Hermione and Tom.

Plain Hermione and Tom.