“I knew a girl once.” Narien said, the words rolling off of his tongue smoothly, his high-born accent making itself known as he spoke without pretense. Everything about it was different from how he usually spoke to other people. “Her name was Mauri, and she had a certain way of existing. It permeated her every movement and breath, this air as though the entire world were simply her toy and would move at her tiniest of whims. It was not that she couldn’t imagine anything bad happening to her, it was that she knew nothing bad would ever happen to her. And she knew it with such certainty that it was beyond the scope of the imagination of all the world, of yours or of mine. So wherever she walked, even the smallest of insects dare not lay foot. She had that kind of existence.” He looked away from her and up at the stars. “I often wondered what she’d done to deserve it – any of it. So one day, I finally asked her. She laughed a laugh I will never forget, because it was so full of careless, mocking joy, as if she was exclusively entitled to the right to laugh without thinking about it. Then she told me, ‘You always ask such strange questions, Narien. Why would I need to do something to deserve to exist however I wish?’ I never hated her more than I did in that moment.” But the look on his face wasn’t hatred, just an odd sort of hollow sadness colored in with pain mingled with scorn. He didn’t say out loud that that had been right before she’d made a small cut on her soft, unblemished palm to draw a slash mark through his brand with her blood as proof that she’d set him free, and then forcefully shoved him out the door with a wink.
~~~
“Yes, go ahead.” Narien snarled softly, his pale blue eyes, so like that of the father he had long forsaken, were cold as ice and sharp as steel, unforgiving and full of both hate and hurt. “Tell the venerated Mason Ki’ila how his unwanted progeny lives. Tell him what kind of shame his blood carries.” He twisted his right hand palm up to show her the brand mark of a slave on his wrist. “But tell him that Narien Ki’ila died, not the day he disappeared, but twelve years ago, his soul departed with that of a woman whose name was Saefi. Yet as a dead man he remains in this world, for even death did not want him, and time and time again he was denied his relief. Tell him that this dead man respects no great leaders of men, for the dead have no respect to give to those who failed to protect them.”
~~~
Narien’s expression twisted into one of an old, deep sadness, eyes a little wet – not really on the brink of tears, but still very sad. “Even after all this time, I miss her.” His jaw clenched slightly and he looked away, then down at his feet. “Losing my mother….” He couldn’t finish that sentence because it didn’t really have a direction. He looked up at her again, still looking terribly sad. “And my father? Did he-” His breath hitched awkwardly and he couldn’t finish that sentence either. Shaking his head roughly, he motioned her away with his arms, turning away from her with a rough and broken voice, “Just leave me alone. It’s none of your business.”
Eyes still moist with grief, expression still deeply hurt, Narien walked away. Insolent female, he thought scornfully, leave your ignorant pity for others. You don’t deserve to even mention my mother. You will never even be worth as much as the dirt on her shoes. It had all been an act, after all, in the hopes that she wouldn’t venture to speak of it again. It was true that he still missed his mother, and her death had left some part of him mired in a sort of perpetual misery, but it had been a long time since any of that still showed itself naturally on his face. It had been a long time since any kind of emotion showed itself naturally on his face, and he certainly hadn’t gotten close to crying in years. As for his father. He didn’t want to know if his father had looked for him or not. No, he already knew. He knew that that man had not looked for him at all. He could have bet that his father still hadn’t even realized what had happened. He rarely came home, and even when he did, he did not bother to look at Narien. It wasn’t as though there was anyone else there to tell him that Narien had been kidnapped, either.
Narien still remembered vividly the day his mother died. It had been so long ago, but somehow even some of the smallest details refused to leave him. She’d gotten better just for a day. Her appetite had returned a little and she’d looked at him with the most clarity he’d seen from her in months. She’d told him a story and ruffled his hair and said she was still a little tired so she was going to sleep for a bit, but when she got better perhaps they would go out and explore again like they had used to. And he’d fallen asleep with the most hope in that whole year that maybe she was going to survive this after all. She’d held his hand in hers and he could feel that reassuring, mother’s warmth from it even as they’d both drifted away. But somewhere in the night he’d woken, even now he couldn’t say precisely why, and he could sense that something was terribly wrong. He wasn’t sure what it was at first, but then he realized that he could no longer hear the sound of his mother’s breath. The steady in and out that had stayed with her even through all of her illness. It was heartbreakingly quiet.
In something of a daze, he’d slipped off of his chair and over to where his father was sleeping restlessly in his big armchair. He didn’t remember how he’d awoken his father. He didn’t remember what words he spoke. He didn’t remember how loudly he said them, or what kind of expression he made. What he did remember was watching his father – that paragon of strength, that indomitable will – reaching that thing – that body that had once held something so precious and yet now, for all its familiar beauty, was utterly worthless. Yes, he remembered watching as his father fell to pieces for all the world to see, cradling and rocking the worthless object gently in his strong arms, roaring his anger and grief and denial at the world. He remembered the agony in his father’s voice that seemed to shake the room, and all his strength crumbling away and leaving only hollow, broken, incomprehensible words to mix with the tears in an ugly brew.
He was glad, the next morning, when he didn’t see his father at the breakfast table, because he’d cried himself to sleep loudly and unabashedly, and was ashamed now that it was light again, but when Mason was not at breakfast the next day, or the day after that, he became worried. The servants told him that his father was at work, and his father stayed “at work” until the funeral, a week later. It was a grand affair which many people attended, some he knew, some he did not, but the only thing he remembered about it was that it had been the first time he’d seen his father since the moment his mother died, and the man he remembered as so loving and warm, with the strong laugh and the mischievous smile, did not once look at him.
As time went by, the house became bare. The servants were dismissed one by one, and anything that had been owned or bought by Saefi was sold off. Since that was most everything, little was left behind. Although Mason orchestrated all of this, he almost never came home anymore, so it seemed he saw no reason to try to add furniture or decorations where the old things had been. No one visited them. People had tried, but as it had been only Narien in the house and the interior had begun to look as though the Ki’ilas were destitute, no one was allowed in, nor their presence even acknowledged.
Alone in that empty house filled with nothing more than echoing memories, Narien cried himself to sleep almost every night for a year. But, eventually, over the course of that year and a bit of the next, the tears trickled away, until he found, quite suddenly, one night, awake in his bed, on his twelfth birthday, and the first one he’d ever spent completely alone, that he could no longer cry at all. He spent that one night wide awake, astonished by his own inability to cry. It was the first time, but not the last. He spent many more nights after that in much the same fashion. Wide awake, consumed by his own emptiness, and unable to shed a single tear. That was how he’d been when the kidnappers sneaked into his room. When he saw the dark shadows hop in through the window, he’d gotten up with some sort of excruciating calm, watching the intruders as if it was all just a dream, ready to be taken away by the spirits of the night. Because right up until one of them tried to punch him, he was convinced that they really were spirits, come to tell him that he had been dead for some time now, and they would lead him to his rest. Instead, they were very solid, living people who loudly made it clear that, like it or not, he was alive. In all his life, he had never hated anyone more, and of all the people he would learn to hate over the next ten years, those two starkly real human beings would always have the rawest of that hate.
(Original date written unknown as it is saved from a blog post now deleted.)