The Academy: ii. trust me, dear; you're better off this way

All he sees is brightness.

He feels, more than he hears or sees or even Knows, the water rushing away from his body. Briefly, he thinks himself in an afterlife. His body feels suddenly dry, and when he opens his eyes, his vision remains clear. Only when he turns his head does he begin to understand. A smile twists his lips, the same partly-humored expression he uses for braveheart constituents. “Alright,” he mutters, to nothing and everything in particular. “Have it your way.” He urges his legs to walk (the dream is long gone, the dance now forgotten), and he moves steadily past walls of water. If they did not waver with waif-like transparency, he thinks, they would be tall enough to block out the sun. He pauses in motion, nearly laughing now. The king turns his head, addressing the water and the sun and the sky, and, drawing a breath, he smiles. “Holy indeed.”

That is when he knows.

No, he realizes; he knew before that. He knew before he opened his eyes.

*

Dawn curls her fingers slowly above the horizon, washing the Academy grass in a pale yellow light. Even Kale appears strangely pure beneath her touch, baptized by the newness and forgivingness of her warmth. He walks with the same slow, steady pace that he has always walked with, knees lifting up, neck arched poignantly. The dark flare of his nostrils dilates and contracts in time with the rise and fall of his chest: up and down, again and again. Only as he passes the strange stone outcroppings (ruins, the humans call them – but he prefers Monolith) does he remember his scar, fleshy and vividly pale against his black skin. It pulsates with a vigor that nearly produces a hum, and throbs uncomfortably beneath his dark breast. He does not mind the activity. He knows it means She is near.

He sees her standing pensively at the edge of a small pond, her flames licking at her ashen heels. Often, he thinks meetings of white horses and black ones seem like a clash of Heaven and Hell, with his large, looming, dark-skinned body and the frailer, purer state of the other. But Hypatia is charred, the edges of her mane curling like burnt paper, and in places she seems almost brown. Somewhere nearby her familiar stands, perhaps waiting to attack the dark-eyed king – but Kale is unafraid and unassuming. He walks, too, to the edge of the lake and stands nearly twenty feet away, pausing to gaze at his own reflection. The creature that stares back seems nothing more or less than Old, with long legs that have many tales to tell, but fewer left to learn, and dark eyes that hold darker secrets. He would fear himself, if fear was something he remembered how to feel.

The silence crashes over them like a wave, thick and brutal. But he has had enough of drowning for the day.

“I died for you,” he says quietly, not stirring from his pensive state, or even flicking one ear in her direction. He exhales deeply, as if this is something he has wanted to say for quite some time.

“I lived for you, too.”