At Cheruti | The Prince ＆ Hallakkungi
princejang-ia:
“I wonder if…” If I had known you before you… before. “No, never mind.” He is smarter, it is true, and he does know better than to give voice to weapons better left unsaid. Dangerous questions are not to Hallakkungi as they are to others. A wrong step and he will not be the one that hurts; if only it were so, then he would let open the gates and spill every last drop till the parched ground drowned itself. He has never been accused of caring for himself. His is a life dedicated to others. His is a fate where to rule is to be last, always, to rely on someone else ensuring he eats and sleeps and breathes enough to prolong another’s joy. Even the thought of failing a life fills him with dread.
And this one-
Hurts.
Like all the rest.
Sharper breaths, until all he has is the anchor of Hallakkungi’s empty scent. “He does not look like you,” he says, a finality to the lilt of his voice. Madness is yet to touch his friend. Yet to warp those fine edges into a facsimile of themselves. It does not pain him to look at Hallakkungi. The word yet will never touch this space of theirs; he will never let it, and through will alone he would wrestle even the most concrete of fates into submission. Perhaps it is a touch of stubbornness, and perhaps it is a touch of pride.
But, he thinks, if he is to be full of sin then he shall have that taint every last corner of the world he touches. Each molecule unto the ending of it all.
“I would do it regardless,” he replies, laughter a quiet huff against the bareness of Hallakkungi’s nape. “For you I would bring the moon betwixt these horizons.” Is this what it means, to be worshipful? He (they) straddle the careful (careless) line that separates (defines) obsession and devotion. He has made different promises in the name of adoration. Eight people know his name, know him to his very core. Know that if he were to be peeled away into flesh and bones he is naught but what Apairewë tells him to be.
From his peripherals he takes to watching the flutter of Hallakkungi’s lashes. Darkly they sweep from corner to cheekbone, a curtain that hides his friend’s emotions with the ease of long years in suffering. There is no pretending, between them. For all that he sees the truth in the world around him, he cannot pretend to know all that has befallen - will befall, when time twists in ever-tightening concourses, grander than ever - this being. “Will you make a story, for me?” It had been intended as a question, open ended, light of heart against their sorrow’s insistent current. Yet curiosity had stolen his breath. Added pauses where there should be none, until he’d presented Hallakkungi with a rhetoric instead of distraction.
For of course he will have a tale, when his life fades. There is a flower tucked into his hair that tells him so. That says no matter what form he hides behind he will harm Hallakkungi, in the end. So, with bright laughter on his breath, he twists this bloom in cold fingers; passes the life thread of a him-that-will-never-be into the keeping of his dark haired god.
“Tell me something beautiful, Hallak.”
In front of them, the image of the madman shifts, liquid mirror shimmering and distorting in the empty space. At first it expands, seemingly stretching across the entirety of the garden before it jerks back before them, the borders of the projection snapping as if protesting the image being forced upon it. Slowly, the border begins to form, solidifying in intricate spirals and twists as a border that might line the pages of a story book. “Take note Apairewë, that beauty no longer concludes into a happy ending, that convention has long since been thrown away – since before even the gods were created.”
As the ending of the warning leaves the god’s mouth, the image inside of border begins to form; grey tinted greens stretching out into a grassy field in an equally grey tinted blue sky. It’s bleak. Dark. Lonely. In the middle of it all stands a boy, he’s young but his face is obscured, hair falling into his eyes and casting a shadow; effectively hiding any distinguishing features, “Once, in a time far away, there lived a young boy and his mother.” The boy in the image stands, unmoving as the background and people flash by him, “They were slaves. ‘Today you shall log fifty trees and twist fifty knots’ the master would say.” There is a tall man looking down at the boy, eyes scolding and mouth large as if he could eat the child up. “But one day the master’s request changed, ‘You must dispose of all of the trees on the mountainside today, and seed the fields with millet’.” Still unmoving, the boy stands as the master leers down at him. “This was no easy task as the boy was nothing more than a mere mortal. Yet he still set off to the fields to complete his master’s task. Oh? But what is this?” There’s false surprise in Hallakgungi’s voice, telling the story as a parent might to their own child. In the image, the background has shifted, reflecting a dense forest, the boy still unmoving, stands, statuesque. An animal appears stage left and the trees disappear from the scenery, “A wild board appeared, plowing the trees for the boy. In the following days and years the master continued to create absurd tasks for the boy, some which were fulfilled with the help of others, and some which the boy committed to alone.”
Time has passed and the boy has grown taller, frame lithe and thin with a fine outlines of muscle definition. “It was after years had passed and the boy had grown that he encountered a group of elderly men. ‘You must seek out your father, and he will bring you what you most desire’. That very night the boy, now a man, returned to his master’s mansion and convinced his mother to tell him of his father. Reluctantly, she told the story of how she had arrived there, and most importantly, of where his father resided.” In the background, the scenery moves slowly behind the boy, scrolling by as if an animation, “The journey to his fathers was not easy. His master, displeased, set his fastest bloodhounds after the boy. But the boy was clever and easily managed to safely flee the beasts, hurrying on his route. It was during this time that the master’s sexual sin could no longer be put off, and he took the boy’s mother, forcing himself on her until she was nothing but a flower with a broken stem.” With each word that leaves the god’s mouth, the image shifts, but never does the boy move, never does he leave the middle of the frame.
“Finding himself in a strange land, it is there when he encounters his father for the first time; and after proving his identity, they speak. His father reveals to the boy the fate of his mother, and the boy vows revenge on those who had violated her so. The determination so obvious in the boy’s eyes as the stranger, now father, finds himself gifting the boy fourteen gifts to contribute to his anger-fuelled promise.” It’s here when the border starts to snap, fizzle, and warp again, it comes to envelope them both and they are seated in the middle, the boy standing inches behind them. Hallakkungi himself is distant, eyes glossed and vision blurry, almost unknowing of what is around them.
“The father gifts the boy with five flowers: for resurrection of the bones, flesh, blood, breath, and soul. And then another six: of weeping, of laughter, of affluence, of fire, of combat, of mind, of destruction. Then finally, and last, he gives the boy a cane.” With each flower spoken, neon and vibrant flowers (mirages) shoot up around them, growing and growing to the sky before suddenly ceasing and shrinking; landing softly in the boy’s outstretched hands. “This time, it doesn’t take the boy long to return to his mater’s house, gifts in his hands and red anger and revenge overtaking his mind. He shows the first flower to them, one of laughter and the master and his family are overcome with joy that they cannot help but laugh; laughing until their sides hurts yet they are helpless to stop.” Around them, blurry figures have apparated into the surroundings, laughing with hands clutched to their sides, “The next flower of weeping has them crying uncontrollably, only set free when they are showed the flower of combat as they begin to quarrel among themselves.” There’s a hint of a smile on the boy’s face, more visible now that they are closer, “The last flower sentences them to their death as they feast on each other’s flesh and-” and just like that the image around them burns away, sides and ends distorting as the characters fade and the boy of the story looks up with a familiar face and a familiar set of eyes and it’s – the image disappears just like that.
Hallakkungi is silent, the rest of the story falling under lock and key as he becomes aware of himself and their surroundings once again. Once clouded eyes are sharp and clear with the depth of passed millennia. “Then again, there are many stories that are to remain unuttered.” Silence washes through the garden, “If what is beautiful is a tragedy. Then most certainly what is a tragedy is beautiful.”
