"I wish to taste you like a fine wine, and see whether you are as strong in body as you look, or just a fleeting summer dalliance of flavors... strong oaks, bittersweet cherries, or summer fruit..."
“Curious,” Andreus mused to himself, when he came upon an unmarked envelope as he shuffled through the letters left for him in his absence. There had been dozens piled up, but most of little to no consequence - invites to events missed, advertisements for local businesses, polite letters from other members of the nobility, seeking audience to ask for one favor or another.
That is, except this one.
I wish to taste you like a fine wine, it had begun, unexpectedly. Certainly no event invite - or if it was, certainly not one like the others. Intrigued, he glanced over the writing - unfamiliar, it was, and upon a second look at the envelope in which it came, there was most certainly no return address. Whoever had sent this had dropped it off personally.
The warm summer air from the open window fluttered the page in his hand, and he wandered to close it, absentmindedly, as he continued to read the note. “‘And see whether you are as strong in body as you look,’” he read aloud, pushing the window closed and turning to sit in the chair nearby to it, to rest his aching leg.
He chuckled, then, though mirth hardly was present. Continued to read the rest of the note - or just a fleeting summer dalliance of flavors… strong oaks, bittersweet cherries, or summer fruit… - as his free hand ran idly over the thigh of his right leg; as it wandered to touch, briefly, on the top of the prosthetic that made up the rest of his leg below the knee.
He sat back in the chair, the same hand moving to rest on his chest; a hand connected to an arm which felt weakened, and spindly, atop a chest which once corded with muscle now felt sunken, and thin. His time in the jungle - his time spend invalid and unmoving - had turned him into a shadow of what he once was.
Bitterly, he concluded, “Clearly written before I returned,” and crushed the letter in a fist, anger and shame and resentment boiling up in his corrupted blood. Not as if it mattered, anyway - he was betrothed, now, after all. Was set to wed a woman he barely knew, after breaking the heart of one whose love he never deserved.
Pitiable, you are. Pathetic, and small.
He looked down at his balled fist; at the admission of lust held within it. At the love letter to his former self, and what he once was, both to himself, and to others. Then, opened his fist; took the paper and smoothed it out. Read it again, and again, and once more. Folded it carefully, and put it in his pocket. A reminder, he thought. A reminder of what he was; and what, perhaps, he could become again.
The clock in the corner chimed five bells, and jolted him back to reality. He was to meet her, now - his betrothed - at a flat which, if sufficient, was to be their home. He had to laugh at that, just a little. At the ridiculousness of his life; at how much had changed, because of what happened in those jungles.
With renewed bitterness, he wondered what would be of his life now, if only the Unseen Gods had chosen to deign him with their grace instead of her. Instead of blessed Natasa Markos, his betrothed with her Gods given powers.
As he wandered towards the address given, summer heat stifling, his hand touched at the pocket that contained the letter and he wondered - how would his blessed bride react to such a thing? With amusement? With jealousy? It gave him comfort to think on either - after all, any insight into this woman he hardly knew was better than the mystery of what he knew of her now. And there was only one way to find out.
(( @natasa-markos for mention ))
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