“ don’t you miss who you were ? ”
“I suppose that depends upon which me you mean. I believe there have been several, as there are for anyone living.” Rezo rumbles a chuckle. “Sounds evasive, doesn’t it? But I’m actually trying to be honest. I miss the me that was kind without ulterior motive. The me who healed a child’s pet kitten suffering from kidney failure, which got me no closer to seeing. The me who did good things just because I didn’t want the people I healed to know how it felt to be me. He did exist, you know, that me. For a long time, actually. Oh, isn’t it awful, Ame? Doing so many things right, and one, one thing wrong, and that one thing was such a terrible thing that it alone defines you in perpetuity?”
He clicks his tongue.
“Ah, there I go. In any case, the sun is warm.”
He pauses. He licks his lips, and balks visibly.
“What … . does it look like? Out here, in the gardens?”
Pale cheeks darken, only slightly.
“Could you, ah. Could you describe it as analogies, using sounds and textures?”
Amelia listens. It is a great and sorrowful answer, but she supposes that is what she asked of him. Rezo is a great deal older than she, and has been many more people. But Amelia is an adult now, and as young adults are prone to realizing, they are not the people they have been up until now.
There is also the fresh understanding that she will never really know what she is doing. That even Rezo, in all his infinite wisdom, can’t particularly do much else besides take his days one at a time as all the rest do. And hope, and wonder, and most especially regret.
She does not mind knowing him in this way. It is certainly not something Zelgadis could hear, but that is no fault of his. Amelia has always been the mediating force between parties nearly irreconcilable. It is a quality her father praises. It is a strength her kingdom needs.
Amelia folds her hands in the lap of her summer dress and lifts her chin to survey the gardens, looking at them in a way she never quite has before.
“If you’ve ever taken a bubble bath,” she starts slowly, eyes glossing over the sprays of blossoms choking every hedge and dripping from vine-crested lattice. “Or felt a bunch of grapes. It’s that sort of... abundance. Some of the flowers are white, like... like ice, or red like velvet. Blue like sugarcane melting on your tongue. The sunlight gleams behind the petals, outlining them in a, well... a glow, like sitting in the shade, but your feet are in the sun. The hedges are like great big walls, green like--like beeswax, and gemstones.”
She laughs uneasily. “I hope it makes sense.”
