Magic

i carry your heart with me
i carry it in my heart
i am never without it
anywhere i go you go, my dear;
and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,
my darling i fear no fate
for you are my fate, my sweet
i want no world
for beautiful you are my world,
my true and it's you are
whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing
is you
here is the deepest secret
nobody knows
here is the root of the root
and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky
of a tree called life;
which grows higher than soul can hope
or mind can hide
and this is the wonder
that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart
i carry it in my heart
e.e. cummings

It is very different sitting at the Ubar's fires than sitting at Grandmother's. I mean there is a fire for light and one for cooking and furs scattered about at both but at his there is constant movement. Slaves to see to the serving and stoking of the flames, A guard always present even when they are not visibly seen being present, commands come and go to deliver reports of the perimeters and the ever incoming things that people bring to share such as a roast tabuk or a basket of nuts or berries because he has seen to a need when they could not. And the slaves see it all whisked away and sent to the back wagons where someone has a need.

Never takes much for us to shut out the rest of the world and for it to feel as if we are the only inhabitants in a lush gardened Eden. While a red headed slave hovered along the edges bringing drinks and proffering a bounty of meats and cheeses, he slipped his arm around my back and settled us in on the fur. Our romantic little talks are often not very romantic at all by some standards. I began asking him about the Love Wars. Had he been there many times to the games, to the walled places? I didn't need sweet nothings from him, I wanted the thoughts that made him who he was, all of the little things and big things that sculpted and formed the man and the mind. I cannot tell you how many times we speak at the same time, not always the same thing but I defer and let him continue because I want to absorb more of what he was saying. He gave my question thought and began to tell me a bit of his past, the parts where he was near or within the walls. He'd been to both over time but the games had been when he was younger .. before he could participate.

There was chance to share with him that Father spoke of a girl he had seen at the Love Wars but then he never spoke of her again after that. Ayg's curiosity wanted to know if he had fought for her. I could not tell him. Father had never said but she had somehow lingered in his thoughts. The times Ayg was in the city was not always good ones. I could see it in his expression and feel it in the static of the air around us. It was not to press a sore point but to know what lie within that scar that he shared a little with me. The cities are not a place for him. He knew of some that that flourished there. He was not one of them. He is happiest here on the plains, in the open places with his people. I have heard many speak of their times there. That same winsome longing in their voice, in their inner voices with the barest of thought being away from the Harigga. It is always present, always very loud like the lonesome winter wind whistling through the canyons trying to find warmth.

I have no want to go there. It has no lure for me. Leave it to a man to envision a woman with and perhaps without their clothing. He laughed at the very idea of seeing me in the mass of robes the dweller women wear and could not see ... how did he put that .. my beautiful face hidden beneath veils. I was already shaking my head and my hand was rising to my face.It never crossed my mind to see myself in that world but the sight was of being out among the verr with all those contraptions on. The heavy garments would not last long in the herds and wearing a wind scarf was more than enough for me. He was explaining how there was far worse, they slept in walled chambers where they could not see the sky above them, the stars, the moons. Without thinking I was clawing at the fabrics that in my mind were suffocating me trying to be rid of them and on the other hand talons were forming on his arm, biting deep with the pain of even thinking of being so confined. I was ready to rise and flee. I was shaking. I could not breathe. What a horror! I could not do that. His hand eased over mine with such soothing. Ours was the best life, he said. We owned the plains, all of it as far as the eye can see and more. We go where we wish, we do what we want. "They" do not feel safe unless they are behind their walls. I managed to whisper what weak things they must be. It was all they knew, he told me and most did not want to know anything else. It was their security. His soft way of talking to me, the caress of my back and my hand were calming. His reassurance that it was not a world I had to live in, let me take a deep breath. The depth of the emotions rasped over my tongue when I told him to let them have their places of comfort until it is time to drive them from our lands then we could raze the stones and scatter them.

We needed change of topic and we both knew it. I was passionate about how I felt about confined places. There are some that think I have no fears but he had touched upon one and now knew the depth of how frightening, how horrifying it was to me. Kaeli had never understood that her insistence I see and experience these places, that she had driven me to a fine lined edge. It was as far as I could allow him to glimpse inside that nightmare, one no know else knew of. I pulled the flap over my curio of weakness by asking him what he had asked of me several hands ago.

"Tell me something that brings you joy." He never blinked or hesitated when he began to tell me that the very first rays of the morning chased away the night and they lit the sky with the brilliant colors of the dawn. By same breath in the evening the central fire starts to give way to the night sky and says farewell with the same colors. That was what gave him joy. So much of what held great importance to me ... great meaning to me, he had this way of painting on my thoughts when he spoke of them. The dusk catches my eye and no matter where I am, I stop and watch it as it spreads over the plains. For a little while we traded visions of our joys. I could list them all but then everything we feel on the inside would be exposed and some things I will hold just for us. There were places we promised each other to go and time ... we offered the other something more precious than gold or all of the finery's in the world. We vowed ... time. Time for one another. While he listened to the places and things I relished as well he leaned in closer.

"Do I sense adventure in you little spex?"

I grinned.

"Do you think you can keep up, warrior?"

It would have been harder to keep me from seeking new things in life among the plains than it would be to hold back a charging bosk. I would not recommend trying either one. Closer still he moved until his lips were so close to mine I could feel the warmth of his breath, I could have tasted them with one deep breath. He whispered against them. He thought he could ... and maybe, he could show me things that would bring my heart to my throat. Did he mean like now? The way I was almost trembling inside and my cheeks feeling flushed enough not to need kindling to start a fire? There was only one thing to say to that. I would show him some in return. It was an altogether different breath he blew as he sat back and ran a hand through his hair. "Are you hungry?" Well now I was and we were not going to mince around words in puns there. We both took another deep breath and shifted on that fur.

Soooo ... how are your studies coming along. Nice diversion. Yes, Mezoo, focus on lizards and eyeballs for a moment won't you? I was learning to walk with what was around me, not as easily done as it is to say. And .. I am getting better at letting every one's emotions shift around me than to hear and feel everyone at once. he was looking for a bit of insight from an outer point of view on how to handle some of that influx, wanting to understand me .. to understand still what had happened on a night at the stream together. That was why I trained, to learn how to control it, when to let it in and when to block right? No, not to control but to understand and flow with it all. Like I was with him that night? So I am not carried away against the current. I ended up confiding that was more like a fallen limb across the current than being part of it. That was that why I fainted. It wasn't a question he asked that time but carrying on the thought that made more sense to him. I held his hand tight as I explained that, that night, he became a part of me. Was that such a bad thing? Because since that night he had felt that I was part of him too, an important part ... one he didn't want to lose. I know he was pouring out his heart to me but I needed him to understand that connection was going to be there whether there was any "us" or not. See, even the sky could not change that now.

I felt like he did though. I look for him in the herds or along the wagon lanes.I see something wonderful or new and I turn to tell him about it as if he is standing right there beside me .. like he can see it too. I am disappointed when I don't get to see him but it is not like some. I do not feel as if my chest will cave in and I can not breathe. Instead I smile and think of when I will have the next chance.

He was kissing my fingers and murmured against them ... yes, like finding a part of him that has been missing. He kissed my palm and I rested it against his chest. What he spoke was more than delicate phrases a man lures a woman with. They were words that came from places deep inside him and there was only one sound .. the vibration of his heart as it found the world outside and was rejoicing at the freedoms.

I tried to warn him there were perils to liking a Haruspex but he silenced it with a touch of his lips against mine. It wasn't one of fiery passions, like I would know the difference but in some way deep within me I did. It held promise. It was sweet and tender and filled to the brim with loving gentleness. I knew I was surrendering to feelings I had just in this very moment realized I possessed. It was not enough intoxication so that when he broke the lingering enough to look deep in my eyes and whisper that he would face all of those perils willingly I sought more by the touch of my lips to his once again. He had kept a promise hadn't he? He had made my heart leap to my throat. He had taken my breath away and it all had an addicting quality to it.

His hand drew mine to his chest and there I heard an echo of pounding that felt like the same drum roll I felt in my own. "You do that. You make my heart sing" I could only swallow several times and this mist began to form on my lashes. If we had been standing I know for a fact one boot would have risen in the air and tucked behind the calf of the other. It was like floating on air. That is the sound and feel of joy. Yes .. yes it is.

I was oh so in control of myself there so I reached over and picked up one of the bowls to ease the flame in my parched throat. It just wasn't my bowl. It was his bowl of blackwine and I coughed and almost snorted it out my nose. Very appealing image there, you know. He said as a Haruspex, he would have thought I'd know which was which. Then we were laughing again until our sides hurt. He said he could tell there will always be laughter between us, along with tears perhaps but as long as they were shared everything was going to be just fine. Yes, we were going to share all of them ... hopes and sadness ...

And dreams.

For that one moment I looked at him surprised that he had said that. He continued in telling me it might be a bit odd and a bit sudden but did I dream of children? As in when I am sleeping, did I dream of them? That has an interpretation all of its own. Or seeing them as a want for the future? For the future, he said. I smiled as I told him that I would like a family .. to raise sons and daughters and to live long enough to watch them raise their own. I would like to see the line of my blood for as many generations as the sky will allow me. It was tentative there when I asked ..

"You"?

He wanted children too, sons and daughters but he was in no rush. He wanted them for the same reasons, the joy of watching them grow, seeing them become young warriors and young women. He wanted to sit on his platform when he was old and gray and hold my hand and point to them and to their children, and their children's children and tell me they were our legacy. Not any deeds they had done but that they were ours children.

I touched my hand to my mouth and bent my head as the wealth of emotions flooded through me and began to spill over. My cheeks were growing damp and my breath hitched deep in my chest making him lean in with concern and an insistent wanting to know if there was something wrong, if he had said something wrong. I was shaking my head back and forth too choked up to be able to answer at first. When I lifted that shimmer of tears up to him, I could feel the glow in my eyes of so much happiness I had no idea what to do with it all.

"Mezoo, we could dance around this forever but I don't want to."

"I love you."

My hands rose to touch his cheeks, to draw him to me, to seal those words right there at their source, to inhale them as part of me just as he had so much become. It all said he was not going anywhere and neither was I. I'd grown to relish this being part of him, the excitement of asking him so much more and even more than that. I loved him .. oh how I had grown to love him. I wanted to see the future with him and everything that it would bring.

It took every bit of control we both had to freeze that moment from any forward momentum. We were so lost in it, so lost in each other than it took an act of will just for me to rest my temple in the hollow of his neck and listen to the wild beat of his heart there. I could feel the coiled tension of his own hard fierce bridling. I could hear his breath as it rumbled in his throat. We would not rush this, we would take our time, if we could. He would spend more time with Grandmother, he'd tend verr all season if he had to just to get her approval. His words were like a warm summer's rain to a parched soil. He intended to make me his .. he planned on building a life around me. My promise in return was I would be there, I would be there through it all. Know it.

He was already beginning to laugh again when I looked up. He added .. if ... Pacu and Fonce did not kill him. Here was where that fair part comes in. With a straight face and all of the seriousness I could muster I told him that before he he could cross the flap of my wagon, I would have something from him. He was going to sing to me. Didn't have to be in front of anyone else, just to me and he didn't have to carry a tune or even know all the words. Wait! He had already had ... earlier today, hadn't he? We were laughing that rich hardy kind of laugh that is good for the body and good for the soul. He made me a promise he would sing to me if I promised not to laugh. Through the bubbling fits of joviality I tried to find some composure only to break up again. What if I laughed? He said then he would laugh right along with me. And we did.

It was all so easy and light that I felt lighter than air and could have taken his hand and found flight. He walked me back to Grandmother's wagons making new plans to spend time together, getting ready and then we would spend the rest of our lives together. We were humming a song and holding hands and feeling as if we owned the plains together all the way up to the walled city of Ar. For us it had simply been a night of magic and the most important part of it all was being together and finding laughter. Was there anything more magically than that?

Just before we got there I tugged his hand and told him quietly, "Don't fall for the gresp hunting routine where Grandmother leads you out along the gully and you hold the sack while she chases a gresp to you."

"What in the sky is a gresp"!?!?

"Doesn't matter .. it is not going to come running into your sack."

"Ok, no gresp hunting then."