I Dream of You: In Light and In Darkness

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

- The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

The Cycle turns and returns and I live as an exhale between one life and the next, haunted by the touch of your palm; an imprint on my soul like thread embroidered in hastily woven cloth. So far as I know, I’ve always died when the leaves begin to fall; fitting, for that was when you were killed, in that first and only life we lived together. This life will be no different; I will die in Autumn and my soul shall proceed forward into the next life, where I will live an indeterminate number of years before, again, dying as frost begins to spread.

I wonder when we will meet again. And meet again, we must -- we are tied together in the midst of a thousand tiny threads, each coursing with the lives we have lived apart. I can hear your voice in my mind throughout my struggles and my victories. I feel your touch in my dreams, painting my skin anew with your fingers and your mouth. When I close my eyes, I can hear every nuance that exists in your voice. I can even see you, sometimes and only just out of the corner of my eye, when I visit the ocean and I’ve lost my thoughts; when there is nothing in me but the roaring of the waves, rhythmic under the thin veneer of skin, erasing the feeble beat of my heart.

Your lives must echo mine, my king, my lover, my friend, and what pitiable existence we live compared to the golden days of millennia ago. But still, I would love you. I would love every life you have lived, all the people you have been. It feels as though you are embedded in the core of me. You draw me, inescapably, into you; if I was in darkness, I would find you. Your life creates a resonance that carries my soul into song and, oh, what a song it is!

We should be grateful that the Gods allowed us even this much. But gratitude can turn to ash in one’s mouth as quick as the blink of an eye - as quick as a lifetime. After, it feeds nothing but desperate hope. Is there any hope left that we shall meet again; truly meet, as we did in that first life, before war and the curse of mortality tore us apart? Before, when we’d lay curled toward each other on a mountain of furs, like parentheses, like two halves of a circle, heads and feet touching. Before, when we thought nothing of our lives ahead of us, only of what we had in each other, together. We’d tell each other every last detail of our only life, giving away bits and pieces of ourselves like fine jewels, mixed and piled together until you and I became one; seamlessly merged. Did I train as a lad with all manner of weapons, leading my people into victory after victory when I was hardly out of boyhood? Or was I the foster-daughter of the Sacred Queens, of Nemain and Her sisters, Overseers of battle and prophecy and death? Were you the King of the Tribe of Dana, glorious and righteous and wonderful, or were you the daughter of Winter, granddaughter of Cailleach, now called Beira?

Does it matter, in the end? I miss you, Gods help me, and I love you as the other half of me. In my love for you, I beat against what keeps us apart; I pound weak, human fists against the barrier between us. Where are you now, oh my king? I burn for you and I hope I always burn, for then I can tell myself that, when I’ve burned enough, I’ll have earned the right to keep you again. But I am burning out, this time, this life; clinging onto the connection I have to you with the pads of my fingers and the tips of my teeth. I know it is happening, for I have stoked the fire, myself, and I will let the flames consume me from the inside out; I have always been willing to burn for you. Oh, my love, I would happily walk across a bed of fire, though I am a daughter of ice and winter, if it meant the only way to be with you was to turn to ash where I stood, until nothing remained.

Was it always meant to be this way? This love turned vicious in such unnecessary separation. Were we meant to love at all? I was given to you, after all; a gift from the War Goddesses as a sign of Their favor. I came to you a maiden, but willing, and you treated me with reverence - anything less would have been an insult to Them. There came a time, however, when the way you touched me had nothing to do with the respect you had for my Queens and everything to do with the affection you had for me. I’d asked you, then, what you would do if I was a Goddess in your bed, rather than the foster-daughter of one, and you stopped my heart with your answer.

‘I would worship you.’

‘I would worship you,’ you’d said, as though it were obvious, and had rolled to prop yourself above me. ‘I would devote myself to you. I would gift you with sacrifices and give thanks -’

Though the words were that of a supplicant, your actions and your eyes had told a different story as you took me apart with your hands and your tongue while I lay helpless beneath you.

‘I would kill for you, die for you, live for you -’

In that brief moment before I lost myself, I had wondered if this counted as blasphemy and decided it didn’t, not because it was easier that way, but because it didn’t matter to me anymore.

‘Whatever you willed would be done,’ you had whispered against the delicate skin of my thighs as I drifted back down to awareness again. As my heartbeat steadied, you’d settled yourself above me again, your hips in the cradle of my thighs. ‘I would make for you a pyre of your enemies and kneel before you as you watched them burn -’

And then something had come over me, something hot and wild and too much, and I showed strength I hadn’t had before as I pushed you onto your back and straddled your hips.

‘Offer yourself to me,’ I had commanded, as though I truly were a Goddess, full to bursting with something like lightning, threatening to split at the seams and be consumed. My body was not meant for such a thing, and yet there I was; demanding, regal, sharp. I was myself and not myself. You saw it, too, and the want in your eyes looked so much like agony. ‘Offer yourself, King.’

‘I offer myself,’ you swore and, as I finally allowed you to enter my body, a voice not my own left my mouth:

‘I accept your offering.’

Was that it, then? Was that when our souls became one? This almost-ritual, this sudden give and take of oaths and offerings? Was it always meant to be thus? You took me, yes, but I took you, too; took your heart and soul into myself; we spoke each other’s name as both prayer and command. Our coming together, this time, felt as though it were an act of devotion, rather than purely carnal. And though we were in your war tent, on your bed of furs, for a moment it was as if we were on an altar of stone and fire, that you were giving yourself to me as a penitent by entering my body and spilling your seed.

I took your offering as though it were my due. And perhaps it was; I was your gift from the Gods, after all. I should not be surprised that we are, after so many lives, still tied together. Divine gifts do not run dry on their own; they are either kept or taken back and nothing was said about it lasting for only one lifetime. Gods do not look at life the same way we do.

The waves are a steady roar against the insides of my ears and behind my eyes. I live in the north, where it is almost always cold where the sea meets the land. I hardly feel it; I was made in the cold, that first life. The cold has lived in my bones no matter where I am born, or when. The great weakness I have is the heat. When I first moved into the house I live in now, I had no way of keeping cool. There were no air conditioning units and the house was stuffy, and there was a heat wave. I became so terribly, terribly ill. It felt as though my organs were melting and I could barely move. I vomited and hallucinated before things were finally put to rights. I thought I was going to die.

Missing you feels a little like that. I put my feet in the water as remembrance.

To burn and burn and burn again. I would light myself on fire to be with you again...and yet, here I am, melting away into nothingness, with no control and no one to stop it. So does it matter, anyway, what I would do for you, if I’m already alight?

The waves are cool against my knees and my feet are numb as they bump against rock and shell. So comforting, the cold, like a mother’s kiss. I remember Her, did you know? I remember where I played. I remember where I grew into womanhood. I remember being claimed by the Sacred Queens; Badb Catha, Macha, Fea, Nemain - the last of which I am closest to now, in this life. I remember being given to you, how I kept my head up and my back straight. I watched you closely as you approached me, both of us curious. Do you remember?

Perhaps I shall continue walking into the waves until I meet Manannán Mac Lir. Could He bring us back together again? Unlikely. Still, I inch forward against the rush of the water; tempted, tempted. I’d burn for you, but I’m already burning and you’re not here, so what’s the point? The water is so cool and clean and lovely. I’ve burned long enough.