Page 122 of The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy
“Always a pleasure to waste time with you,” said Osric.
A smile was her answer.
He pulled down the back of his shirt. Fairhrim stood before him and put her arms around his neck.
The light was salt and silver. Waves washed back and forth over their skin; the slow heartbeat of the sea. Cloud-clotted moonlight danced across black wave tips in soft fractals.
It began to rain. But the rain did not fall only from the clouds. It was met, as it descended, by rain rising from the sea, from somewhere to their left, and to their right, and then all around them, gushing upwards.
The black backs of whales gleamed amid the waves. And Osric heard, for the first time, one of the strangest, most unforgettable sounds in the world: whale song. Deep songs of journey, of peace, of celestial immensities. When they spouted, in the mist of their breath, moonbows danced.
Then—beauty upon eerie beauty—in the bow waves of the whales, gleaming blue-green multitudes shimmered to life. Every whale left trails of bioluminescence in its wake; every raindrop splattering made widening rings of brightness. The surface of the water was alive with light.
In this light, in the rain, in the sea, danced the forms of another place—other waves, other whales, another sea in another storm. They stood in the waters of another world.
Fairhrim’s tacn—that divine touch, that gift of life—found the back of Osric’s neck, as it had so many times before, and there, for the last time, between their first greeting and their final farewell, between thesickness and the cure, on a beach that drew a line between Here and There, in rain-fractured moonlight, she pushed her seith into him. It surged into him in a blaze, kind and strong, curative and loving. It went to the very tips of his fingers, filling him with something hallowed.
The song of the whales died away and left behind only the ceaseless adagio of the sea.
“It worked,” said Osric, breathless and soaked.
He did not need Fairhrim to cast her usual diagnostics to know that it had worked. He felt his seith system alive, vibrating, whole.
She held up her tacn anyway. The diagnostic image appeared between them, as insubstantial as the moonlight. Raindrops sprinkled through it like silver motes. She pivoted the image this way and that way, spun it, magnified it. She took several steps back. Blinked. Waved away the diagnostic and pulled up another one.
“I can’t find an obvious trace of the rot,” she said in amazement.
“I told you: I can feel it,” said Osric. “You did it. You’ve cured me.”
Rain-soaked, disbelieving, Fairhrim pressed her hands to her mouth. She laughed a silvery laugh.
“You’re healed,” said Fairhrim.
She hugged him hard. He embraced her like a flagellant embracing his torment.
She had cured him of one thing and afflicted him with another.
He kissed her smile. And he knew sadness then, because this was the end, because he was who he was and she was who she was. This was the inevitable goodbye. They were already standing in a memory.
He tried to fix it all in his mind as it slipped away with the passing seconds. Black-bright eyes. Rainwater on lashes and lips. A mouth the very shape of loveliness. The exquisite impossibility of their kiss.
Kiss me and kiss me again; our tomorrows are so few.
24
Becoming Strangers
Aurienne
The rain was moon splashes on their shoulders, the sea-foam wet velvet at their knees. Aurienne and Mordaunt held each other. A farewell was coming. It was normal to be sad. All farewells are a sort of death.
By mutual, unspoken agreement they decided not to call the Leyfarer back yet. This was the end. They needn’t rush it.
Thunder rumbled. Wavelets danced. They stood with eyes dreaming towards each other.
“Fairhrim, I—”
“Aurienne. You can call me Aurienne.”
