Us & Them
Title: Us and Them
Theme: Character-A-Day: Day 7: Helios, sm_monthly, March 2008
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG
Notes: The original entry I wrote for the theme is here. This piece originated at the same time, as an alternative. I think I never posted this because I thought it needed more, but upon rereading, I find I’m content to let it stand on its own.
“I no longer know my prince.”
“What do you know, priest?”
“I know his love is pure.”
Her face flinched, and her lip curled.
He shook his head. “But whether love, pure or not, is the best thing for Earth remains to be seen.”
“Are you not,” she circled him slowly, “loyal to your prince?”
He bristled. “I am loyal to my land.” He paused. “I no longer know my prince.” His voice dropped with sadness and weighed with guilt, the admission manifesting an ache in his chest.
“Would you save your land? Priesssst.” She mocked him, weaving closer as he struggled with himself.
“My land-“
“Our land, Helios. Our planet.”
“-is dying!”
Energy crackled silently, branching off of her and snaking around him, suffocating him physically, tangible in every way except actual. The impurity, the darkness, the venom seeped the air so that he wanted to fist it and throw it away.
Instead, his fingers closed into his hand, and nails dug into empty palms.
“Let me save it, Helios,” she whispered into his ear, laying her head upon his shoulder intimately. “Let us save it.”
‘Us?’ Helios could not remember who ‘us’ was. He felt drained.
The darkness of everyone’s dreams, the despair and despondency: Earth was crippling under it. It swayed underneath the shadows of hate and neglect. Like a bush that has been picked once too often, it could not continue to bloom and flourish when everybody only cared enough to ignore.
Coiling her arms around Helios’s neck, Beryl moved to face him and gently lay her cheek against his. “He-li-os,” she sang, nightingale of the serpents. “Let us heal Earth; let us repair what was wrought upon us by the Moon-“
Helios wrenched himself away, stumbling as he did so. They sought to conquer the Moon, not to heal the Earth.
He backed, pained bodily by her dusk and his brush with betrayal.
A woman, a queen, a temptress, a sorceress, a sadist, a traitor… She was many things now, but not all-
- a laughing girl of fairy tale dreams wishing for the love of a prince to sweep her off her feet to her happily-ever-after.
The girl was no longer any part of what he’d touched, and so Helios mourned what he’d lost.
What they’d both lost.