you're too young & eager to love

I had high hopes for this piece, but then things fizzled out. Damn my brain.




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“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a
moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.” – Margaret Atwood



The released, official statement is that Augusta inherited the position after the rebels murdered her husband.

There is a formal, though small, ceremonial funeral. These days, bodies are burned rather than committed to the earth.

The ashes thicken the air then settle on the sand.

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As minister, she makes a list of things that have been purged: the businesses of known supernatural-sympathizers, houses of worship, so-called princes of power from a number of territories, books of note, popular newspapers, music, non-official holidays, trade unions, unscripted broadcasting, secular theatre performances, expressionist art.

She has a second list, incomplete, of all that is no more: cities, films (except those with subtle or overt propagandist slants), cellular phones, pharmaceuticals and blind faith in a pain-relieving pill. No more certainty of surviving, progress for women, easy-access to clean water and readily available fruit. No more concrete country lines and unmanned borders, federal safety programs, agents of authority (except for what The Party promotes). No more roses, violets, chrysanthemums. No more threats of nuclear genocide, mass suicide, foot soldiers fighting in the fields, mustard gas casualties.

Some wars cannot be won with the usual weapons.

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Augusta the child had been bright and shrewd; Augusta the woman is quick and sharp and her words and blows always find their mark.

Fully-grown now she is tall and strong. Her simple clothes only conceal so much, and when she unbinds her hair or pushes up a sleeve for Radomir to clasp a string of pearls around, it nearly staggers him like an unexpected blow. It is always unexpected. He sees her, simultaneously, as his – the child at his tutor’s knee – and the minister of an ashen world. Nothing has changed between them, and yet everything has changed. The back of her long neck, the smooth palms of her hands, the slice of her bare chest that gleams visible when her wrap dresses are too loosely fastened, her bare feet at night, toes white against the cold compound floor. The sight of her fills him with anguish, twisting in his chest like a pestilence, but he has no small experience of pain on her behalf.

There is much to admire in her. She navigates through complex politics in a way that he, too monstrous and base-blooded, will never be allowed to, and reports to him her plans, her machinations of the future. She is unbreakably diligent even in the face of obstacles. She radiates zeal like the saints of old; she burns hot and untouchable and next to her Radomir is less than the meanest scavenger.

She is everything graceful in his life.


-

Like polished men of power, Roman adopts the mannerisms of his betters. He ghosts his lips across her knuckles in deference. “Minister, if you get your way, you will set our whole world aflame.”

She has a habit of smiling without stretching her mouth. Instead, she quirks the corner of her lips, retrieving her hand not unkindly from his grasp. “Fire is cathartic, Roman. Fire purges. I can only hope you remain unburned.”


-

He is built like a column of marble or stone. He has a thick neck, a barrel chest with a solid torso – Radomir takes up more space than anyone else – a body with an air of self-imposed authority. A man you would not want to cross. A man you would want to please. But she has muzzled him brazenly, without fear.

Augusta’s strong fingers trace along the leather straps and hesitate.

Rad does not dream often. But when he does, he'll dream of her tenderness - how the warped orange half-light of the fire shines from behind her hair when she is pressed close to his chest. If she wanted his chest for her pillow and his low breathing for her metronome, then such was her right. If she liked to bind his face and remind him of the torture of the pits, of how she has raised him from such a terrible place of lowliness, that too is her right.

She's taking a long look as he seethes and reddens; he can feel a track of spit cutting its way down his lower lip and this shames him more than anything, the sloppy weakness of his current state. Scars, at least, are difficult for him to acquire and when he does they at least heal cleanly. She lifts the leather up to meet the lower half of his jaw and presses it into place like a kiss. It fits over him like an ancient torture device, leaden and chafing; even the sweet, soft touch of her fingers cannot kill the first moment of discomfort from the straps and metal sinking into their permanent places and meeting tender places. He knows how to breathe, how to sink down into the center of himself and find a new footing, and he draws a strangled, deep breath until his lungs ache.

Looking up at her, he wishes he could brush his mouth across her eyelids, the dip between her brows. And as though his desire is plainly etched into the lines of his body, the tension of his massive shoulders, she slap her hand across his face. The muzzle blocks the force of it, but her nails scratch below his eye.

It’s just like Augusta, to grasp and wound what is hers already.

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