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Agostino
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Joined: 22 Feb 2011
Posts: 41

PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:10 pm Post subject: Soulsmith... Reply with quote

What hand forges the will of man, and bends it to greater purpose? Agostino lay silent in his bed, crude blankets tossed carelessly in restless sleep. Every muscle ached in protest of the harsh demands he had made upon a body that was being forged as well.

Bereft of sleep, the bed was a tedious and tiresome companion, and so he deserted it to pad barefoot out onto the sands of the the Nujel'm beach. The quarter moon was frozen in a clear and starlit sky, illuminating all with her pale and wanton lumina. His skin turned pewter in the cold and dying light.

There was something comforting in the immensity of it all. Something that reminded him that, make his mark as he may, this world could not be broken. It was a vastness that afforded him the freedom to strike hammer to spirit with reckless abandon. To reach for the splendors this life had to offer with both hands, without fear of falling.

A gentle wind stirred the sands at his feet and tossed his hair heedlessly in its caress. Reverently, he fell to his knees in the sand and rested his hands on his thighs, head lowered in awed silence. The gesture hearkened back to a distant memory of ritual, long since forgotten. He lifted his eyes to the stars, his breath a silent spectre rising to the heavens. Dizzy and drunk with the motion of the world, he found his cup filled to overflowing. His spirit at perfect peace, he waited for sleep to find him.
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Agostino
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Joined: 22 Feb 2011
Posts: 41

PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:13 pm Post subject: Reply with quote

In dreams...

“Mia bellissima Oriana...” He smiled, burying his face in her long, dark hair and breathing in the scent of heather.

“Ti amo, Agostino.” Her voice was quiet and calm as she lay her cool cheek against his chest.

Only the sounds of her breath and her heartbeat thrummed softly beneath the night sounds of the forest beyond his tent.

He knew it was a borrowed moment – and he knew, too, the pain that awaited. But as a thousand times before, he held the moment and pressed it in his mind that he might not forget a single detail.

“Don’t go, Oriana. Not this time. Stay with me tonight. Trust me, Tesoro...” His voice was laden with desperation and sorrow that had crept into the memory, years hence.

“I trust you, Mio Amore. You know that I do. But I have to return to my tent. My family will be checking in on me. I will see you tomorrow. Don’t despair...soon we will be wed.” Her expression ablaze at the thought in the darkness, she stood to go, her fingers still entwined with his.

Not to your tent – Please, Oriana, anywhere but your tent... But try as he might, the thoughts could find no voice, and her fingertips fell away from his, leaving him empty and alone.

And as a thousand times before, he found her by the glow of dawn’s arora. Eyes open, pleading and terrified. Face contorted in a sanguine scream silenced by the ligatures at her throat. Bloodsoaked and cold. He joined her there, cradling her as he wept warm and silent tears. Resolutely, he waited for the second dawn – waited to wake from the nightmare again.
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Agostino
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:15 pm Post subject: Reply with quote

How long had he lain beside her that morning, nine years ago? Lost gazes entwined in ways the world could never unravel. Hers open and pleading. His, quite simply, lost. Side by side in the dust. He, in a pool of her blood, his hair matting in the congealed and slimy sanguine mud.

Their gaze spanned both sides of eternity. Any who happened upon them might have mistaken them both for dead, so still did he lie. So shallow did he breathe. Respirare la vita. The words echoed within the roar of blood that filled his ears.

If only he did not move, he might not break the spell. His throat ached, clenched tightly against the hollow and plaintive cries that fought to escape. The moments since she last drew breath were still short. There had to be a way to go back…But the minutes turned to hours. And still he found no way to fight the torrent of time as it dragged him away from her.

If he turned his eyes away from her now, all was lost.

“Agostino Demonte. What have you done?” The words shattered the perimeter of his world.

He did not respond. He could not let go, not now. Not before he found a way to go back…

“Agostino.” A new voice had joined the first. This one so heavy with sorrow that it broke him.

The illusion crumbled around him. His dark eyes closed to the eternal realm where hers still watched – open, innocent, but bereft of the fire he once knew.

Faces gathered, dark and curious, in the doorway of her tent, and beyond. He clung to her as they tore him away, so desperate was he to hold onto the last vestiges of hope.

The embers were extinguished, as hot tears slid down over his cheeks. The last embers of her life. The last embers of his humanity.

From behind, arms encircled him and rocked him gently. “Shh…Agostino…It is too late…you have to let go.”

With all his soul, unabashedly, he wept.
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Agostino
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:35 pm Post subject: Reply with quote

The last of his clan had retreated back to their camp near Compassion. Each had spoken soft words as they touched him. A simple touch, so important in times like these. The sharing of a spirit, the sharing of hope. Each had given a small part of themselves, in effort to fill the chasm which had been opened up inside him.

Agostino knelt before the mound of fresh soil as he finished his work by the light of the bonfire. His weary hands crumbled the earth as the mound grew ever higher. The place was perfect – he would hear no other suggestions. His Oriana loved the cliffs. How often they had come here and watched the sunrise from the edge of the world. The clouds far below them obscuring forest and river, so that they themselves were all that remained. A man could see nothing but sky forever, from here.

“Agostino.” Cezanne’s voice came softly from somewhere in the darkness behind him.

He paused as he lifted another handful of earth to cover the grave. “Si, Cezanne?” He did not turn to her, and she did not approach.

“How fare you through this ordeal?” Her words were heavy with concern.

Slowly, with some effort, he crumbled the handfuls of soil. “I yet breathe, Cousin.”

“They said you insisted on doing this yourself.”

Agostino sighed. “Given two more weeks, I would have clad her in the flowers of spring – a dress of the finest silk I could find. A veil so light that even the wings of the angels who attend her would hold sway upon it.”

When she spoke again, Cezanne’s voice was closer. “She loved you very much, Agostino.”

“Si. And I her. But it was not enough, was it?” He halted his work, cutting his dark eyes back in the direction of her voice, but he did not turn to her.

“Agostino. There is nothing you can do to right this.” A soft insistance coloured her tone.

“No?” The beast within him clawed at his chest from the inside, but he urged peace and silence for just a little while longer. Now was no time to speak of such things. Agostino took a small leather pouch from his pack and poured out its contents into his hand. He scattered a handful of seeds across the mound, pushing each beneath the soil with a fingertip, and covering it over.

“What will you do, Agostino?” Cezanne’s voice was just behind him, and her hands rested on his bare shoulders.

He leaned back against her, closing his eyes. “Many things, Cousin. But for now, I still cover my bride with the flowers of spring.”
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Agostino
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 17, 2011 11:45 pm Post subject: Reply with quote

“Listen here, Gypsy. I’ll have you removed from my room and arrested for thievery—” But his threats were cut short as Agostino stepped up to the man and flicked out a dagger, the point of it biting into the flesh at the man’s throat.

Agostino stood straight and still, watching the widening eyes of the man beneath his blade. The gypsy inclined his head slightly to the left, trailing the dagger’s point down the man’s throat, to his chest as he spoke – quietly, matter-of-factly.

“Even among the lowest order of humans, you fare poorly as a man. You, who have no conscience, no soul. You, who would deprive the world of the most beautiful being who ever set foot upon it, out of jealousy and spite.”

The man cleared his throat, finding his voice. “I can assure you, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Boy. But if you insist on this childish game, I will most certainly deprive the world of one more worthless street rat. Perhaps this ‘beautiful being’ is better off dead than yoked to common gutter rubbish. I could have paid a hefty sum for her dowry. Seen to it she never wanted for anything. But alas, I stood reviled for such kindness as I offered.”

“She was my heart, Signore.” The calm in Agostino’s voice belied the rage that roiled beneath the surface.

“She refused all the wealth, and all the luxury a man of my status could provide her. It doesn’t speak to her intelligence, or her worth. Perhaps you should question your taste in women, Gypsy.”

In an instant, restraint failed. His eyes brimming with tears, Agostino was unsure whether he was more overcome with rage or grief. Through clenched teeth, he spoke three words. Then he plunged the dagger into the man’s chest.

“She was mine.”

Staggering backward, the man fell to the floor, the blade of the bloody dagger slipping from the wound as the hilt remained firmly in the gypsy’s grasp. The man reached a hand up to the spreading crimson around the wound, seemingly shocked. He looked up to Agostino with a wry smile. “You’re as ignorant as she was…I’ll see you executed for this.” Deftly, he drew his own blade, his eyes darkened and vengeful.

The last shred of the humanity in which he had cloaked himself, was rent. Agostino screamed with rage as he lunged upon the man, plunging the dagger again and again into his chest. Sternum and ribs cracked and splintered, standing up at impossible angles from the gaping hole in the man's chest. The gypsy’s face and chest were spattered with blood as he lost what little control he had left. “You took my heart! I will have yours in its stead!”

Tears mingled with blood in pink rivulets that streaked his cheeks as Agostino continued to plunge the steel blade into the man’s chest repeatedly, long past the point of reason. Who knew at what point the light left the man’s eyes? It mattered not. But as he cried out incoherently, Agostino became aware of a light touch upon his shoulder. He turned quickly, raising the bloody dagger against the young bride – this girl who could have been no older than he. In his rage, he struck.

The blade firmly planted in her chest, the girl trembled, eyes wide as she clutched for the dagger and his bloodstained hands. Frantically, he removed the blade and cast it away from him. It clattered across the floor as Agostino caught the girl in his arms and laid her on the bed.

Mio Dio, perdonami....” He uttered the words softly, watching her wound to make sure the blade had not pierced the heart. Then, latching the door softly behind him, he found his place again among the shadows and disappeared onto the streets, and into the night.


****

"Mio Dio, perdonami...." = "My God, forgive me...."
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