They reached his room. “Take care of yourself, David,” Libraean told him as he hobbled into his starkly quiet, Jacob-less room. He was hit with a sharp pang of loneliness. Perhaps he would write a bit more before he retired. “Actually, David,” he turned back towards him. “Do you have a few moments?”
David waited for him to continue.
“I was wondering if you could tell me your side of things, at the beginning.”
“Oh,” David looked surprised, but entered, settling into the soft upholstered chair near the desk. “What would you like to know?”
Libraean hurried to retrieve David’s book from the shelf, an updated version of the decrepit volume left in the vaults which he had to put behind glass to preserve. Ironically enough, it was situated next to Lucius’s scrolls. He settled behind his desk, turning to a fresh, unmarked sheet. “What can you tell me about the beginning?” he asked. “How was your life with Isis?”
David frowned as he considered his question. “Looking back, I know I loved Isis,” he said. “I just wasn’t sure what that meant. We were so painfully young then, with no direction on how to be.”
“Of course,” Libraean nodded. “You had no parents, no mentors to guide you.”
“I thought both twins were beautiful, but I lusted for Morrigan immediately,” he said, staring out the window. “This is difficult to speak about.”
“You don't have to unless you want to,” Librean promised him. “I only wanted to give you the chance to tell your side of things, since I offered the chance to them.”
“Morrigan spoke about me?”
Libraean gave him a sad smile. “She wouldn’t tell me what you wrote in your letters.”
David looked wistful. “I was quite the artist, even then,” he told him. “I drew her as I remembered her, naked in the river with water streaming down her skin. I even wrote poems to her on sheets of papyrus. They were painfully romantic, of course, how beautiful I thought she was, how her eyes reminded me of the sky. I admired her most, however, because she was free, untamed, and feral, so unlike her sister, Isis. So unlike me.”
“You didn’t feel free?”
David shook his head. “I was a god and the humans looked to me as their king. I had to be fair, right, and just. I had to lead them, to show them how to be. It was I who helped create them, therefore it was my duty to nurture them.”
“Quite a lot of responsibility for a young god,” Libraean sympathized.
“Lucius, on the other hand, didn’t have a care in the world. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He even had a beautiful, determined wife who he could make love to every day if he wanted. But instead, he chose to neglect Nephthys. I suppose I wanted what he had—” His voice caught in his throat, as if his own words surprised him. He looked up worriedly. “I don’t know where that came from, Libraean, please forgive me.”
“You haven’t been right lately,” Libraean said quickly, not wanting to provoke another spell. “I shouldn’t have asked you to talk. We can always resume at a later time, when things are less stressful.” He rose to his feet.
“Perhaps you are right…” David murmured, looking quite distraught. “I must take my leave of you now.”
“Of course,” Libraean said, though he remained unsettled by the reaction, wringing his hands as he watched David walk out the door. Another time, he thought, as he looked on the page half filled with ink. Come to think of it, he’d become quite drained from all the interactions.
He reshelved the book beside the others and turned off the lamp. Then he shuffled towards his bed and put his worn, tired body to rest, imagining Jacob’s arms around him.
PART III
Gaia stood in front of him, a dozen horsehair brushes in her fists. “It’s time to get up,” she ordered him.
He squinted in the morning light, something he was still having trouble getting used to, even in an ethereal realm. His head pounded right between his eyes, reminding him that he’d finished an entire bottle of wine before he’d passed out, tangled up in Gaia’s limbs. Her hair was still pleasantly tousled, poorly covering the outline of her breasts under the sheer tunic she wore. He suddenly remembered the hours they’d spent rekindling their love, as well as the pleasant realization that, in this realm, he had the same youthful vigor that he had back then. He lifted up his blankets to confirm his suspicions; there was not one stitch of clothing on him.
“Can I have my clothes first?” he asked.
“Well, I would prefer if you didn’t,” she grinned. “But there are fresh clothes in the cabinets. I’ll meet you outside.”
David hurried to dress, exiting the old tree that served as her home to be met once again with blinding sunlight. He followed her to the nearby stream, light sparkling on its surface as it trickled along the stones.
She stood proudly next to an easel she’d created for him, every color of paint one could dream of spread out on the ground around her, nestled amongst numerous canvases and pieces of chalk. She seemed pleased by his expression, thrusting the brushes into his hands. “This is the second step in finding yourself again. Step one was last night.” She smiled.
He laughed, selecting one and setting the rest down, the sensation of a brush in his hand just as distantly familiar as the feel of the sun. “I don’t even know what to paint,” he admitted. “What did I paint before?”
“The lovers,” she said softly.
He stared at her. “How do you know that?”
“We are in the afterlife, my love. I’ve learned things here, remember?”
He looked back down at the jars of paint, remembering the shades he used on the walls of Lucius’s home. He could see the image of the two intertwined bodies against the aging plaster, glowing orange in the sunset. And then it was as if he’d entered a trance, falling instantly into a rhythm of mixing, twirling, brushing, filling the canvases with paint. He was lost in each stroke, staining his fingers as he blended, the smell of paint sharp in his nostrils. Gaia sat beside him, but did not speak, bringing him more water, more canvas, more wine, as birds chirped around them and fish jumped in the stream.
Finally, as the sun began to dip behind the clouds, she grabbed his hand, jolting him out of his hypnosis to see dozens of paintings laid out before him on canvas, stone, and parchment. His entire life in paint. A painting of Gaia and him as children, running through a bustling Roman marketplace. An image of Lucius and him sailing under the night sky towards Greece. An image of Lucius in Morgana’s arms as they stared at him in Wallachia. A painting of himself in the midst of war outside their crumbling castle. One of him thrusting his sword into the spine of a black dragon. A rendition of Lardone Manor. The tenements of London…and a painting of crows.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “You have lived a very long life, Davius. It’s okay to let it go.”
He pulled her close to him and kissed her head, reminded of how much he’d missed the smell of jasmine. “You were right when you said that my entire life is a series of decisions based on guilt.” He sighed. “But I don’t think creating more of it by abandoning the others I care about will solve my affliction.”
She echoed the sigh as she nestled into his chest. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
He lifted up her head with his bent finger. “However, once things are finished, I will return. If you’ll still have me, of course.”
“Of course I will. We just have to figure out how to please the Watchers so they let you. Perhaps you can come to a compromise with them,” she suggested.
David considered her words. “They want us all gone. They want me to stay here with you and put Lucius back in Tartarus. Dan and Cahira would have their own place, Libraean and Jacob would be together. But that would leave Anubis and Morrigan...and I might have accepted the truth of our affair, but I can’t kill her, nor can I cast her into some horrid realm.”
