Hope

By Sophia S

I love you.

You know this, of course. You know this because you are not dead, not yet. But what can you know now? Now that you are silent and dreaming?

I wonder what you dream of. In your ageless, changeless sleep, what do you dream of? Do you dream of swans on a forest lake, trees reflecting in the water and white birds breaking the smooth glass surface? Do you dream of deer lifting their graceful necks from the grass and sprinting into the brush? Do you dream of peacocks in the fields, strutting and flaunting their colors?

Or do you dream of wild boars, skewering your companions with bloody tusks? Do you dream of wolves, stalking you with dripping fangs? Do you dream of wildcats, clawing your horse’s flank?

Or do you dream not of the hunt? Do you dream of your other love? Do you dream of me?

Do you dream of holding me in your arms and kissing my neck? Do you dream of spilling our secrets over glasses of wine? 

Do you dream of love?

(pause)

I miss you.

I warned you of the dangers of the hunt. I warned you of the risk, and still you went, fearless into the beyond. I love you for your bravery, but is it bravery to run headlong into danger for nothing other than the thrill? I suppose I would not know.

I do not know of danger. I have spent the eons existing in a state of perpetual safety, knowing that I cannot die. I cannot be brave, then, for nothing I do carries a risk.

Everything you do does.

When you threw yourself onto one of your men during that hunt, knocked him down, you took the tusk to the thigh. It cut through your flesh, and left you to expire on the earth like so much aging fruit, bleeding like juice. 

(backtrack)

I do not wish to speak of that yet. I wish to tell you more of what you did not listen to.

You, of course, heard me when I told you that trying to defeat the Great Boar was no task for a mere mortal. Yet you had completed hundreds, thousands of successful hunts, and this was your final prize. You would not be swayed. You were the Emperor about to conquer Germania at last. 

I tried. I tried to warn you. You, my great lovely brave fool, who stared Death into the face and said “You, I shall kill.”

You heard me. You did not listen.

And for your hubris, and for my failure to make you listen, you now sleep for ever.

(pause)

You were splayed on the dirt in a pool of your own blood when I arrived. Your men were all dead. Your sacrifice was in vain. I landed next to you, laid my head on your chest, and begged you to breathe.

Faintly, I heard it. The whispering, rattling exhales of Death approaching.

(pause)

I begged that day. 

No, not begged. 

I prayed.

I prayed to any god who would listen. Any of my fellows who could help, who could heal as I could not.

I was granted mercy by one.

He came, on wings of silence, holding his staff and horn.

I kissed his hand, bowed over his feet. I told him my prayer. He said he could do one thing. He could do the only thing he could ever do.

He could make you sleep. He could give you reprieve from pain, reprieve from age, reprieve from death.

But you would never wake up again.

I was wracked with grief. I did not want you to die. Oh, no, I did not want you to die. I thought, perhaps, perhaps, this will buy me time. I will save you. I will still save you, my love.

Oh, my hunter.

I did not mean to do this. 

I did not think of you. I thought only of me, what losing you would do to me. 

I suppose I am still just a selfish god. No amount of mortal love will change what I am meant to be.

(pause)

I do not know what comes next. You are lost to me, as surely as if you had breathed your last. Yet I cannot shake the feeling that our story is not over.

I still have hope. Hope, that thing you mortals love so much, that thing that drives you onward and upward, hope that thing that makes you live and love to your fullest extent because if you do not hope then what is the point.

(pause)

I understand now.

Hope is humanity’s soul.

You are mine.

(pause)

I will live another day. I will cling tight to your memory.

(pause)

I will see you soon.

fin.