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[Enya - Tempus Vernum]

Orchid

He came to the cliffs again, just as I expected, even when he was late. In the heavens, the clouds resonated with my sorrow, devoid of sun as it cried down to the forest floor.

"Hey, Orchid, are you okay?"

"One day, you will understand."

"Three days is all you have."

Mother's words resonated in my head, and I hate, hate, hate her for it. She could not let me be free from her grasp. She could not let me love the only man in the world who gave me his affections.

"Love?"

I did not have the strength to look at him, much less tell him the matters of my heart.

Instead, I cried, and spoke out that which my heart longed to believe was false. "We cannot be together anymore."

A long silence passed between us, interrupted only by the patter of rain against stone and leaf.

"Why?" His voice, brought to a low whisper, pained.

"Because... I- I no longer love you."

My love, I am sorry. I am so sorry. For lying. For not changing our fates together. For not defending you when I ought to. For letting you in my heart when the world forbade us.

"D-did I do something wrong?" He bent down to his knees and put a hand over my shoulder.

"Do not touch me." I pushed his hand away from him, saw the tears in his ears sluicing along with the rain. "Just from the moment we met, we were not meant to be together. Two men, one a Civilized, the other a Demigod. You, a dragon, I, a cat. We are but an absurd pair destined to fail and bear no child. Can you... Can you not see that?!"

"What are you talking about?" Lazaro replied. "Just yesterday, we didn't care about that at all. We... We kissed, we danced. Fuck, we even bathed on the river together. You even loved me! So what's wrong?"

"Yes! Yes, we... did that." Each word I spoke was broken down by sobs. Our wrestling on the flower fields, bathing on the river, walks in the forest so late in the night, and our million hours of conversation in the mountain clifftops. All of them, I had to cut down to an abyss in my heart, to return to decades' loneliness. Just so Mother would be appeased... "And I did love you."

"So why? Is it about yesterday? When I was angry at you?"

"No!" I yelled. "I am not... I can not tell you."

"If it's something I did, then sorry. I don't know what I did to hurt you like this, but I'll fix us together again. I swear."

"Lazaro, I beg of you. Please, let us cease this love once and for all."

"But why?!"

"Because- because..."

"Orchid I-"

"Mother!" I yelled, pouring with it the poison of her words that slowly left me to rot. "She... She knows."

"What?"

"She, my mother, the Goddess of the Mountain knows of our affections together." I threw myself to him, sobbed on his shoulder as he embraced me. Behind me, his fingers twisted together to a lock. "And she... she is angry."

"Don't worry, Orchid. I'll convince her. I'll convince her that we can be together, and that we're worthy of each other." He caressed his claws gently down my back.

"No, no! Lazaro, you do not understand. In the eyes of gods, our love is but a fleeting rock floating in the river. As transient as a grain of sand in the face of immortality."

"I don't care. I'll prove to your mother that she's wrong about me, about the two of us. We'll face her together. Then we can no longer keep our relationship a secret!"

"I- I should never have told you!" I pushed him off of me, and it pained me much to see his face break in shock. "Mother's rage devours entire cities, and her floods reach the peaks of the highest mountains! Please, I beg of you. If not for your sake, then mine!"

"Orchid..." He said my name, so laced with betrayal. "You're that quick in giving us up just like this?"

"No, I am quick in deciding that I want you alive." The rain slowed down in its temper, but the clouds still kept the sun, and the gales breathed along with me. I wiped the tears away from my face. "You have to understand that."

"Understand? Understand that your mother's just going to keep you trapped here forever?"

"Yes."

"That you're just going to get back to being alone again? That I'm going to live the rest of my life never seeing you again?"

I sighed, a dead one. "Yes."

"I can't. I can't accept that. I'll fight for you, for us. No matter how much it takes."

"If you fight her, you will die."

"Orchid, a dead body lives better than a soul dead with regrets. If you don't love me anymore, tell me honestly, and I'll leave immediately. But if your love for me hasn't changed once, then tell me that and I'll defend you, body and soul. I'd rather die than be tortured for the rest of my life all because you weren't in it to make it better."

I realized that we cannot understand each other, that there is no compromise in this.

It was either one or the other.

"Then this shall be the last time we will see each other." I ran for the woods, felt the taste of salt and rain on the tip of my tongue. Sorrow and rage both spread from my chest, bleeding me slowly like a poison. For his sake and mine, we can no longer be together.

"Huh? Where are you going? Orchid!"

I spent the rest of the day mourning and hating myself for the crimes committed against me. I wished that I did not do what I did, but it had to be done, for I loved him very much.

I was going to be back to my loneliness, to the times I spent looking at all the Civilized in envy for their friendship with each other, and for all the love they give.

One day passed uneventfully. My first instinct was to go to the cliffs, forgetting that we were not supposed to be together. When I reached the top, there was only but pain in the remembrance that I was no longer going to be seeing him again. I was no longer going to be having the moments in which we spent together, and the thought itself hurt, hurt, hurt so much. The pain, tantamount to none that I have ever felt in my entire life.

So before he could find me on the cliffs again, I went to the mansion where I hid. It was here that he taught me to dance. It was here that I knew I finally had someone who truly loved me for who I was.

I laid down in the mansion's abandoned garden instead, the soft bed of grass encouraging me to sleep. I thought to myself that I wish I could disappear forever, and be reborn as a Civilized. If that were to happen, surely, I would be free to wander the world beyond the mountains, and love Lazaro.

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