It was a truly beautiful night. Garlands of stars were strewing the sky, of course, but then, most of the time that was a given in Mediterranean Greece—unless one was stupid enough to plan a beach party during the rainy months of January, February or March, which I wasn’t. So what made the moment special was really the choice and range of colors: pink, blue, purple and bright yellow were twinkling quite prettily in the heavens I had conjured up for this very night. The whole House of Gemini was a field of wild flowers swaying in rhythm with the music, complete with the comforting shadows of its high columns of marble turned trees for the occasion. It would have been all perfect, if Schiller hadn’t harassed me during the whole morning, demanding that a karaoke be made available—for the Cancer Saint was a galaxy-wide star singer, he’d have me and everyone in yelling range know, and it would be an unspeakable mistake for the Sanctuary to prevent the expression of his immense and multiple-facetted talents, and blah, blah, blah.
I hadn’t vaporized him on the spot. That, if nothing else, had shown all the judgmental old men ruling over the Sanctuary that I wasn’t the scrambled brains shrew they so loved claiming I was. It was all because of the Gold Coth which had decided to share my existence. The all-powerful Gemini Cloth was also known as the equivalent of sports cars, Harley Davidson bikes and little blue pills in the male-minded, traditionalist Sanctuary. In itself, the thought was enough to send me rolling on the floor laughing: this place, devoted to the worship of a goddess of old, had been dominated by conservative gloomy old men for centuries. My accolade had sent many rows of teeth gritting in frustration, the seething resentment of their oh so virile owners so sharp that at first I couldn’t cross paths with some of my peers without feeling the air bristling with the sheer pressure of their disdain. Still, that nonsense had stopped on the day I had snapped my fingers, and with a thought dumped a full platoon of Silver Saints into the Aegean Sea after dragging them all the way from the sanctuary to Cape Sounio. That feat had earned me the lasting disapproval of Ionia, but now, the lot of them knew they’d better show up at parties I organized, the more so when they were held tonight, of all nights. <Glistening black hair, so thick I could have draped myself in it and use it as clothing, he—stop.>
With an effort of will, I sent the stubborn memories back to the dusty corners of my soul. I was the party’s hostess, and I had set up the whole frigging thing so I could get drunk and do anything but reminisce. Of course, Ionia’s presence and power in the Sanctuary meant that nobody would dare breach the edict forbidding the smallest drop of alcohol from touching the Sacred Domain’s grounds. You could get drunk on other things, however. And, infuriating though he was, Schiller was just the kind of thing that would do the trick. With that goal in mind, I had managed to bear with Harbinger crashing the party—I wasn’t yet so far gone as to invite the one person who was sure to summon the lesser kind side of me. As luck would have it, the fool Taurus wasn’t yet bold enough to carry his bully-ish pranks to their end when the Capricorn Saint turned his watchful eyes toward him, even from afar. This time, the ghostly whisper of a word straight out of Ionia’s devilish book had done the trick, and darling Harby had gone back to his House like a good little Saint, his tail between his legs. It was really too bad that taming him would require more restraint than I was capable of showing, or he’d have made a perfect boy-toy for the night…but I was out for something other than murderous frenzy, so there. With a little sigh, I wiped the Taurus Saint from my mind, and refocused on my goal.
“This is the rhythm of the night!” The singer’s voice and the music went dead at the exact same time, and a heartbeat later another, shriller voice yelled, “oh yeah!” The diminutive squirrel sitting on my left shoulder let out a muted squeak, and moved its tiny forepaws to plug its ears. Schiller had that effect on people, and on all living beings, it seemed, whenever he decided to shout at the top of his lungs. In the many-colored light of the fake stars lighting my illusionary garden, I stole a glance toward the lean, tall and too frigging handsome for his own good Cancer Saint. Of course, the fool was busy drooling into the mike Ionia had leant me just this afternoon, bent over it like a lover about to start one of those “lengthiest kiss of all times” contests.
It wasn’t enough that I had gone to all the trouble of getting the gear to organize this little party inside my own House – which of course, I’d be left to clean and put into a semblance of order on my own after the guests had wreaked havoc all over the place. It wasn’t enough that I had gone to the trouble of charming one of the apprentices to play the part of DJ for the night so I could have some fun and dance myself into oblivion…well, okay, with just maybe the tiniest semblance of a plan to perform said dancing into oblivion close enough to Schiller so the self-centered ass would notice. Even though he hadn’t deemed it worth his time to reply to my finely worded invitation, the moronic Cancer Saint had shown up after throwing one of his fabled temper tantrums this morning. Pretending he wasn't perfectly aware that I had especially set aside a time so he could karaoke until he was hoarse, he had proceeded to just throw my DJ out of the Gemini House. I had caught the boy just in time to spare him an unpleasant and one-way trip to the underworld. Then, I had sent the freaked-out apprentice home with a box of cookies I had thought I’d eat with some tea when waking up for breakfast, and would now have to do without. I heaved out a sigh. Schiller was like that. All too much aware he was gorgeous, and brilliant, and frighteningly appealing, he couldn’t help lording it over everyone he crossed paths with and ruining first impressions in the blink of an eye in the process. At least, tonight would balance the scales, if only a little.
What that meant, was that it wouldn’t do to yield to my current mood and geld him right now. I had other uses for him. After that, well. Of its own volition, a thin smile crept up my lips even as I reached his side. “Now!” shouted Schiller while sending the music’s volume from mute to unbearably loud in less than a second, “all together! This is…” I heaved out a sigh, and considered waiting until the song’s end to make my move. “Why,” I blinked. The music had gone dead once more. “I’d recognize those breasts anywhere.” The Cancer Saint leered up at me. “No prize cow in the world could ever compete with you, Para.” Silence, absolute and terrifying, smothered my House in a heartbeat.
I stared down at him. “Is…” I dragged in a breath, and willed my smile to stay in place, “that…” and failed, “so?”
Schiller’s face drained of color. Too late. It had come in a moment, as it always did, and I had let it. “Look, Para,” he began.
Quick as lightning, I reached out and grabbed him by the throat. Lifting him from the ground wasn’t even hard. “That’s what happens when you’re too lean,” I grinned at him. Something half groan, half whine managed to pass through his lips. Perhaps I should squeeze a little bit tighter, and crush his windpipe to make the unpleasant noise stop. “Nah”, I told myself, and I flung him aside. Predictable as ever, Schiller used the moment to call his Cloth to him, and landed unceremoniously in the grass, clad in glittering gold. “I’m terrified,” I jeered at him, even as I willed myself right next to him and lifted the right foot right above his badly protected groin. “So,” I asked him conversationally, “how do you like your fashionable Cloth, now?”
Squinting at the high heel of my shoe, the Cancer Saint tried not to whimper. My lips curled up, revealing my teeth, while I took a good, long look at him. After all, murderous folly might very well end up on the night’s menu, and why not? The storm of wind raging inside my heart was burning hot, it was dry, and it howled louder than memories or feelings. It was familiar and comfortable. Comforting even. It required neither thought, nor effort. I hurled my foot down.
“Enough!” The word was a growl. Even as it registered inside my brain, arms encircled me from behind and pulled me back with incredible strength. Before me, Schiller was crawling backward as quickly as he could, sweat streaming down his face. He was going to stand up and run. Escape. No. With a thought, I dropped the pleasant garden illusion and lit my Cosmo. “I said, enough!” This time, the words were fire. The interloper’s Cosmo was flames. High and strong, they mixed with the wind, cajoling it. I scoffed at the ridiculous attempt. “He isn’t worth killing.” The flames’ song had pushed the world back. It had even pushed Time and Destiny back. It wouldn’t last, of course. But, goddess, it felt so good. Soothing.
Soothing.
I let out a shuddering breath, and hissed, “He isn’t worth a lecture on the Sanctuary’s laws by Ionia, you mean.”
“Yes,” the deep voice replied, something like relief seeping into its tone, “indeed.”
Breathe in. Breathe out. I repeated the basic exercise for a while, never trying to escape from the intruder’s grasp—using him for support, while I willed the fury aside. Five steps away from me, Schiller had stood up, still clad in the Cancer Gold Cloth. For a moment, it looked as if he was about to speak, then his eyes flicked up to something behind me, and all of a sudden he scampered away. “Cockroach,” I found myself scoffing. My shoulders wanted to start shaking. Badly. Folding my lips, I straightened and spun on my heels. “So,” I asked in a quiet, quiet voice, “what is it you think you’re doing, Leo?”
“Keeping order,” was Mycenes’ short reply. The pale blue gaze was locked on me, unfathomable as always. “And incidentally, saving the both of us from one of Ionia’s lectures. I’d never have heard the end of it, if I had let you go berserk and kill one of your peers.”
That brought another smile on my lips, one that never touched my eyes. “I’m no little girl in need of a guardian, Leo,” I told him in the same calm tone. Reasonable. Rea-so-na-ble. When it became clear that he wouldn’t answer, I looked away from him. The garden was back, now that my fury had abated. It always returned when I came back to myself.
All around me, it lay in ruins. Blackened flowers and grass, downed trees and the acrid smell of smoke assaulted my senses. “Fire.” The blanched murmur had come from me. “He burnt it,” I shook my head. Beneath my feet, scorched blades of grass and leaves cracked when I pivoted to the left. Ice coiled up to my spine, even as my insides twisted in tight little knots. The birds and squirrels were gone. The guests were gone. Everything was gone. Everything was black—had always been black. In the distance, I heard sirens howling.
Flickering lights. Air heavier than a thirty-tons truck. Dissonant voices, muffled by crackles. Flames, they do that on occasion. Most often, they sing, but at times, they— There’s nothing pleasant about meat burnt to a crisp. It stinks like hell, and it sends you into uncontrollable fits of coughing. The stench clings to you for ages, no matter that you scrub your skin way past its bleeding point. And all the while, the voices war with the crackles for the front stage of that stupidly tragic play where people go. Leave. End. Die.
Die, die, die.
They die, and the sirens start howling.
Pain speared through my body, and the sirens faltered. Again, pain thundered down my being, in the moment when the sirens started shouting death, and fate, and fatality. It was so intense that it silenced them—well, almost. I blinked. “Gone.” The faint whisper escaped from my lips. Two. So much taller than me. Stern and yet afraid. Revolted by the mere sight of their own flesh and blood. Sharper than any thorn, but…familiar. Mine—theirs, the shape and borders of my universe, and they had faded, dissolved in the same time one of Fate’s myriad of threads had unraveled. “Gone,” my voice repeated, hollow. “They….” I shook my head. Something was bubbling up my throat, demanding to be released. I yielded.
Laughter.
He’d come, now. Yes, of course he’d come. It was what he had done then, it was what he would do now. Everything had burnt. Everything was gone. He couldn’t do anything else. He—The laughter tearing itself free from my body broke into hiccups. “I know,” someone said, awfully close. “I know.” Something in the man’s tone won through the riot of emotions choking me. All of a sudden, I felt the hand gripping my right shoulder so hard that it had pulled it out of its socket—hence the pain I had experienced earlier, no doubt.
<I know.> Those two words dangling before my eyes had a sour, rancid taste to them. So, he knew, hey? He knew the lazy waltz of flames encircling the powerless husks of flesh who hadn’t even understood their stupid choice would bring about their end. He knew the smell and song of human meat roasting amidst the quickly decaying lives’ broken cries of pain and dread. He knew… In a slow motion, I turned my back on the desolation of my makeshift garden. “Tell me,” I asked Leo Mycenes, my voice devoid of emotions, “what is it you know?” With the left hand, I reached out to his own, still busy holding my shoulder in a vise-like grip. “What is it you understand?”
“The fire,” he replied, just as he released me and his hand met mine and clasped it, our fingers intertwined. Gingerly, he touched both our hands to my chest, right over the heart. “In here,” he added, his voice oddly gentle, “kindled when the clock’s bells toll.”
Taking a sharp step back, I snarled, “You know nothing, Leo!” I could feel my body shaking under the strain of keeping the fury at bay. Why was I even fighting it? The oblivion hate brought in its wake was better than this. “You know nothing at all,” I heard myself say in a voice so low it was barely audible. Hatred was better than seeing the noble, beautiful ghost with the long, ebony black hair come for me, hold out its hand and then abandon me.
“Cassandra.”
I bit my lower lip, hard. The sounds of that name refused to go away. Again, I bit my lower lip, until I tasted blood. For the time of a heartbeat, I closed my eyes tightly shut, and then I confronted the man who had uttered the name of a girl long dead. “Whatever nonsense the old crow has been spewing out, he has no idea about. And you,” I summoned a smile to my lips, “should be wary of using such double-edged blades.” That earned me a long silence, then:
“Pepper and salt,” was there a hint of wonder in Mycenes’ voice? “yes, you’re right. And it suits you.” He gave me a nod. “Also, I will concede that Ionia has no idea what he’s talking about.”
I stared at him for a moment, then I remembered my shoulder, and set it back in its socket with the left hand and a spark of Cosmo, focusing on the pain that entailed to ignore the black-haired ghost haunting my mind. Ten seconds passed, then thirty, and then a full minute, and another. At last, I faced the Leo Gold Saint once more, and snorted, “You’re crazier than I am.”
He shrugged. “By your reckoning, certainly. Now,” he gestured toward the ruins of my garden, “since Schiller did manage to avenge himself when he left, this party is over. I’m guessing that your objective hasn’t been met.”
I had to laugh. “No.” There was no stopping the crooked smile twisting the lines of my mouth. “It doesn’t matter.”
For a moment, I thought he’d start berating me and telling me that I had no business belittling me like that. Instead, he held out his hand toward me. “There’s no field of wild flowers in the House of Leo, but I keep a corner of savannah somewhere. The stars of the southern hemisphere shine so bright there’s no need for the moon or artificial lights. The owls sing a nice tenor, and the breeze does know how to play guitar with the high grass.” In silence, I eyed his proffered hand, then I looked up at him. There was that same, ever-present unfathomable light in his gaze. “Will you dance with me, Lady Gemini?”
He had bowed from the waist while asking his ludicrous question, and now he was waiting for an answer, still bowing. It couldn’t be comfortable. I watched him, and waited. The silence stretched on between us, but he didn’t move. Eventually, I sighed out a breath. “You’re a freaking nut-case,” I told him, “and I’m no lady.” I grimaced. “I’m no fragile young woman out of the Victorian era, I’m no fashionable doll, sweet and sugar-coated. Don’t ever presume to treat me like one, or I’ll skin you alive.”
In a slow, easy motion, Mycenes straightened up. “No, you’re not, definitely.” His lips had curled up in what couldn’t be a smile, and yet had to be. A small, almost imperceptible smile, yes, but still a smile.
The Leo Gold Saint never smiled. He was all about duty and following commands and preserving order. He was all about being professional, focused solely on business, dry as a bone in the middle of the Sahara desert. So how could he be smiling at me, at this absurd conversation of ours? Why would he even be smiling? And why was there something like a spark in his clear blue gaze that almost felt like warmth and—“What I am is broken shards of glass,” I lifted up my chin at him, “and sharp ones, at that.”
Mycenes’ smile widened, ever so slightly. “So?” he asked me. There had been a challenge in that single word, but a gentle one. His hand was still held out toward me.
The Leo Gold Saint’s strong, tall frame was all I could see. His presence, the radiance of his cosmo was all I could feel. There was a strange peace in the tingling of my blood, which in itself was a paradox. It was likely it wouldn’t, couldn’t last. “Tenor owls and guitar-playing breeze, huh?” I asked him. Mycenes nodded in reply. The fool was still smiling. “Well then,” I took his hand.
“Let’s dance.”
--- End ---