Nonpareil

Kiha is his idea of what a beautiful woman looks like. With a pang, he remembers seeing her in the soft glow of candlelight between the bookshelves all those years ago. He remembers the covert looks he was always throwing her way whenever she was doing her duties as one of the temple servants, and later on, as temple priestess, how graceful she looked in the long white garb of the oracle's attendants. Somehow everything she wears always complements her features. She carries herself with such thoughtful purpose, and the folds of her gowns fall and swish and cling and move with the same quiet elegance as her own nature. Heaven has not fashioned any flower with as much precision as they did her own form.

He had grown up alongside her, yet he cannot say he ever grew used to her beauty, so startling in its brilliance and intensity - like a blazing torch in the midst of a moonless evening. His nights were ever dark, and he was constantly seeking the warmth of that light. He sought her still, sometimes, even now that it hurts to look at her, to remember her face.

DamDuk thinks of Kiha in that moment because they were so unlike each other, she and this girl with the inexplicable tears in her eyes asking to be told she was pretty.

She is quite the little fireball of impulsive emotions, his Sujini. Like peering into the depths of a clear pool in sunlight, her happiness and her wrath, her concern, her endearing indignation, the rare flustered bashfulness he could coax out only with much teasing, are always so transparent upon her features; easier to read than Master Hyungo's ancient scrolls. Scowls and smiles and laughter and frowns come to her face with the quickness and frequency of lightning in a thunderstorm; and so, apparently, do tears. In this way she is terrible at keeping secrets, which is why it alarms him to see her trying so hard to keep one from him now. Her cheeks are damp with fresh tears but her smile is determinedly bright. Her lower lip trembles with the effort to keep it so as she hands him back his mother's trinket.

How terrible a secret can it be to require such exertions? Not without a twinge of worry he wonders what it could be about - perhaps turning down the Julno tribe's offer of adoption had upset her more than she had let on.

The clothes she normally wears suit her well enough, though if he is honest he will have to admit he hadn't paid much heed to the way she dressed until now. What does it matter if they're men's clothing, if they're a little worn and shabby, chosen more for practicality than attractiveness? They don't hide the twinkle in her eyes, nor silence her exuberant laughter. They don't get in her way and put her in even more danger when she's rushing gleefully headlong into perilous situations.

He could never have imagined her in a thousand years donning anything so impractical as that delicate pink thing she had walked in wearing, and for a heartbeat he had thought she might have transformed into someone he no longer knew, until she started walking like she still had breeches on instead of a dress, and his chuckle was more relief than anything else. For the pink gown suits her more than he is comfortable with, just as a golden chain would suit the foot of an uncommon bird.

(Do you know the meaning of my name, he heard her say again)

He had thought her looks didn't particularly matter to her as well, and he realizes belatedly that he was mistaken, his sex and his social standing rendering him oblivious to her woes.

I've always wanted someone to tell me this...that I'm a little pretty, she says. Like other ordinary women are called pretty, no doubt; like the women in Da Rae House are called pretty. But what fool looks directly at the shining sun and thinks it a little pretty, you ridiculous girl.

No; for instead, said fool wakens to the feel of warm sunlight on his face, banishing the memory of the cold night, and he thinks, ah! what a beautiful morning. He sees sunbeams streaming through a canopy of leaves, forming dappled shadows on the ground and he says to himself, ah! what a beautiful day. He sees light sparkling playfully on the surface of a gurgling brook and he thinks, despite everything there is something good and right in the world. May it stay that way for always.

So DamDuk tells her: You are pretty. Regardless of these clothes, you have always been pretty; because he knows it to be true. She is prettier than most girls; she might even be as lovely as Kiha. Why does she look so damn achingly grateful when it is such an inadequate word to describe his irrepressible, incorrigible, endearing, frustrating, kind, fearless...sun personified...unfettered joy...wilding bird...

She tells him she's going, and there is something in her voice and her too-bright smile which said somewhere you can't follow, that DamDuk grabs her arm, makes her stay. Wild birds fly to far off places, and sometimes they don't come back. For years and years, he learns much later, to his own sorrow.

Let me go, she says laughingly.

Let me go.

(If you bind me against my will, I would die.)

DamDuk's grip tightens for an instant; then loosens; lets go.

In that last moment she looks heartbreaking, the way some sunsets are heartbreaking; all pink and lilac; aglow with things left unsaid - the sun hiding its face from the world.

Her, turning her back to him.