A rare moment of stillness

The visions meant death. I was certain of it. Vivid nightmares of black sores snaking around your body frequented my days and nights. Your screams, wild and terrified, would always call out to me as your flesh disintegrates to ash. And I could do nothing but fumble with rolls of bandages, tied up in endless strips of soft white.

Those bandages...

I used to wear them on my left forearm under the bracer, purposefully wrapped tight – sometimes too tight – across my bare hand, up my arm, suffocating the skin below. A constant slight pain, nearly cutting off circulation, on the verge of numbness but never stepping beyond that. It brought me focus back then. It was my own secret, apart from the world. Something I kept close.

But that was long ago. And those bandages never covered any physical wound.

The bandages grew, however, as time passed, branching up my forearm at first. Sickly white cloth was wrapped tightly, marching upwards every week as each convulsion of pain spouted another dark bruise, a sore. Extending beyond my elbow, I layered stiff fresh bandages daily. The infected skin beneath always bled through too fast, until at last I gave up and simply wore a long black sleeve because the thin wrappings became too painful, too temporary, too real. The illusionary permanence of a pain I could control was gone. These were actual wounds, and it shocked me because I was so accustomed to that perpetual dampened ache that this new condition hit me as pure fiction. Unexplainable, cold, debilitating pain sprung through the affected skin with increasing frequency. White bandages laced with red lay discarded. This was so much more than foolish tests of endurance and thresholds.

And I knew I was dying. The white strips that had brought me comfort before now only reminded me of loss. But I wasn't afraid of death. It was you I was worried for. Your loss. My pain was tolerable. Yours was not.

That night I removed all the bandages, and a slow stinging sensation crept along my arm concealed beneath the long black sleeve. You met me late, under a cloudy starless sky in the city on a street corner near the edge of the old ruins. I thought I saw tears in your eyes but it could have just been the low lighting or my eyes playing tricks.

I held out my palm, the tiny drop of silver gleaming in the center. Something solid to capture my wordless glances at you. The way I've always looked at you. The way I had to look away now because I couldn't let another death fall heavy on you. With that shimmering bit of metal pressed delicately on your finger, I felt the world pull itself inward, into my gaze, raw in its sudden truth. Your smile betrayed me because I suddenly doubted my decision, and the visions of you screaming, strangled with black sores, fell silent. For the first time in months, I felt a calmness settle deep within me, if only for an instant.

And in that rare moment of stillness, I saw us, captured together in a beauty I had never even dreamt was possible. We were whole. Deep garnet eyes held me fast, anchored me. A desperate desire to cling to your stability choked me, yet the pain was already resuming its dominance, its noise, and I knew I couldn't forfeit your life with mine.

I think you knew it, too. Even though your smile remained, bittersweet, your lips tried to tame and solidify the intangible feeling surrounding us, as I was. But words were not necessary. You gazed down at the tiny carved emblem, a wolf. A silent gesture. A promise. The only way I could ever speak to you.