And so we were alone, you and I.
I squeezed your hand. As the sands of Sur-Shar when baked beneath the sun, so was your flesh. The words that dropped from your lips were not Hokkaran or Qorin. They were the crack of fire consuming wood; the dull roar of flames igniting; the pop of boiling oil. Thick fog hid the brown-gold of your eyes.
I stared down at you and considered our life together. Our life apart, really. The first day we met, your hands locked around my throat, your face a demonic mask. All the letters you wrote me that I could not read; all the letters I made Otgar write to you. The stories you’d tell me of the goings-on at court. That afternoon beneath the tree, our blood mingling on an arrowhead.
I touched your cheek.
How I had longed to do this, Shizuka. Oh, I’d found reasons to touch you. I did take you out for rides, as I’d imagined when we first left. With perfect nonchalance, you touched the star-shaped blaze on my horse’s forehead.
Perhaps you do not know this. My mare and I were born on the same day. You might be asking yourself how such a thing is possible, when we are now nearly thirty and I ride her still. Just as you and I are something more than human, my horse is something more than a horse. This was known from her birth. My mother’s liver mare was her dam; her sire was a roan. Yet when she emerged, she was black as night, with the white star on her forehead.
In no way should such a union have yielded a black horse, or the gray she grew into. In cases like these, we say Grandfather Earth guided her birth. My mother hosted a grand feast to celebrate her dual fortune—an Earth-blessed horse, and a healthy young daughter.
You did not know that when you asked. At least you did not know it consciously. You could not talk to her as I did, could not speak the tongue of swaying wind.
I wondered if you were speaking your own version of that tongue. I wondered what you were saying.
I touched your lips while my own trembled. Dry, cracked, flaking. When I dreamed of this moment, I imagined how soft they’d be.
Yes, Shizuka. I imagined touching your lips, your cloud-soft skin. I had for at least two years. Other girls my age had boys paying their bride-prices already. When my mother asked if I wanted her to find someone, I shook my head.
I wanted you. Only you.
From the day we met, I’ve known this as my heart has known to beat. That it took me so long to recognize is my own great shame.
And I saw you there, a ghost of yourself. You still had so much to do, Shizuka. We were going to slay gods together. The Empire of Hokkaro needed you, too—you had to found your own dynasty, had to raise children, had to ascend to the Dragon Throne. Empress O-Shizuka you would be, and no one in the land would be permitted to write your name without dropping a stroke out of deference.
You could never be mine. Much as I wanted you, much as we were destined to spend our lives together, we could never be together the way I wanted us to.
I licked my lips.
A fever. That such a mundane thing would lay you so low …
“Shefali.”
At the sound of my name, I jolted back to reality. The fog on your eyes had lifted.
“Shizuka?” I said. “Do you need anything?”
Weak as you were, you squeezed my hand. Again, fire burned in your gaze, all the more bright against your pallid complexion. “Shefali,” you said, tugging on my hand, “kiss me.”
My mouth hung open. I drew back, a chill running up my spine. “Wh-what?”
You screwed your eyes shut and forced yourself to sit up. From somewhere within yourself, you found strength enough to pull me onto the bed. “I don’t care how wrong it is,” you said, almost shouting, “I am not going to die without kissing you at least once. Hurry up!”
How I wanted to! But what if this was just your fevered raving? What if, when you recovered (you had to recover) you regretted it? This could not be happening. You were going to be Empress one day. You could not want to be with me that way.
“We’re both girls,” I said.
You grabbed me by the flap of my deel. Mad with strength, you rolled us over. Hot tears fell on my chest and face.
“Did you hear me?” you roared. “I don’t care! In all the lands of the Empire, I’ve only ever wanted to marry you. You fool Qorin! You do not hesitate to slay a tiger, but you hesitate to kiss a girl?”
I stared at you, your cheeks flushed red, your whole body trembling.
“Are you not a warrior?” you said. “Are you not a leader? Act decisively! Don’t sit there and gawk at a dying woman!”
I sputtered. No words came to me.
But this was not the time for words, was it?
And so I wrapped my arms around you. So I held you in my arms as men hold women, as Grandfather Earth held Grandmother Sky. And as Tumenbayar loved Batumongke, as O-Shizuru loved O-Itsuki, so did I love you.
Yes, Shizuka. The sky is full of stars beyond number, each one representing a life. And yet in all those lives beyond number, in all those millions of years lived by those before us, in all their shared experience, none have loved so thoroughly as we.
When our lips met, the stars grew jealous of us. I cannot begin to tell you how it felt. How my whole body rang with the sound of temple bells.
When we parted, I could not remember how to breathe.
I stared at you, eyes wide, fear creeping back in. What if you had not liked it? I’d never kissed anyone before.
But you tugged me down toward you again. “Keep going,” you said, “until I tell you to stop.”
And so I did. Our mouths met again. You wasted no time slipping your tongue between my lips like a lick of flame. My hands traveled the wall of your spine. I touched your skin and felt the muscle hiding beneath, felt the bones that made you up. Your hands, too, wandered. With a calligrapher’s grace, you danced across my rib cage and collarbones.
You became my air. Whenever we parted, you redoubled your efforts. You kissed me like a monsoon; you touched me like lightning. You tugged at my deel, too weak to take it off. Whatever doubts I had disappeared when I rid myself of my deel and pants. I paused with my hands on the brocade edges of your dress.
“Are you—?”
“Keep going.”
When I slid off your clothing, I think I died for the first time—for no one can live through such a divine vision. For an eternity I sat up, gaping at your beauty before you tugged me back downward.
“Fool Qorin,” you whispered into my ear. “I did not say stop.”
And then your mouth pressed against my neck. Heat and pressure and pain against that tender skin made me moan. You smiled as you kept at it, knowing full well you’d leave a mark.
“Shizuka, everyone will see,” I whimpered.