Begging and Pleading

The mattress dipped slightly as a familiar figure slipped beneath the thin sheets at such a time that was too late to be called night but too early to be called morning. Cool arms wrapped around the feminine form that lay already sleeping, cheeks wet from the stain of her worried tears. An equally damp face buried itself into her golden hair and washed her loose locks with salt and water as a cold hand stroked up and down one lightly bronzed arm.

It was all he could do not to wake her at that moment. To tell her the news that would most surely send her away from him forever. But, at that same moment, he could not persuade his selfish lips, teeth, and tongue to disclose himself to her. He could not risk losing her.

He was pulled from his thoughts by her sweet voice as she spoke her name. Like a question? No. Like a prayer.

And he answered her, telling her he was here, with her, like he would always be. The tears streamed down their faces and, for a moment, the universe was still, allowing them to hold each other for just a little longer. But, the moment broke and time restarted. The clocks began to move once again and they were living by the rules written by the Fates.

She rolled over to face him and their eyes met. And that was all it took for him to lean in and touch his own cold lips to hers, bruising their cracked, pink surface with his embrace.

Their cheeks touched and their tears mixed and mingled, becoming one together as they were two apart. He moved his hands carefully to her abdomen, his long, spiderlike fingers ghosting over the swollen flesh there.

Her small hands fell over his own, her rough calluses gently running over his elegant dorsals reminding him just how different their upbringings had been.

And then, for one terrifying second, he mused on the prospect of leaving. Of running away from this world, fleeing the only home he had ever known to greet an unkind reality of ice and fire. Of giving into the pusillanimity of his very disposition and abandoning his young wife and their unborn child for fear of what that babe might reveal of his own nature and, furthermore, might prove to him the wicked and ugly truth of the matter.

This child would reveal to his wife and all those who lay eyes upon it just how much of a monster its patron was. This infant would bring shame to himself and his family. He just hoped to the highest powers in the universe that the Fates be good to him.

In his mind he begged the Sisters of Time to give his child a fighting chance. He pleaded in his every thought, with the every crevice of his psyche, for them to have mercy upon him and his wife.

Just do not let it be like me.