“What is it we are doing here Neyaa?” That was the question he asked that led to that terrible fight that almost cost us our friendship. And now I pose the same question, ‘What is it we are doing here?’
The man confuses me. What am I to think? Should I even trouble myself to look into the heart and mind of my flaxen haired friend? Can one peer into those piercing blue eyes and really understand what lies within? I think not. Whenever I think that I have gotten the measure of the man, he confounds me.
But I think that I know him better than most, I cannot count the hours we have conversed. He has trusted me with his innermost secrets and I will take them to my grave.
His mood is so changeable, yet I have little desire to change him, only that which troubles him, that which traps him within the wall he has built so firmly around himself with only his tormenters for company. How I would like to smash down that wall and pluck him from the clutches of that which holds him, but nay, a wall that surrounds one must be dismantled one brick at a time, for to knock it down would break all that is within, and you are broken already my friend. The only thing in your way now, is yourself, I fear it is your own fist that grasps you.
These things take patience. I know only too well. Loving Deredan was so simple, there were no games, no anxieties, it was said, it was done, it was so. He would be gone, months on end and in all my loneliness I did not falter, I did not even consider it, as tempting as you were Seaver. For all the slander that has been levelled on you, you never once put temptation my way when I was betrothed. In truth, I would never have succumbed, my love for Deredan was complete and that means forsaking all others. Even after I learned of his death, I grieved for the longest time … but even grief cannot fend off love and I know that Deredan would have wished love for me, I am not sure he would have wished that love was you…
I think that I have written afore, that we cannot control whom we love, but we can choose whether to admit it, and when I did, you froze with fear, so I have tread carefully since. Why does it need to be said anyway? Is it not better shown? And not with sentimental drivelling’s and clichéd phrases, but with true lasting friendship, selfless thoughts, caring deeds, abstinence? Does that not bode stronger? Truer?
Countless numbers have uttered the words ‘I love you!’ Some have meant it, some have not, and some have thought it true and found it was not. Some have professed falsely to claim another’s virtue. But I know that no man would ever find those words harder to say than you.
So, what is it that we are doing here Seaver? You bemuse me. One moment you are warm, the next brooding and aloof. I rob you of your sleep and you of mine. You hide me away, you hide whatever this is, this thing we will not label from others. Are you ashamed of me? You hid me when the Captains daughter knocked upon the door.
We have lain ourselves bare to the point where we could be the undoing of one another, yet I trust you and I think that you trust me, how many can say that?
Dare I write of our nights together? This parchment would surely catch ablaze. Primal lust, insatiable, uncontrollable desire, burning, sinful, exquisite, skin upon skin tangling together until sated. At times, tender, gentle and loving in contrast, a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate. And in those moments one is easily fooled into believing, into thinking I want more, that there can be more, that you would want more and that there should be no other, but those are words I would never utter, and neither would you.
Come morning, I slip from your bed to my son, safe in Aanya’s care so I am there afore he wakes, but of late, you have awoken and stopped me…
Nay, I do not know what it is that we are doing here, but I know this, we are friends, we are lovers, and lovers do not so much make love, as they are remade by love.
