Episode 85: Painful Chest Sensations (Nell)

In the darkness of the evening, when Konrad had returned to bed and filled their home with the sense of a day long since ended, when Robert had finally laid his head back and closed his eyes for the night, when the creatures that stirred in the day had gone to rest and the ones that enjoyed the night had woken, Nell stood.

He felt it in his heart, a place he often chose to neglect, a need to be with his Enny.

He pulled his pants on and wrapped his tunic around him. He did the laces loosely, just in a way that would stay on him. He didn’t care, he didn’t think Enny would care.

He flexed his bare toes against the floor as he looked at his boots in the corner of the room. He wouldn’t need them, so he left them. He parted through the door, travel packs in hand, and made his way to the nearest door. 

The door burst open beyond the pressure of his hands. Once free, he breathed in the night air and let the twinkling stars fill his gaze.

He knew, in such a strong way, that he had wasted nearly a thousand years hiding from her. What he preferred didn’t matter. Enny had a part of his heart, and a part of his passion, and she belonged with him. He loved her.

He help the pack in his hand and imagined her, the tree she lived in, the mountainey landscape that crumbled away from the pixie home. 

He wanted her. 

He dropped the pack and it splattered against the ground. Fumes enveloped him in the same instant and he was gone, and there, as space fell away and reformed itself around him. 

He didn’t knock. This was his home. He opened the doors to their bedroom. She shot up from the bed, sheets pulled against her chest. 

“Enny,” he breathed.

Her cheeks were pink, a compliment to her long red hair that was braided behind her. Her wings furled and her eyes glistened. “Please go home, Nell. I’m busy.”

“It’s late. How are you busy?” he argued.

She turned her head away from him. “Busy ignoring you.”

“Enny,” he pleaded. He crossed the room and crawled onto the foot of their bed. “Enny,” he breathed again. He took her hand.

“If you had wanted me gone so much…” tears stood on her eyes, tense and unyielding. 

Nell slid his hands up her arms and pulled her against him. It had been years since he had been so close to her, close enough to smell the earth and honeydew that graced her skin.

He rested his fingers beneath the soft skin of her freckled chin and drew it up so he could see her eyes. She met them, the lakes tearing at his being. “Never.”

She blinked as her shoulders dropped. He smiled a little, not out of joy but because the corners of his mouth had found their way up – in hope.

“I’ve been confused,” he explained. “By something that has impacted Konrad as well.”

It didn’t explain everything. It didn’t explain him letting his attraction to men cloud his love for her. It didn’t explain a thousand years, or asking her to bear his lover’s children.

It explained very little, and yet he had no idea where to begin. 

He looked at her, and watched as she pulled away with a tight back and rigid wings. 

Nell ran his hand down her cheek, hope withering. “Forgive me. I’m sorry, for everything I have done wrong and every way I have failed you.”

“Nell?”

Her eyes dazzled in the moonlight. He had forgotten how beautiful she was – not just forgotten from memory, but forgotten to see it. Her creamy skin, her freckles that moved from most dense on her nose to scattered all the way down her neckline.

“It’s me,” he promised. He ran his hands through her hair and held her against him. “I’m supposed to be your strength, and I’ve been far from it.

“You’ve been enough. What happened between you and Konrad? What happened to you?”

He could sense her distance. He missed the centuries-old connection that had been his entire life, all that he could remember. He missed the impenetrable bond. Now, he only had the silence of desire.

“It’s some sort of… I suspect Cecily is ill. He hasn’t been as driven and I think he needs to retire soon; he isn’t impassioned by his work anymore.”

She was silent.

Maybe he had answered the wrong question.

“I need to talk to him about you, us, the…”

“Three of us,” she said, finishing his thought. She sighed and met his eyes. “I’m seeing someone.”

His hand found hers as it fell from wherever it was held, somewhere between the sky and his knee. He held it in his, the last strand of connection. He closed his eyes and imagined her, hundreds of years of her, coming to a close. She held his hand, silence enveloping them and reminding him – he’d done this. 

“Can I just stay for a bit?” he asked. “See Einin and Eiron?”

Her voice was sharp. “Do you mean it? They’ve missed you too many times.”

The words were only made sharper by their truth. 

“I do,” he promised. 

She wiped a tear from his cheek, one that must have fallen while he wasn’t focused. How long had it been since he had cried? Had he ever before? He longed to repair what little he had left – his relationship with his son and his daughter, at least, would be something.

“I’ve never seen you like this, Nell.”

“Maybe I put on someone else’s clothes,” he managed to say. The tears kept coming, the loss, the pain.

He had done this.

She laughed. “Why now after hundreds of years…”

What point was baring his soul, if she had already moved on. 

“You know, I could get the kids a gift,” he suggested. 

“Nell.”

“You don’t think they could use snow cones here?” Not with alcohol. 

What was he doing. He just… she wanted words he wasn’t sure he could give her.

“Alright.” She sighed. “Snow cones and a way to power the machine.”

Nell watched her gaze as it looked for something else to focus on, something in the room.

He took a deep breath. No more letting her down, no more disappointing her. No more, even if it cost him everything, because she had given him everything and more.

“Do you love him?” Nell asked.

“Why does it matter?”

“Just. Do you? Love him.”

“Yes.” 

He couldn’t tell, but he was almost certain she was lying. It was her choice to lie. If she didn’t want him, he would have to go. 

He stood. He left her in her bed, and extricated his being because he would never be able to extricate his soul.

“I’m going to check on the kids. I can be a better dad. I want to be a better dad.”

“They’ll like that,” Enny said. Rylena. 

He slipped from the room and held himself against the wall until he could breathe. Then, he found his twins, the most beautiful gifts she had ever given him. She had given them without question, without hesitation. 

He’d made a mess of his life, with the long held right righteousness that raising her made it wrong to touch her, that being gay made it improper; undesirable.

Now, broken from here, he knew how wrong he was. 

He slipped into the bedroom where the six year old, bright red headed, twins rested. Despite wanting to wake them, to be with them, he let them rest. He sat there, instead, and just existed in a space he had taken for granted, in a space he longed to be his more than it was. 

And under the light of the stars and the moon, he drifted into dreams of what could have been and the haunting reality he would wake to.

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