Aubergine

They met in the oddest but most ordinary of ways—on a writing site, under a poem about grief or loss. Lives half-lived across oceans and time.

Both lost. Both saddened and heavy with the weight of life. So heavy with the weight of it all. Neither hoped for anything more. Not daring to think that there could be anything else.

Celia left a comment. River replied. Then came messages, shared drafts, late-night typos and the strange intimacy of edits passed between time zones.

It was easy, and not. Distance has a gravity of its own, works on a time zone not manipulated by man and its clock. In the space of a year and over three months’ worth of minutes: 131,500.8 to be exact, spoken through a webcam. And in between, words typed in fever and hope. In-jokes formed. They had to sleep but neither wanted to. The sleep they had both once cherished became a burden. A missing of sorts. As if the hours spent in REM were wasted, useless but for the necessity of being human.

By the time they said “I love you,” they hadn’t touched. But their words had become blood. Life. Words bruised like aubergine. A little scared around the edges but covering a wound deeper than they could know.

It was love that propelled Celia across the ocean to be by River’s hospital bed as she became the them they had always known. The only one Celia had ever known. It was love that allowed River to relinquish. To accept. To be vulnerable in the most sacred, difficult after-moments.

And it was love that flew Celia back across the ocean three months later to a River fully restored. Fully themselves.

Celia arrived in the dark. River, now able to drive, was waiting at the airport. A sleep. The first together in what seemed like an eternity. They married the next morning, wearing headbands woven from grass and lilies and violets. The sky above was too bright for such a quiet, burning thing. They flew home together that evening. They slept on the plane, hand in hand. No more clocks. No more waiting. Free at last. Home.

They settled into the UK momentarily. Their first Christmas. Their first shared birthdays. So many firsts. Each held with joy and childhood abandon. Mostly the unkempt basement flat smells of tea and cats and unfamiliar safety. Sometimes joss sticks and weed. And still, sometimes, the ocean felt too close. The manacles too tight.

It was just a kiss. Nothing out of the ordinary for a life they had waited for. Just a kiss while Celia was stirring a pot of chilli, no fanfare. A simple kiss. A luxury they had both almost grown accustomed to but still held sacred. And then they were crying. Just like that

Celia laughed through it. “Jesus. We’re such a mess.” She shook her head.

River held her tighter. “It’s—I don’t know. It feels—I… like…”

Muttering, “Like we’ve been here before,” Celia placed the spoon in the sink.

Neither of them knew. At least, not then. The dreams would come later.

The shackles.

The salt.

As they lay in bed that night, Celia felt the name she once screamed into the sea. It was sharp against her tongue. Heavy in her chest.

It always began with salt. Stinging of raw welts breaking against her back. Pain rubbed into pain. And smoke. Then rope. Splinters in her palm and a searing pain across her forehead.

Gulls lurched above her head. Squawking. The ship’s tinny screech. Water splashing. The insipid smell of rotting fish. Her knees were bruised and dented from stone. Her mouth filled with the iron taste of dried blood. Her throat was numb from screaming.

And there they were. River. Shorter hair. Rougher clothes. Shackled at the wrists. But their eyes were the same.The left a lighter shade of hazel. Both with the same infatigable light. She knew it was them. She always knew it was them.

Celia tried to push through the crowd. Shifting and turning. Like limestone soldiers they followed her. Erupting into the space between the two. Blocking and stopping. Their movements, hollow and robotic. Damaging in their apathy.

A man in the uniform of the guards barked something incomprehensible as the lash fell onto River’s back. They didn’t flinch. Blood soaked through the cracked material of their shirt. She watched it pool in stone.

Silence.

Celia saw their lips move. “I’ll find you.” Maybe she imagined the words. But she heard herself too. Far away, drowning, calling back like an echo lost between the cracks of the ocean floor. “I’ll wait.”

The world imploded into moss and daisies. Dandelions and fog. The screams siphoned slowly into sparrow song. They were both kneeling. Foreheads touching. Celia’s hands were tying something delicate around River’s wrist. A transparent thread. Grass and lilies and violets dangled across their eyes.

She woke to the sunlight streaming through the partially opened venetian. River was curled against her. Their bodies were wrapped into a cacoon. Their hands wrapped around each other’s wrists. A transparent string lay between their fingers. And salt stung their lips.

They met in the most ordinary way: Celia was the cook at the local inn; River sold flowers by the roadside.

They’d both chosen quiet lives—close to people, but never quite among them. Observers more than participants. Listening, watching. That was their art.

“A flower for your inn?” River called as Celia passed.

“Not today, thanks.”

“What if I give you one for free?”

“I don’t like roses.”

River grinned, already digging through the pile. “Of course not. You wouldn’t.”

They pulled a lily from the middle, holding it up like an offering. “I, uh—found this one.”

“Found?” Celia raised an eyebrow. She doubted it.

But she did like lilies. And the inn could use a little colour.

“Don’t think about it,” River said. “A beautiful flower for a beautiful woman.”

Celia gave them a long look. Then shook her head and turned for the door.

She didn’t say thank you. But the lily made it onto the windowsill nonetheless.

The Inn had sheltered the storm that she knew would come if she allowed herself access to the world. She hid behind tankards and the playfulness of the men escaping their wives. Poured beer without commitment. Smiled when they said she should. The wench. It was comfortable and safe and she was happy there. Mostly.

Still, the lily. The way the orange stamen glared out against the muted colours of the subdued white petals. It was a small shift in her perception. She didn’t see it coming, until it was too late. Or not soon enough.

The sky seemed a little lighter. The grass is just a touch more verdant. And the nights closed in like a hug and not a shroud.

It happened in glimpses. Between looks. A lily then two. A brush of hands.

And finally a kiss.

Just a kiss, nothing more.

They married under the moonlight with grass and lilies and violets entangled in their hair. A secret ceremony meant only for them. A love too true to be spoken to the masses that would condemn for fear of the other. Instead they feared.

They separated at dawn.

In battlefields and crime and the skirmish of the righteous, River was taken to be tried as an heretic. But fate intervened. Taking passage for 7 year indenture, they lived as they had begun – with little more than a cape around their soldier and enough food to carry a body. Their body leaned into the moonlight but their mind could not remember.

Celia could not forget. She clung to the words that had wrapped around her fingers.

As she lay dying in old age, with little to show for her troubles. A roof. Shelter. A husband they had thrust upon her. A kind man. But not one who loved beyond necessity. She remembered those mismatched eyes and thought only of the next life.

The second first time. They married in the morning, Grass and lilies and violets woven in their hair. This time family and friends looked on. And the officiant smile. And they kissed. Radiant and full of hope for the future they would carve together. Out of ash and salt and dust. And lillies.

But of course, this is no fairytale and two things can be true at the same time. The new life together is mid-oscillation. Waiting to begin. The bigotries and the sanctimony of the few carries through the ages. As sure as taxes. The unaffected, affecting – shoving their misshapen servitude down the throats of people who just want to breathe.

With neither country of their birth offering open passage to peace, they watch the moon at night and wait for the next chapter to begin. Thailand. The home they have chosen. The place where finally This, the second first time, they can just be.

We may be forever between countries. But we’re together in this life. For better. For worse. And all that comes to pass.

Aubergine. The colour of the bruise long after the violence stops and love begins to heal.