There is now

(A/N: Taking a break from the neverending travel blogs, and posting a fictional oneshot because of course I write stuff like this, ostentatiously pretentious literature MA that I am. The two characters depicted here are  Aeneas and Dido, and this is meant to be set the evening before Aeneas is visited by Hermes in a dream, leaving the next day to fulfill his destiny, to found the dynasty that would be known to later generations as the Roman Empire. Originally published in the 2013 fall issue of DFLL Pioneer.)

There is now

    She stood at the door of her chamber, a bottle of old wine in her hands, and smiled at her lover, who was curled up in her favourite armchair with a book, at a vantage point overlooking the city. He looked up, gazed at her, and laughed softly. "Are you not going to come in, my Lady?"

    "I was just admiring the view from here," she answered teasingly, coming across to him, laying the wine on the table and putting her hand upon his shoulder. "What are you reading?"

    "Something interesting, for a change," he answered. "I bartered it from a trader who claimed to have come from Asia Minor, across even the Propontis; there is no reason I should believe him, but the yarn he sold me certainly makes for a good read, even though it has obviously been translated, and somewhat shoddily at that."

    "Will you tell me the story?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, rising from the chair and helping her into it. "It is about a powerful king, a tyrant, who was arrogant and self-appeasing, and to punish him the gods made for him a nemesis, a semi-divine being in the shape of a wild beast, who was the only one under the sun capable of buttressing the immense power he wielded and the awe and fear he inspired. So the gods sent him to do battle with the tyrant, and such a fight there was never seen, upon the earth or above it, and at the end both were grievously wounded, neither emerging the victor. Yet other powers were at work that fateful day, and they put aside their destinies and differences, and became the most bosom of friends. Together they traversed the world, one very different to that which we know now - a world in which the landscapes were yet newly shaped, the seas not bent, and many strange and fantastic monsters roamed the terrain. They hunted down these monsters, for many of them brought destruction and woe to the race of men. And so the days and years passed, until one day, when the king's friend was mortally wounded by the Bull of Heaven, and immortal though he was, yet he too passed away to their Hades. And the king, distraught and broken, sought long and hard for a way to resurrect his friend, and his quest for true immortality and everlasting life took him to many lands yet unexplored, where the stars are strange and the wind is still. Yet just upon the brink of immortality, he failed the ultimate test, and he accepted his fate, and returned to his kingdom, a humiliated and mortal man, to build and educate his citizens, who enjoyed prosperity and wealth during his sovereignty. Yet it is said that, ere he passed away, he was reunited with his friend, he whom the king had loved the most, and the gods made them immortal and set them to watch over the lands, and to guard the race of man until the final day of our age." He fell silent, and gazed out of the window, where the translucent beams of the sun were permeating the silk hangings on either side and casting long jagged shadows upon the carpeted floor.

    "And do you believe it to be true?" she asked, looking at his now shadowed profile.

    "Everything I believed in," he answered, "failed when the Argives took my country, my lands, my family, all that I loved. When Scamander flowed crimson, and the very dew of the early morning was scarlet - the gods are using us as mere pawns. We are the cotton balls that your sister's cat is so fond of playing with. When countless ages have passed, will we fade into oblivion too? Will later generations remember how fiercely we loved, how bravely we fought, or will our names only be marked by the cities we conquested, by the armies we ground to dust, and the temples we rear from the ground? Everything we do now, is seemingly only for the greater good, for design on a much grander scale. What we individuals want, what we desire for - is unimportant and unremarkable, in the eyes of the gods. At the end, it is their whim that is our will. Priam's city was doomed from the beginning, as was his son, the tamer of horses. What did it matter that Hector was a far more noble man than the leader of the Achaeans - that our forces, so few pitted against so many, were yet able to hold them for eight long years, to be finally sabotaged by our own traitors in the city, in a fight that was unjust and unaccounted from the start. Yet we were doomed to fail, condemned to die and be razed in the dry dust, no matter how valiantly we fought. For that is the will of the gods. So, do I believe in the story? I believe in what it tells us - that we are but the dartpieces in the gods' game of throwboard, and that what we believe we are doing by right of free will is in reality merely the means of achieving the gods' ends." His profile was sad and stern, and she looked at him, feeling equally the pain that he emanated, the helplessness and frustration in his fate and immobility.

    "Forgive me," she said at length. "I should not have..I only desire your happiness, my lord, and the joy that we may bring each other."

   "Nothing to forgive," he said, turning from the window and walking back to her side. He ran his fingers through her hair, and smiled tenderly at her. "For I am happy here, happy now, happy as I have seldom been for a long, long time. I feel complete when I am with you, my lady and Queen. Would that this is the fate the gods have spun for me, that my last abode is here, even though it is far from the now barren soil where I was born and which I love."

   "I believe," she said, "that we all weave our own tapestries of life. Yes, the gods have the power to alter them, for better or worse, but we are our own grand architects, and it is not only by their whims, but ours also, that the world moves and wonders. So, you may have been blown here by chance, to a Phoenician woman you have never seen before, by grace of Aeolus. Yet it was our choice, you and I, to fall in love, to sculpt the wholesome life that we have now. Maybe not all is as it seems, great warrior. You are here now, and we are happy; we need no eternity in which to love or great kingdoms to witness our joy. Perhaps tomorrow you or I will die; perhaps there are only days or weeks left to us, but what of that? There is now, and you, and I; that is enough. And," she rose and took the bottle of wine from the table, and poured it out into two chalices, "shall you, my Lord? Let us feast and drink, for tomorrow we shall die," and she laughed in merriment, and he joined her in her laughter.