By mid morning light had flooded the room to the extent that the few shadows that survived drowning were made all the more stark, all the more blue by their perils. Her skin glowed, so did his dark hair, and even Calliope's hazel eyes seemed to turn into molten gold. The fruits were all so vibrant in colour that it made them feel artificial to her eyes, and she half expected to taste plastic when she bit into them. It was only breakfast, but it felt like they were dining at Mount Olympus, mortals made gods.
Aegyr had sent for her earlier, told her he'd appreciate her company for the morning meal. If his actions the night before would've engendered a sense of awkwardness between any other two humans, he hadn't quite received that lesson. It was as if he expected things to continue progressing as normal, which put Ophelia on edge. What if he approached her, tried to kiss her once more…?
Fortunately, although whether it was good or bad was highly debatable, a certain message Aegyr had received an hour earlier would make her feel immature for worrying about such things. "I have received word from Sophia," he said, and she heard Calliope beside her gasp, "that his majesty the Emperor has called for the celebration of the Mystae. He has announced that he will appoint your title himself before the rites of baptism are held."
Calliope almost jumped up: only Aegyr's stern stare stopped her. "Oh! This is incredible! The Mystae hasn't been held in over a hundred years!"
"What is this? A festival?" asked Ophelia.
"It's something else entirely," Aegyr explained. "It's only been held to commemorate special occasions. The first of them marks the start of our calendar; the second was held after the Suebii and Vandal kingdoms were subjugated and incorporated to the empire, the third was held at the end of the Great Long Winter. This would be the fourth time it's called."
"What happens in these celebrations?"
"Certain things will vary according to the occasion, but it is customary to hold baptisms, the Bacchanalia. His majesty might also decide to give special dispensations."
Ophelia frowned. "The Bacchanalia? That's where he calls for women to…" she trailed off, her sensitivities not quite allowing her to finish that sentence. Calliope, alert teenager she was, picked up where she left off:
"Make new families!" she smiled, excitedly. "I wish we had the honour of being called."
"You're too young for that," Ophelia said. Calliope pouted.
"I'm not a child! And I'm engaged, I shall have you know. I'll have my wedding next year," an idea suddenly occurred to her and her eyes went wide. "Oh, your highness! Do you think you'll be called? It would make the most sense as you come from Byzantium, too!"
Ophelia paled; that had been her initial thought as well when she'd heard the Bacchanalia mentioned, but she'd forced the thought to the back of her head.
Aegyr cleared his throat.
"If that had been the case, it would've been made explicit by the messenger," he did not look any better than Ophelia. "He simply requested her presence for the title appointment ceremony."
There was a certain reticence in his manner that alarmed the woman. "It could still happen, could it?" she asked. "He could still call for me."
"It's… not clear at this point what his majesty's thoughts are on the matter. As Lady Calliope pointed out, it would also be the common expectation from everyone else in Elysium."
Her eyes strayed towards her confused lady-in-waiting; she did not want to have that conversation in front of her. She stood up, and ordered her and the rest of the servants in the room to leave, and after they did, she sat closer to Aegyr.
"Please, don't take me to Sophia," she begged. "This may be tradition to you, but for me it's cruelty."
She had expected yet another talk about fate and order and all those things that seemed to be more dogma to him than a simple philosophy, but she found in his initial silence that he was equally as perturbed by the prospects that awaited her. There was struggle in his eyes.
"I… we have no choice in the matter. But once there, I can request an audience."
"Choice? There's plenty," Ophelia whispered, indignant. "You could let me escape as we make our way there."
"How far do you think you can go, my lady?" Aegyr narrowed his eyes. "It will take you at least a week and a half to leave the Empire on your own; even if we assumed you knew how to make your way out of it. And there'll be Knights escorting us, dozens of other families on the same route making their way there. You will be hunted down by an entire nation."
Ophelia stood up. There were tears in her eyes. "So what? Do I have to just resign myself to my fate?"
"Fate only brings us together; what we make out of it is entirely our own choice," he echoed the words of the previous night. "You will have to meet his majesty at some point or another; that is unavoidable. As to whether you'll be called to serve as a mistress, I want to believe you will have more power over that than you may think."
"I didn't take you for a gambling man," Ophelia spat out. "I know I'm certainly not."
She stormed off back to her chambers. Her rage and indignation had to be forcibly stomped back to the recesses of her mind as the next few days saw the manor inundated with Knights. The rest of her stay at Aegyr's manor was tense, and she made no attempt to hide her open hostility. Busy with the preparations of the trip, he stayed away for the most part dealing with the contingency of Knights that would become their escort. Even Calliope decided to avoid the subject of the Mystae altogether, after noticing the sour disposition it tended to bring out in her mistress.
It took three days to arrange, and once they were ready to go, she left her room without looking back or even daring to lift a finger to prepare. The only thing she truly cared about was the armband from Hyperion that as always was securely stored in a small leather pouch that hang from her waist. Wherever she went, she knew, she'd have to dress up in whichever way they wanted her to: she had no clothes of her own, or even possessions she could cherish. The things she'd brought from London had all been stashed away in Hyperion's villa in Arqa, and for the first time ever she found herself missing them.
As she was led by Aegyr into the carriage that would take her to Sophia, she searched around for the invisible strings that moved her limbs; it would not have surprised her at all if she did find them, given how much she'd been divested of her agency by Elysium. Perhaps the tower in the east wing had touched her with a hint of madness as well, as she pondered if she could truly test her own powers by trying a bold, chaotic escape then.
She fantasized of big explosions and a dash through smoke and falling debris – but as the thought formed into images in her mind, she went back to Arqa and the terrible smell of burning flesh, the hushed moans and the sooth that covered her fingers, and knew it would all remain a fantasy. Perhaps it wouldn't be a test of her powers as much as a test of her will to do such things, which she knew she'd fail miserably. She'd take being delivered to a strange man over potentially killing anyone.
Elysium saw to their departure with joy; a caravan had already started, and they were not the only ones en route. Carriages with elaborate emblems filled the streets, the gallop of horses echoing loudly amidst the excited shouts of the commoners who were not able to attend the Mystae. Many guessed as to who the occupants of Lord Scipio's carriage were by virtue of the number of Knights that were escorting them, and this summoned a wave of curious faces trying to sneak a glance from the sidelines. Ophelia saw flowers being thrown, then sashes, veils, even necklaces and other small objects. As they hit the carriage they made it seem as if it had begun to hail, but it was Calliope who assured her it was all fine:
"It's a superstition. They will retrieve whatever they threw later, and believe it brings them good luck, cures them of their ailments, that sort of thing."
Their pace picked up after they ventured outside of the boundaries of the suburbs. With the Knights clearing their way, their preferential treatment allowed them to cover distance faster, and soon they reached the hills north of Aurelia, in the region they called Domusprimum. The area was not necessarily poorer but lacked the grandiose air of the capital and the population was more scarce, so as they advanced Ophelia truly felt they were venturing into the country.
It was in Domusprimum where the first signs of the Aaentiean mountain belt was seen; stretching eastwards, they provided Phrygia and Thracia the natural borders for which they'd been made famously unconquerable. Their most famous feature were the Black Mountains, where the earth was of a deep dark colour that stained even the top of the trees that grew on it, but close second came the curious formation of the Domusprimum canyon. Streaked with six different colours, behemoths arose from the creek at the bottom of the valley to render all architecture insignificant. The walls were smooth, and even shone under the sun when the light caught a reflection off some powdered quartz on their surface. At the top of one of the canyons a number of inns offered rest and food for the wearied traveller who was in search of the magnificent landscape; they promised the best goat stew in the region, and tastes of the, according to them, 'world-famous' Domusprimum cheese.
Perhaps it had all sounded tantalizing to their party, perhaps it was simply tradition to make a stop in that particular place on the way to Sophia; regardless, they decided to rest there for an hour. The two carriages in their party went to join the line that had already gathered behind one of the inns; the cavalry went to find the rudimentary stables that had been set up as part of that post. Calliope and Ophelia stepped out to stretch their legs.
"I remember coming here as a child," the teenager said as she stared in amazement at the scene. "It all seems so much smaller."
Aegyr came up from behind them, and softly placed a hand on Ophelia's shoulder. He lightly grazed one of the Lyre Tear's she had been told to wear before leaving Aurelia, which perhaps was a purposeful move as he then said "let's find somewhere private, and away from all these eyes."
Around them, the crowd of those departing or arriving at the inns had not failed to notice the glow that illuminated both hers and Aegyr's necks; she'd heard hushed whispers and gasps, and a multitude of stares that were angrily drinking in their every move. It would take one brave person to come to her before they all descended upon them; before that happened, they needed to get some privacy.
They walked towards the edge of the cliff, where someone had left multiple tree stumps as some sort of crude chairs for anyone to pick up and sit on. The view was marvellous, even as the sunlight had begun to wane, and it encouraged their silence as they took in the monumental view. So many colours, so much light and shine; in spite of the children's screams in the background, it felt oddly peaceful.
Ophelia had one of those moments where the reality of her experience hit her: she realized that she'd never expected to live through such strange moments, and to be in a place like that, surrounded by people like that. It was so unreal it made it all the more evident that she was there and not dreaming in her room; and for that, she felt at least some gratitude.
Her thoughts were interrupted brusquely when Calliope, careless Calliope, walked closer to the cliff and decided she wanted to try recovering the jar someone had thrown away into the canyon. It had been chipped, it showed that it had been disposed of – but it was of a bright blue colour, and that was interesting enough for her. It was resting precariously on a kind of natural platform four feet below the edge of the cliff, and the girl stood closer trying to call it forth with her aether.
Her lack of control, or perhaps the distance, made it a difficult task for her: Ophelia, who was nervously watching her, had already begun to step towards her when the girl's unconscious shifting towards the edge turned dangerous. She shouted, Calliope began to fall; it all happened in a split second.
Ophelia would remember almost taking a hold of the girl's arm; unconsciously, her aether grabbed Calliope's body when she failed to do so, and sent it backwards into safety. Unfortunately, the momentum made Ophelia tip over the edge, and then it was her who was falling.
A multitude of voices rained on her descent as the screams of the onlookers echoed in the canyon. A shadow followed her, a mass of black hair and a hand that was reaching out for her. For some reason, nothing was changing, despite her doing her damnedest to force yet another aurelian miracle to stop her fall.
The darkness never came. She was falling, then the next thing she knew she was staring at the night sky, resting on a patch of grass. She gasped for breath, then trembled, reacting as if her body ought to be broken. Her mind was tearing itself from the vision of the reddened canyon walls engulfing her, assembling the picture she was now staring at.
It took her a few minutes until she started laughing at herself: her eyes, washed clean from months of that strange trip, had taken in her surroundings with the naivety of someone who quite did not know what to expect next. It was strange how it all suddenly revealed itself as foreign, only comparable to what she'd become used to in Arqa, in Caudiceum, in Elysium: she saw the statues and thought they might be close to a temple, drew the shape of the fences as carefully tended tree trunks, turned the park into someone's villa garden.
It was the light of the London Eye that made everything come into focus, and staring back at her, welcomed her back to the city that she'd thought she'd never go back to.
Something took a hold of her chest. The first moment was of doubt – was she really back in London? The second, of deep, deep fear: had it all been real? And the third, of desperation: what if she was stuck there, again, forever? But mercy was kind enough to gift her a sign, and she heard then a spluttering, a cough from a man behind her.
"Aegyr," she almost shouted, running to him. The shadows had hidden his form, kept him safe from the harsh changing neon lights coming across the Thames. His mind also had chosen to believe that he'd died, and his body took a moment to find out that he was, in fact, in one piece. She knelt next to him, hands reaching out to touch the only proof she had that she hadn't hallucinated the last few months.
"What happened?" his eyes scanned her face, before something relaxed in them. He sat up, took in his surroundings, and Ophelia wondered if he was seeing the same thing she'd seen at first. "Where are we?"
"Somehow… I don't know how, or why… we ended up in London."
"London?" it took him a second to process what she had said, before he grabbed her shoulders with an urgency that seemed all-too-endearing. "This is Byzantium?"
She nodded. Fast as lighting he had jumped to his feet, looking around in pure wonder. It wasn't long until he caught sight of what lay beyond that little park, beyond the black fence: the street, the banks of the Thames, the cars driving by. The changing lights of the London Eye reflecting on the river waters, on the surface of Cleopatra's needle, partially obscured by the trees.
"Byzantium…" Ophelia heard him whisper as he pressed himself against the fence, staring out into the world he'd only heard of in myths.
"The one and only, I suppose," past the initial moment of surprise, Ophelia felt like she was slowly wearing back a suit she'd once worn daily. Westminster borough with all its nightlife, commoner and royal drunks, had a seizable police force patrolling the streets, and the two of them were currently trespassing. The word rolled around her mind lazily, almost as if it'd rather stick to oblivion than come back to warn her of the peculiarities of British culture. But they were back, she remembered, and it was time to go.
They hopped over the fence: she could not say she expected to count with the cheat codes she'd earned in the other world, but still found it disappointing that she could not quite float herself in and out of places anymore.
"See? No aether in Byzantium. We're all plain Janes and Joes, here," she said to the confused Aegyr, who didn't seem any less enthusiastic about the place.
"The candles shine so bright here," he said in wonder, looking up.
"That's because they're not candles. They're lit using electricity… something alike to lightning," Ophelia said.
"You can create and capture lightning like this?"
Ophelia laughed; she was delighted by the accidental poetry in his words. "You shall see what else we can do with it. Here, see those?" she pointed at the traffic. "They're the cars I once told you about. And the silent ones, those are powered by that electricity."
A bus passed them by. "And they can be so big!" Aegyr exclaimed.
They slowly made their way north. Understandably the Elysian was initially fascinated by the vision of that enormous wheel that seemed to colour its surroundings, and the river's water, in different shades of red. Ophelia explained that it was more than just lighting, that it wasn't a monument; one could ride in it, and it was a popular spot for those who went to visit the city.
"We ought to try it," Aegyr whispered. He was smiling from ear to ear, like a child who'd just been eating candy. Ophelia, without his notice, offered the always helpful and non-committal 'yes, that'd be nice' before leading him into the next attraction. She wasn't sure what time it was, but it clearly wasn't so late that she'd find groups of hens shouting for a kebab in the middle of a street, so the tube would've still been open. They made their way to Embankment station, and finally a certain degree of disappointment of some sort showed on Aegyr's face: "it feels like the final days of the Bacchanalia," he said disparagingly as he heard the shouts and saw the stumbling of the hard working British party goer.
It was only when Ophelia caught sight of the faregates that she realized of the logistical problems they were facing: they had no money, and unlike some other stations, Embankment was popular enough to have very attentive staff around them. She thought about pulling some sort of trick, but with her aether it seemed that also her deviousness had also gone away. That was the way of that city, of her life until then: it seemed to weigh on her, crush her spirit into conformity to the point that there was no recourse but to play the game, obey its laws. An invisible custodian had awoken in her head, shutting down her ideas before they became fully formed.
Welcome to London.
"What is this small tablet?" Aegyr asked; it seemed that while she was having a small existential crisis he'd wandered around the entrance, exploring all the nooks and crooks of its grubby glory, and had happened upon an Oyster card. Ophelia stared at him in disbelief.
"Oh lord, please let it have some credit…" she said, taking it out of his hands and walking into the station to hold it against the reader of one of the ticket machines. Someone had had twenty pounds fall out of their pocket when they'd lost it. She took a look at the TFL employees; Aegyr's good luck had given her spirits back. She decided to run a little experiment: if her aether was gone, perhaps the peculiarity of her insignificance in that world would've come back.
She walked Aegyr to the gates, and instructed him on how to use the Oyster to open them. Enthusiastic, he repeated what she told him with no fault whatsoever; waiting on the other side, he watched as she brazenly took her time to climb over the gates. His sharp mind quickly grasped the situation, piecing together what she'd said, what she'd done, and what she'd told him to do. "Can you use this tablet without limit?" he asked curiously. "And why did you climb over the gates, rather than using this tablet?"
"It's called an oyster card, by the way," Ophelia explained as she motioned for him to follow her to the escalators. "You can charge it with a certain amount of money, and then every time you use the tube, it subtracts the fare of the journey. This is so you don't have to manually pay for every single ride, separately. Unfortunately, only one person can use it at a time. I don't have any currency with me, so for me to travel I had to… do something that's not allowed."
"Will you get in trouble?"
Ophelia smiled. "Fortunately, although we might not be able to use our aether here, I still do have a superpower of some sort: this place loves to ignore me. So I can get away with a lot of things simply because I'm invisible to the folks in here. It's very strange."
Aegyr's expression made it clear that he didn't understand fully what she meant by that, but he didn't press it. The roar of the trains as they approached the station, the disembodied voice telling them to mind the gap, and the conductor cracking a dry joke about their destination over the speakers required the full attention of the man from the other world. His eyes drank in every detail, piercing together observations that he'd share with Ophelia from time to time to check their validity. It was the most animated and chatty he'd ever seen the normally aloof, cold man, and she welcomed the change. That he was excited about their crossing into Byzantium was better than her wallowing in the misery of being back.
They got off at Highgate station. At that time of the night it was mostly empty, although some strange characters were still running around the park to pay their quota of the day's fitness goals. Her feet had no trouble finding their way through the once daily path she'd make to and from work; she made the same shortcuts, crossed the street in the exact same way she'd done before her journey to that other world. She stared longingly at the chippy she defected to when she wasn't in the mood for cooking, and speculatively at the Tesco Express, thinking that once she got a hold of her cards they'd need to run some errands.
They made it to her apartment, finally. She wasn't one to regularly come back home after a drunken night out, and she wasn't any more forgetful than the average joe, but in its spite the universe had before done away with things she was entirely sure had been on her person. As if by magic she'd seen coins, notes, a card, and even her driver's license vanish right before they'd be needed, never to appear again. It engendered in her a certain paranoia for such things, and at some point she'd decided she would not wait to find herself locked outside of her own apartment, and had made a little hidden compartment in the floor fittings outside her door in which she had stashed a spare set of keys.
Reaping the benefits of her forethought, she came back into her apartment. She asked Aegyr to make himself at home, although she wasn't quite sure what that could mean for someone like him. She would find it difficult to situate herself in that broody space, half empty, half filled with memories. It was when she spotted the pictures of her parents and herself she'd hung on the hallway that she almost broke down crying. They were only photographs, some of them of times she'd been too young to remember or hadn't been present for, and could only pale in comparison to the memories she cherished of them, but they served as anchors for her comfort. They were physical reminders of the people she loved the most; powerful enough to momentarily transport her to happier times. That, she had missed terribly.
She showed Aegyr around the house; she didn't have a spare room for him, but the couch was large enough that he would be able to sleep comfortably. The kitchen and the bathroom provided the most entertainment to him: "it's all made so easy, so instantaneous, I see why you live without servants."
Ophelia felt grateful for his presence. She would've probably crumbled in the couch to cry if she'd come back by herself; he instead allowed her to come into her house like a newborn, trying to make sense of all of the things she'd considered so mundane in a way that could be explained in Elysian. It revitalized all those crumbling corners of her flat with the magic of her adventures; and rather than becoming her entrapment in London, it turned into a refuge where the other world and Earth met.
While she let Aegyr take his first Byzantine shower, she went through the stack of letters and bills that had been accumulated in her absence. She wondered if anyone at work had noticed she'd gone missing, or if they'd simply written her off, relieved she would not be coming back again; perhaps it was for the better the police had not stormed in to make a wellness check. A look at the dates, and then the date on her laptop, told her she'd been gone for eight months. It was now early May.
Her stomach rumbled: she was faced with the conundrum of not being prepared to set foot in the kitchen, where surely she'd find the spoils of eight months of rotten food, and the possibility of walking to the chippy, potentially leaving Aegyr in the flat and trust he would not set anything on fire. She was in the middle of making plans when said man walked in fresh from his shower.
"The Tears are not shining anymore," he said, as he left his on the living room's table. She had not yet changed out of her Elysian outfit, both earrings now looking strangely dead without their preternatural glow. She turned around to answer, when she noticed he wasn't wearing anything – except for the towel she'd given him, wrapped around his waist.
She blushed and turned back around. "We'll have to go shopping for men's clothes tomorrow," she said.
"Is there somewhere I can hang my stola to air it?"
Ophelia stammered an affirmative reply; she promised she'd take care of it. "I ought to get you something to wear…"
She got the indication that perhaps Aegyr was toying with her when he followed her into her room, feigning ignorance as she rummaged through her drawers. A pair of baggy shorts she'd ordered online emerged as a clear winner: she'd been sent something two sizes too big for her, and she'd been too discouraged from trying to send it back. She held it up to him, trying not to look in the direction of the lean, well-built torso of the man, when he said, "is there something wrong, lady Ophelia? You keep shying away from me."
"I can't say I'm used to having men in my flat, much less men in various states of undress" she countered, making a swift escape back to the living room. "I'm going out to get us something to eat. I'll be back in ten minutes."
She grabbed her keys and the wallet she'd fished out from one of her jackets, and left. She didn't bother changing; she knew that even if the entirety of the street was looking at her, it was London, and so she'd either get a pass as an ethnic outfit, or some sort of street wear too avantgarde for people to know about. And chippies, by virtue of the hours and clientele of their trade, were full of men who had perfected the art of small talk as much as they'd mastered the art of getting chips the right level of crunchy: they said enough so that it wouldn't be awkward, but they would never intrude. Should an alien find themselves wanting to taste some good ole fish and chips in London at two am, they'd find that the hardest question they'd be asked was if they wanted Tango or a Coke to go with it.
Armed with two battered cods, two orders of chips, a portion of cheese sticks and another one of chicken nuggets, she went back to the flat smelling like grease. Aegyr, thankfully, had changed into the shorts – which seemed just slightly too tight – and was now looking through her bookshelf.
"Feel free to dig in, I'm just going to change out of this," Ophelia said as she left the bags on the small table in front of the couch and turned the TV on.
She knew that Aegyr's antics had worked when, taking a look at the regular set she used as pajamas, she became self-conscious. She ended up grabbing a fresh shirt and pair of joggers, and took a quick shower as well. She didn't want it to go that way, but she definitely could feel the tell-tales of the famed Netflix and chill session starting to force their way into her flat.
The concept of takeaway and fried fish wasn't entirely novel to Aegyr, that she knew; the taste of the beer, however, came as a surprise. "It is very strong," he said. "Is this what you drink every day?"
"We don't drink beer as if it was water," Ophelia explained. "Only adults can drink it; you may think of it as a social drink, something to partake of in a public house, or as something that goes with meals."
"What do children drink, then?"
"Water; you can drink it from the tap here – you could drink the water you showered with," that earned her a scandalized look from the man.
Ophelia, who had been zapping through the channels, decided to show him then something she'd talked about at length before. "Oh, we should watch The Thing," she said. "This is that play, which we call movie, which I was reminded of during my initial trip to Arqa."
What she hadn't realized was that Aegyr didn't speak English, and Elysian was not within the subtitle options. It didn't matter; when she started apologizing, the man insisted on watching it regardless of the language barrier. The spectacle of it was enough for him to be entertained, and movies, when done right, were enough of a visual medium that one could follow a storyline without understanding the dialogue. She let the movie play without offering much in the way of explanations, except when it was necessary: by then the mental exercise of having to find ways to explain things that had been entirely natural to her to someone who spoke a different language and lived a completely different life had begun to strain her.
It wasn't until she woke up the next morning that she realized she'd fallen asleep somewhere around the middle of the movie. Disoriented, she thought for a few minutes as she laid with her eyes closed that she was back in Arqa, and then corrected herself: she was in Aurelia, in Aegyr's manor. It wasn't until she heard someone else shuffle in the living room that it all came crashing down and she opened her eyes: she was in her own room, with no recollection of having ever got there in the first place.
"Morning," she greeted Aegyr as she walked into the living room. "Did you, last night…?"
"I carried you to your room when the movie finished," he said. "You were very tired."
He flicked on the TV, earning him a smile from Ophelia. "Thanks. You learn fast."
"As strange as this all is to me, there is some logic to it. I myself am surprised that even now I start to find certain things following a certain natural order to them," he was holding a glass of water in his hand as an example.
"You better ready yourself for today," Ophelia was almost giddy at the prospect, "I will take you to see London proper."
But first, she recruited him to help her with the chores that ought to be taken care of: cleaning the kitchen, and specifically, the fridge from all the things that had gone bad in those eight months. It wasn't much, as she didn't go out of her way to cook and keep a fridge stocked with fresh food, but she'd always been adverse to the sight and smells of spoiled food, and she wanted some sort of support while it all was taken care of.
"Ugh, I wish I had my aether now," she said, throwing the remains of a roast chicken into the garbage bin Aegyr was holding.
"I find that a lot of the things that I would've done with it are already taken care of," Aegyr commented. "Heating the water for a bath, or preparing a fire for cooking; carrying an animal's carcass for butchering, or salting it and putting it up for drying. All of that seems irrelevant here."
"In this city? Yes. Perhaps that's true of all the cities in the world; but there's many places where your way of living is still considered normal. We consider them less developed, although many wonder why for all our technology and comforts there is more sadness in the cities than anywhere else."
"Were you sad in this city?"
"Mate, I was positively miserable," Ophelia closed the rubbish bag. "Maybe you shall see some more today, but this place doesn't want me here and it makes a damn good job of letting me know it."
As there was nothing else for him to wear, Aegyr donned his Elysian clothes again; Ophelia decided to show him some support by also wearing her outfit as well. It had crawled under her skin and made its home there, and she would have to say she preferred them to the clothes she'd wear in London, but it was a strange contrast to the grey of the city. Elysium was more like the Mediterranean countries: had a bright sun, an intense blue sky, and when it rained, it poured dramatically. Such vivacity was foreign to London, where even the spring felt gentle, polite, as if it didn't want to cause much of a fuss.
They ventured out to Oxford Street; it was a thursday, so they would avoid the weekend crowds. It was also, thankfully, sunny out; and with all the gardens and the baskets of flowers outside of cafes and pubs in full bloom, it made it all delightfully colourful.
"You don't call tailors to make clothes, and very few people sew their own," Ophelia explained, ushering him into one of the megastores. "Here, you come to a store, and you will find different pieces of clothing made in standardized sizes."
"They can't possibly make something that fits every size," he followed her lead, stopping to look at the items on display with a critical eye.
"You're correct; they don't. It should fit well enough, but if it doesn't… well, there's very little you can do about it."
The men's section was as always an explosion of beige and mute dark colours. The fabrics and the shape of the coats, the shirts and even the pants were strange to Aegyr, but he quickly developed a taste for what he liked and what he didn't. He was partial to the navy blue and the dark green in his clothes, and disliked anything too bright or cheery. Ophelia waited patiently as he selected and tried on his clothes. He'd come out with a full outfit to ask her opinion, to check if it was in line with "Byzantine tastes"; Ophelia found it surreal to see the man she'd thought of as the arbiter of Elysian customs dressed as if he was going to shop at a Waitrose after a Sunday brunch.
After paying for the full wardrobe, she took him to Soho for lunch. They'd both changed their outfits into something less noticeable at the restroom in Harrod's, where she pointed out the many luxury items the nouveau riche would buy, before procuring one or two blends of tea she thought Hyperion would've loved. It was then that, as she struggled to lead him around the crowd, he grabbed her hand with an impish smile on his face. "I might get lost," he said innocently enough, and given that he was out of his Elysian clothes and looked more like another Londoner, it was easy for Ophelia to give him a pass.
"It doesn't matter where we go, there's always people around," he commented while they walked around Chinatown. "I have yet to see a port, a gate, or fields. It seems like this city goes on forever."
"It has expanded over the centuries," Ophelia explained. "A thousand years ago, this place was not part of London. We need to keep walking another thirty minutes, perhaps, to reach what was once fenced off behind gates. And this is now considered central London. Where I live, where we came from; that's also one of the boroughs of the city; it would've taken us two hours to walk from there. Perhaps a century and a half ago it was just a village."
"So it was the case with Aurelia; it reaches for the countryside, ever expanding… It makes one wonder when it will stop, if it will ever collapse on itself. A city ought not to be so big…"
Ophelia shook her head. She conveyed her pessimism:
"London has only gotten hungrier over the years; whether it's to bring more people in, or simply for expansion's sake, it has paved over green fields, turned trees into housing states, transformed sleepy villages into commuter towns with main streets full of shops desperate to convince you not to make the trip down town. And all these malformed growths, all these boroughs end up with no identity of their own outside of the tourist attractions they provide; they're just there to house folks so they can go to work on the Monday…"
She stopped, and pointed at a cafe. "But, I suppose there are some benefits," she admitted guiltily as ushered him inside. "For example, one can eat and drink at any time of the day they want. There's food to cater to every taste, entertainment for all pockets, always on, always something happening."
Coffee, apparently, was something Aegyr had only tasted once and knew by the name qahwah. "That so exotic a drink for me has become so commonplace, it's simply fascinating," he commented. "And, it does seem different from what I've had before; certainly divested of the powder from which it is made, it is altogether more pleasant."
He took a look around. "It does look like a public house of sorts, with a different beverage and a different type of food. I've noticed that there's many places like this. Do folks prefer eating outside than in their own homes?"
"Well, a cafe is where you'd go for a snack on a day out, like what we're doing now. A restaurant is where you go to have your supper or your midday meal; and it can be for a special occasion or simply because you want to have a meal out. It would be too expensive to have a meal outside every day, but it's not so that you can't do it every week or every other week," as she explained, in the table next to them a man produced a small gift of a rose encased in an acrylic box to his lover. Ophelia smiled at the romantic scene, and added: "we also might spend a day with a special someone, we call that a date. You'd take them for a meal, or to do something fun together. It's an essential part of courtship in Byzantium."
Aegyr followed her gaze, frowning ever so slightly. "Wouldn't it be… similar to what we've done today?"
Ophelia blushed and put her hands up. "Y-yes…" she stammered, "but I wasn't intending on courting you. You can also do that between friends."
"You can court your friends?" he cocked an eyebrow. "Pity… if this had been a date, I would've accepted any marriage requests sent afterwards. I cannot say that any other man or woman in Elysium could rival this courtship."
He saw from Ophelia's gaze, which was clearly avoiding his, that she was desperately looking for a way to shift the topic somewhere else. He felt inspired, and something inside of him had broken loose; Byzantium had worked its magic on him, releasing him from bonds he'd long ago thought would hold him until his death. "Won't you look my way, Ophelia?" he said, dropping the honorifics. Right then and there it was just the two of them: Byzantium had transformed them, and she had become just a woman and he just a man. "One might think you're leading a poor man on…"
"I…" Ophelia looked conflicted, and then sighed. "What do you want from me, Aegyr? I'm not some holy woman anymore; there's no fate here, and we are just two nameless faces in the crowd."
"It has never been about that," the man admitted. "But equally, it is Byzantium who has made you who you are. It's all this," he gestured around them, "which you hate, but that has transformed you into someone I've found deeply fascinating. It is difficult now to think of how it will all play out, but the more I walk these streets the more I'm convinced that it doesn't matter. You're absolutely right: we are not prisoners of Elysium's fate anymore, so I will dare to dream."
He looked to the side, his gaze searching something in the streets. "I want you," he said so softly she almost missed it. "Even if it's for a few nights, even if you tire of me; as long as I have you for a single day I'll be the most blissful man."
Ophelia stared, dumbfounded, at the man's passionate confession. She looked away, trying to search her feelings to form the words to respond. Of one thing she was certain… "I can't say I… like you that unconditionally. You are handsome, of that there're no doubts; it is difficult for me to deny that I see you as a man. But I can't quite figure out how to feel about you: sometimes I think you're the most detestable person ever, sometimes I think you're entertaining and easy to get along with."
He reached for her cheek. "If I ask you to use me, would you accept that?"
It could've been seen as pathetic, desperate even, for any other man; but with Aegyr it just felt like it fit perfectly with his strange ways. He was a puzzle that would take forever to piece together. And it was a difficult one to solve: to the uninitiated every thread that was unravelled would appear to knot things together even more tightly. Ophelia had simply grown in her wisdom to not try to predict him.
"Do you think I could be that cruel?"
"You don't know cruelty, my lady," he looked at her pointedly; the tale of his wives was still fresh in her mind. He knew her better than she did him; that much was clear. If he said so, if he chose not to see her shortcomings as cruelty, perhaps it was a call to sublimate the touch of all those women he'd forced himself to embrace. By giving her his consent, he was absolving her of her villainy, and him of his victimhood.
"As long as it's within Byzantium," she said finally, unsure of her own words. "I will see you with new eyes. But should we go back… I might not be able to live with you in the same way."
He agreed, but there was a certain challenge in his eyes. As strangely self-sacrificing as his words had been, he wasn't so altruistic that he wouldn't try to keep her within his reach with some artifice or another. Ophelia decided that his tricks would happen regardless of whether she took his hand or not; she might as well choose how and when she'd entangle and disentangle herself. Perhaps it would make it easier to see what was coming.
The outing became a date after that; hands were held in spite of them walking through empty streets. He would stick to her side, leaning over her when she wasn't looking, and despite the new clothes and the shower he'd had the previous night, the scent of fresh pine invaded her senses. The tension built up over the evening, but it was pleasurable, a tingle in her belly; perhaps that they'd come out clean during their cafe break had made it all the easier to give wide berth to certain desires. It was clear to Ophelia that he'd woken up a slightly different man, one capable of laughing carefree at some dumb joke she made; and this only egged her on, and she liked him more, she felt equally careless.
Eventually they stumbled back to her flat after downing a few pints at her local, and it only felt natural that he followed her to her room. She didn't flinch when he brought their mouths together; she took off the clothes that hid the body she'd not wanted to see the day before, lest she end up as she was then with a handful of Aegyr and a lot of regrets in the morning. But she knew that the taste of London in her skin and in her mouth needed washing, and in absence of a better candidate he would have to do. There, cruelly taken to remind herself where she'd been, where she'd found her heart, she used him that night as her link to that other world. She had him struggling on her sheets, wishing that his scent would remain forever in them so that she'd never smell that scent of loneliness again.
Whatever it was that she gave out, he took eagerly; his hands followed where she led. There was no hesitation in his pulse, no naivete in his eyes. He was treading known territory, confident that he could show her what she was unfamiliar with. And it was it all culminated, when she let out an airy gasp after his, that she knew that every step she'd taken he'd been silently guiding her.
Nothing was said after. They held each other in silence, chests and arms sticking together, hands clammy, throats parched. And then, almost as if they'd been together for years, another couple in London, he got up to get a glass of water and she went to take a quick shower. It was only natural that when she got back into bed, he opened his arms, letting her wet hair tickle his chest. Ophelia fell asleep thinking a whole conversation had been had, but in the wake of their arrival into what was no man's land for the both of them, they had both connected in a strange way.
The morning after saw the beginning of a descent into uncanny valley. Aegyr had decided to pick up English by greeting her with a timid morning; after a brief trip to the local Tesco, he had memorized most of the words for what they'd bought, as well as thank you for shopping at Tesco (diction included). He found it infinitely amusing that the machine would talk back at him, as he put it, "Byzantium has found a way to make automatas capable of singing platitudes".
By mid morning, while they were having their breakfast he'd correctly guessed what news meant, and learnt the words for the weather in a perfect BBC accent. It only worsened as the day went on, and a walk to Highgate Cemetery had him improvising a conversation with a woman whose dog had decided to adopt him as a new owner. It was at dinner that she finally cracked, and asked, "how is it that you're picking up English so quickly?"
"I am accepting of Byzantium; perhaps, she's offering me a gift," he said with a carefree smile. Gone was the archduke; in a grey hoodie, slicing bell peppers on her kitchen counter, he looked boyish; he could've been a coworker, an old mate from university. "Is this enough?"
Ophelia nodded. He'd also learnt how to work the oven. "London is quite coquettish when she wants to," she said, thinking back to the twenty pound note Aegyr had found on the street earlier. "I wonder what she has in store for you."
"For us," he said nonchalantly, correcting her as if she'd just said the sky was red.
Ophelia would've wanted to insist that there was no indication that her status as persona non grata had been revoked, but she knew that it was a concept that was difficult to understand. Just as Aegyr was showing a proficiency for languages that she could've only attributed to a wish granted by his aether, there was also little explanation for the rational mind about her and the curse that hung over her head.
They finished the curry after she'd repeated the instructions in Elysian and English, and settled for another movie night. Not one to spend much time looking for the perfect choice, she decided to go for Starship Troopers for the night, thinking perhaps that a dumb sci-fi action would definitely elicit some interesting responses from the man from the other world. And it did; but they were of an altogether different nature from what she was expecting.
"This is… weird, huh," she said to herself. So far she'd been translating some of the dialogue, and as she did, Aegyr had begun to pick up more and more; enough that she was needed less and less. This had forced her to pay closer attention to the plot, and she began to notice that the film was not as dumb and thoughtless as she'd thought at first. There were references, and she soon had to explain what fascism meant.
"It's a satire," she said, pensively. "They are unquestioningly loyal to their government, happily partaking in the machine of war… Not aware that they're merely flesh for their cannons."
"They're fulfilling their duty to their nation, to their fatherland," Aegyr countered. "They're defending what's theirs, and then preventing further damage by taking over the land of their attackers. What's to satirize about?"
"Duty? They're being thrown into the carnage for no other reason than profit. They might think they're doing it out of duty for the Earth; their leaders, certainly, have other motives."
"The leaders must ensure the prosperity of the generations to come. That demands a sacrifice. They also have children, grandchildren they want to see thrive."
"That's why they have to send the lesser folk to die?"
"Everyone has their role."
"You think you're the protagonist, don't you?" Ophelia turned around to look at the man in the eye, frustrated. "You feel comfort in knowing that, like Rico, you will get to the end of the movie. But have you ever thought you might not? Now that you're here in Byzantium, there is no Scipio family name to hide behind, no privileged spot at the top of the Pleroma, no strong aether to wrap yourself in. We are background characters here, and our fate is not set in stone. We might be the bugs being killed, or the soldiers in the background being blasted away."
That earned her a pause from him. She continued, "and even if you were like Rico back in Elysium, you were nothing but a puppet in the hands of the emperor, and the customs you so lovingly upheld. Are they so dear to you now? I wonder."
He said nothing. They watched the rest of the movie in silence; when she got up to go to bed, he grabbed her arm to stop her. "Can I sleep with you?" he said softly.
Ophelia stared at him, more shocked by his command of the language he'd just started interacting with the previous day than anything else. "You can, but only sleep," she tried, and he nodded. When she asked him to repeat what she'd said in Elysian, he offered a perfect translation. Her words were still floating in the air, but she was too tired to pry into his thoughts; perhaps, she would find out in the morning what had made him pause at the vehemence of her argument.
As they nestled into bed, she snuggled into him. She wasn't quite in the mood for intimacy, but she sought the smell of pine in his embrace; it made her feel like she was back in Arqa. In her dreams the fresh breeze and the smell of the sea enraptured her, and she walked once again the open courtyards of Hyperion's villa, searching for chai and good company.
She woke up the next day alone. The sound of something sizzling in the pan could be heard from the kitchen.
"Good morning," Aegyr greeted her in that BBC accent he'd picked up. "Sausages?"
"Will you offer me a full english breakfast next?" she asked with a smile as she put the kettle and some toast on. "Is it a fascination with all these trinkets that keeps you glued to the kitchen?"
"I had only cooked for myself before, and only in occasions when I was on a journey and had brought no attendants. I always thought of it as something cumbersome," he began serving some of the sausages they'd bought the day before. "But it feels different when you're cooking for someone else."
Ophelia opened her mouth, and then promptly closed it. She was violently reminded that she'd never actually known what that was like, either; when her father had been alive, he'd always cooked for her. She'd never had friends over, much less a boyfriend; and to know then that they had something like that in common made her feel strange. "I've never cooked for anyone else, either," she felt like she owed him some honesty.
"We've cooked together, haven't we?" Aegyr smiled. Ophelia prepared a pot of tea and sighed, admitting defeat: "I suppose you could do dinner today, and I'll do it tomorrow."
The BBC rambled on about the weather, what the Prime Minister had said, what Russia had done near its borders lately; Ophelia tuned it out, watching the steam rise from her cup of tea as she ate her toast. Aegyr seemed to be hanging to every word said, until he too began to tune it out. There was only so much anyone could digest about men in suits and all their silly conflicts. But he had caught on that certain tensions were brewing between these nations; that no peace was guaranteed, even in Byzantium. As the brows of the presenters became more and more furrowed, as the political commentators came on, it felt like the seeds of something momentous were being sown. A simple look outside the window, however, revealed the same overcast day with the mothers taking their kids to school and the postmen doing their rounds and the kegs being rolled in the streets to their nearest pub.
And the two of them, sharing a simple breakfast in another nondescript flat in the immensity of London; unknown to the world, their travels absolutely obscured to all those men in suits who seemed to know what was going on.
"Incredible," he said under his breath in that newfound language, earning a confused look from Ophelia. She had been at the centre of their world, yet here was only another face in the crowd; and even in spite of having been so crudely divested of her crown she still shone brighter than everyone else. It wasn't her aether that had earned her a place in their world as much as it had been her willingness to find her own way in it. Aegyr wondered if he could be like that too: now that he had no title, no name, no heritage to force him into place, perhaps he would find his own way, too.
He was overcome by that feeling of childish awe that he'd once felt when his wet nurse had talked to him about Byzantium. Its citizens revelled in the glory of their free will: each of them anonymous, yet the main characters of the movies they carried on their shoulders. That was the true mystery of his promised land: Byzantium was where he could truly be free.