In Retrospect

Title: In Retrospect
Author: St. Jean
Summary: The feelings are as fresh as the first day I saw him. *Complete*
Disclaimer: These are my characters.

This story is complete. I would like to thank everyone who has read my stories and supported me thus far. I’ve had the urge to write something historical and something in the first person. Luckily, this idea came along. I hope you all enjoy. Criticism is welcome!

It was the simple things like watching a group of children play that made me enjoy being alive. They were off in their little group; oblivious to the world around them, all things of importance narrowed down to the occupants of a five by five square and a bright red ball. So beautiful. So pure was this scene. I’ve always enjoyed autumn best. It’s a time when the leaves shift and change, their colors oscillating like the acts of a stage play. The air is just right and the sky is at its most natural state.

I checked my watch. Just a few more hours. Just a small expanse of time before my joy will no longer be derived by the watching others grow and thrive. It’s easy to watch the children, and times like this make me the saddest. They have no idea of the world at large. Of the world beyond their grasp that holds pain and suffering and anguish. They have no idea of the torment that can pass between human beings at a moment’s notice.

They have no idea, nor should they. I have learned so much in my lifetime. Patience is a virtue best learned and revered.

Just a few more minutes and the last five hundred years will be worth it. Like the vivacious life of a young flower sprouting from a seed, this will be the germination…and the maturation of our love.
***

I’d been a part of the King and Queen’s Navy since the great reclaiming. A lowly sailor I was not. Lieutenant of one of my Kingdom’s greatest ships, La Joya, the position was fitting for a man of my station. Be that as it may, a man of my status was limited to a short range of trades. Yet, the Ascension stripped me of any decision I had yet to make. I was to be a member of Navy, the Armada of the newly united Spain.

For ten long years, I’d explored. I’d found parts of the so-called New World. The title seemed silly to me as I had not seen all there was to see of the Old World. I yearned to sail away from the disease and dubious battles. Sights I encountered were forever locked in my memory, making me wish for a priest and divine mercy more and more as each day passed away from my mother home.

In this modern time, people speak of hindsight as a perfectly lucid concept. Was I blind then? Not hardly, I was struck and was rendered incapable of seeing what was to come as what it was.

Destiny. Again, something people of today’s world speak of as a dirty word, something controlling and limiting in the will of the individual. Destiny is not a bad thing; it’s a guide—one that you can choose to follow or simply be led by. I chose the former.

Boyhood was slow in releasing me completely. Man of twenty eight winters and as foolish a goat in barrel of wine. In a few weeks time, I would be a year older. This anniversary of my birth was no less auspicious as it would be the first time in a decade that I would see my home. Walk over the lands of father and his fathers before him. During the long exploration of the Americas, my father had since passed to join my fair and forever beautiful mother.
***

It was quiet at our family home, peaceful and pleasant; just myself and the servants who were always cheerful and content. Their almost invisible tasking left me with much time to gaze at my horses and take my dogs hunting in the woods. Our lands were so beautiful, stretching far and wide, with trees nestling us from the base of the mountains.

The dogs were free, running far and fast, more playful than I remembered them to be. We spent the days upon my return hunting wild game. It was comfortable, yet lonely as I had no one to share the day with. The game that I didn’t portion for myself would go to my servants and by extension to their families. Compassion and magnanimous giving were things I learned abroad in my travels, better to have your people think kindly upon you than fear you. Fear always led to betrayal or so I thought.

The sun was setting, casting long shadows upon the ground, like a weaving of the spirits light passed through the branches of the near barren tree limbs above. So absorbed in the simplistic wonders of nature, I almost missed the silence. The dogs were gone.

I could hear the sound of their excited barks. Just over the next bend I presumed. The trio of beasts circled the grandest white horse my eyes have ever landed upon. White was an uncommon color, yet the purity of the horse’s coat was reminiscent of the first winter’s snow. The horse brayed and stomped trying to get the dogs away from its feet. My attention shifted to the riderless saddle. A short distance away in a grassy pasture, a dark shadow lay motionless.

I walked into that field not expecting anything more than a fallen traveler. What I got has led me here today? He would have appeared asleep except for the streak of blood running down his forehead. The constant up and down of his covered chest alerted me to his attachment to life. I hoisted the traveler and placed him over the saddle and led him back to my estate.
***

I remember how shocked my servants were as I deigned to care for my guest. It wasn’t that I merely wanted to, but I was compelled by something far greater to do so. I had help from my oldest servant, Juan, in stripping our guest of his many layers of outer garb.

The designs were foreign to me, but similar to those you found in the Eastern portions of the continent. My eyes were relentless in their watching of him. His skin, like the horse, was a fine, clear milky complexion. His hair was straight and black like the endless midnight skies over the seas that I had traveled for much of my life. I longed for the day when he would awaken, thereby gracing me with the sight of his eyes and the sound of his voice. I longed to hear his story, to hear of his travels and to share the stories of my own.

It was the longing of companionship that drew me nearer to him. A longing which forced me to visit the chapels and make prayers for his return to this plane of consciousness. I had no way of knowing whether he would share the same perverse tendency as I. Yet, faith precluded my mind from silencing my heart. I waited.
***

He woke up in stages, each more beautiful than the last. First his limbs twisted and stretched, showing me just how fluid his flowing muscles could be. Gradually every part of him awoke with the grace of a flower blooming in spring. The moment his eyes opened, it was as if the great hand of God himself had seized my breath.

I could not breathe.

I could not speak.

I could only stare at the wondrous sparkle of crystal blue eyes. Like the seas of the New World, those eyes sucked me in to a limitless clear expanse of pure blue oblivion.

When his eyes landed on me, they were not the scared eyes of a lost youth, but those of a man. A man ready for any and everything. I was more intrigued by the second.

His first words sounded like garbled nonsense, but his voice was nonetheless strong and steady. We seemed to play this game for quite a few rounds until I finally gestured at myself, saying “Isandro.”

Those sharp jewel-like eyes knew instantly and rewarded me. “Anastas.” Slightly shorter than our word for resurrection. Indeed, my heart was in the early stages of such an event and Anastas was the cause.

From his features and state of dress, I would gave guessed he were of a noble class, but nature often has a way of fooling even the most assured man. He carried himself with the grace of a prince, whether it be rising from his sickbed or trying to communicate with me through gesture and sign.

Our meeting was fated as the stars and the moon being hung in the sky nightly. Our acquaintance shifted from a guest and lodger relationship to that of friends. How we progressed to something more was my fault as I could not keep my eyes from straying to the soft pinkness of his lips. He finally caught me, like the hunter that he was, he held my eye. That day I could have tasted his sword, for it was far more dangerous to even imply of such an odd nature. He didn’t disappoint me and instead allowed me to taste of his sweet and supple lips. A taste I shall never forget.
***

People, in this age of science and global lust, are eager to speak of sex and make implications of its doing. They call it a ‘rush’ and ‘hot’. From my experience, sex has always been the same, yet the perception is wholly different. It’s never sharp and tangible, but lurid—always escaping one’s grasp as sensation darts from one point to another. It’s electricity, even before there was such a thing invented. It’s the culmination of poetry into fluid motion, no matter the form or the function of the utensils used to create it. This is the nature of sex.

I remember the feel of his thighs yielding to my body. Our bodies flowed together like a study of light and dark. His body was pale and milk, yet full of radiant life. His skin smooth from constant self-maintenance, care so meticulous that no dark hair covered his skin anywhere excluding his head, face and the valley nestling his eager sex. I was the darkness, as I have always been, darker skinned and heavy. A natural predisposition I possessed, but my time under the scorching American sun, my skin and hair had darkened to gilded brown and coffee blackness. We were perfect. We were right. Our dark heads bent towards each other, then our lips joined us and breath was shared.

I took him like a starving man takes to a spread of food before him. He was sustenance and I was his water. The constant well that quell his thirst. My manhood cooled the fires inside and quenched the thirst lying deep in his throat. His body he gave to me freely and with sheer open willingness. In those rare moments were I yielded to him, our coupling was so perfect that I found myself moved to tears.
***

We ran together across my lands to corners vacant and open. Sometimes, we crashed together. Our voices mingled into a heap of joyous laughter. It was so easy to touch him out here in the wilds of nature, where in any corner any number of eyes could have seen us. Yet close presence, shut dissolved the surrounding world, leaving just us and our passion. I longed to touch him, feeling the glorious warmth of his blood flushed face beneath my work hardened fingers.

We longed to run. To journey to places far and wide, to move beyond the control any man or reigning court. We would be free to be together without reprisal.

I knew a day would come where my service would be called upon again. How could I leave my Anastas? How could I cross the world when the other half of my soul was here in my home? Never one for the ways of religion, I left the ponderings of the fate’s intervention on our behalf to Anastas.

To hear him say my name—calling out for his ‘Isandro’, whether it be the throes of our passion, or just the moments of quiet togetherness, shook something inside me that left me terrified by its awesome power.

Juan was given the task of teaching my ‘amante’ our native tongue. I had done my best to learn his tongue that ruled a vast land beyond many ranges of mountains. Anastas longed to stay with me. Therefore I gave him free reign of my house. He was its master until I returned.

I recall, even now, the night before my departure. He looked so sad. So unearthly beautiful in the pale moonlight. The laces of his shirt slid through my fingers. He undid the fastenings of his britches and stood before me, bare and beautiful. His sex was engorged and erect, pointing at me like a sword ready to pierce my innermost sanctum. Anastas crossed the bed, crawling slowly to display the smooth globes of his firm backside.

The memories are hazy as I too stripped and fell into bed. We made love first with him on his knees, with me cradled between his splayed knees. I thrust into him, filling him with my hardness. Our bodies slid together at our sweat passed between us. I gave him my essence many times that night, more than enough to keep him warm during the time of my voyage. He too left me with a reminder; its flavor still rests on my tongue to this very day.

In the dawn’s light, I reached for him. But he was gone. Panic crept into veins, before panic could set in; I found him standing before a table off in a shaded corner. He was mixing herbs by a candle light. I moved to join him. That’s when I noticed the dagger.

Anastas noticed me standing beside him, but continued his work. Once he finished his work, a determined hand caressed my cheek. I kissed his surprisingly smooth fingers and allowed him to proceed. He sliced my palm then his own. Our blood mixing and swirling together into the dark contents of his mixing bowl. Words poured from his lips, some of which I had no understanding of, yet my heart and soul knew the power of this incantation.

“Ê íàøåìó áóäóùåìó.” His last words pushed a heavy stone into my gut.

“Por nuestra futura.” He managed to say. Anastas offered the bowl to me first. My mouth was filled with the sweetest nectar ever imagined. He smiled and I longed to kiss him once more. He held the bowl once more. His pink lips pressed to the edge.

Suddenly the door to my quarters burst open. The bowl clattered to the floor between us, the contents spreading all over like an untreated wound. Anastas was gripped about the waist by one guard as I was restrained by two more. I was full of rage, surging through my veins was the spirit of an enraged beast. They carried him away from me. All the while, he screamed for me and I screamed for him. A hilt of a sword dug into the back of my skull, silencing my anguish.

Too long was I in darkness. My love was at the mercy of an unyielding court. Convicted of crimes against nature and God, he was sentenced to the stake. I watched my Anastas burn. My heart pierced in a million places.

His last word “resurrection”.
***

I prayed for death. When it didn’t come after the first fifty years after I lost my love, I knew what Anastas had done. And for his prolonged sight, I will be forever grateful. The sound of his voice echoes within me, even now, and the sudden feeling of aching longing still feels as fresh as the day he died.

Then, it changed. As if the fire we created has been rekindled, I must nurse it. Therefore, I wait.

I knew he would come once more. My heart felt it before I was to see it. When my hands land upon my love, when our lips once again meet, when we are once again claimed by one another – we shall be whole.

I could feel it. Just a little while longer.

The end

Translation:
Amante: Lover
Por nuestra futura & Ê íàøåìó áóäóùåìó: For our future
La Joya: The Jewel

***I just realized the Russian text didn't come out. Sorry guys!***
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