ramble/drabble on with kol and elijah looking like each other /waggles brows.
AS OFTEN IS the case, his mother was the first to comment on her sons’ striking resemblance to each other. A four-year-old Kol crouched in Esther’s garden, digging for the roots she had asked from him. Dark eyes flicked from plant to plant as small, deliberate hands –already streaked with dirt – dug through the dark earth to find the ingredients for their dinner.
Esther stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the children of hers who she could see. Her hand rested on her stomach which was only-just beginning to show signs of the child inside. Her seventh child: seventh miracle. Seventh gift from Dahlia. Watching her youngest boy in the garden brought her suddenly back to when she had been watching her earth-shaker, her Elijah, in the same garden, her stomach swollen with her precious, dangerous secret. “How much he looks like you, Elijah,” she said as the elder brother approached. “Same hair, same eyes, same chin. You will watch your younger brother, won’t you?”
Elijah, in all of his nine-and-a-half years, looked at his little brother for a moment. His neck was slick with sweat: he had just come from a clandestine trip with another brother – a brighter, more golden brother – and he nodded for his mother. “Of course,” he replied.
It was a fact mentioned in passing throughout Kol’s childhood. Whether it was an overheard curse in Mikael’s voice, claiming his and Elijah’s resemblance as proof of some other grievous sin, or a comment from one of the village’s older women as they grasped his chin and proclaimed him to be as handsome as his older brother, it was what he grew up knowing. He was following his mirror: nothing separated him from Elijah save for the magic which so eagerly answered his calls whenever he asked for it. Looking into the glass, however, he only saw every place where Elijah succeeded and he failed.
On the night they were killed by Mikael, Kol had planned to run. The only idea he had of destination was where his face was only his own, and not a years-ago echo of an accomplished and shining older brother. He had his plans already in train: after the other succumbed to sleep, he would steal away with the bag he had already packed. Esther, in her grief of the loss of her youngest, would not notice. Mikael, in his disgust at the sight of his children’s faces, would not notice. And his siblings, in their guilt or sorrow, would not notice. He felt a dull, numb ache whenever he thought of Henrik. He, too, had resembled Elijah with his dark hair, but he had Esther’s bones where Kol and Elijah had Mikael’s. There were no more echoes after he and Elijah.
Instead of running, he died. An identical look of betrayal on his face as sat on his older brother’s. His constant mirror: the one who came first. As the light faded from his dark eyes, Kol glanced at Elijah, already on the floor. How strange it was, he thought, that he should already have an idea of what he would look like in death, seeing it painted on his brother’s face. And how strange it was, he thought, that seeing Elijah dead had already deadened something in him.
