#tius

Let’s pretend I’ve never posted them before.

In the waxing light she surveyed the village below and felt a familiar ache in her heart. It seemed another life entirely in which she was a part of that village, unfettered and free to her whims. She had no doubt it was where she belonged, yet there she stood, locked in her tower like some mythical princess.

Hardly a princess, she thought as she panned her gaze to the final wisps of smoke rising up from the fire dying in the brazier. Yet her life seemed to fit that pattern, and she was waiting for her knight in shining armor to break down the door and rescue her from the clutches of an insurmountable evil.

She had been waiting now for some time. The progress was slower than she had hoped, but she trusted that the wheels were still turning, that Tius was still down there working to build the future they both wanted and watching over their star-distant daughter. For now, Safiyeh’s role in that had ended.

On a bad day she might lament the years wasted and wasting. The three of them were only growing older with each slow day. Still, she held to her faith like the sun holds the light: steady, dependable, and there even when hidden. She had spent enough time sighing over ships in the harbor. Her time was coming, and each hour brought it closer. That was her consolation.

Sometimes, when Wesley permitted, she went down to the village, and though under the eyes of his thugs she was never alone, she always had at least a passing smile for Tius as she and Esi carried groceries for her mother and father. Alone in the lighthouse she found her thoughts and her gaze bending unbridled toward his little home and watching the lights in her parents’ windows flare and fade. Some day soon she would truly rejoin their fold. Some day soon this isolation would end. Some day soon her faith would be rewarded. Some day soon. Some day soon.

She looked to the sky again to see the sun glowing through a rent in the morning’s grey clouds. Imagining Tius squinting at the same sun so close to her, she smiled. She closed her hand and imagined his calloused fingers within. She bent her head and imagined his shoulder beneath. Her heart swelled.

The creak of rusted hinges cut her daydream short. Safiyeh turned to see Wesley clambering through the hatch and onto the deck. Balling her hands inside her pockets, she leaned against the parapet in stony silence and watched him dust himself off.

He offered an annoyed “Good morning, Safiyeh.”

“What is it?”

“Ah,” he started with a lopsided smile, laughing under his breath. “You don’t love me at all.”

Safiyeh said nothing.

“You’re still in love with Tius.”

“The only thing worse than your temper is your imagination, Wesley.” She rolled her eyes to the nearby rooftops and bit her cheek.

Producing a folded page from his pocket he countered, “I don’t need imagination when it’s so conveniently put in writing for me.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded, suddenly striking forth to snatch the page from his hands. He attempted to pull it back, but she was too fast. She opened it to find a letter penned in her father’s hand, addressed to a friend in another village. In it he explained everything—everything Safiyeh had told her parents about her plans with Tius. Reeling with fear, she was silent.

Wesley stepped closer; she stepped back. “What do you think I should do about this?” he asked, a threat on his breath. “Should I have Tius killed? Actually killed, this time?”

She fixed on him a gaze of terror and rage.

He hummed as if in thought. “But when I think about it, I don’t know why I would go to all that trouble.”

“What do you m—”

“It seems to me that you’ve outlived your usefulness.”

Her lip curled. “So what are you going to do about it? Not even you are stupid enough to kill me,” she bristled. “Everyone would know exactly who to look to if I wound up dead.”

With his hands folded neatly behind his back, Wesley donned a placid smile. “As always, Safi, I’m one step ahead of you.”

Though he was much older than her he was still a large man and hale; by comparison, Safiyeh was thin and wiry. He lifted her with ease even as she pitched, clawed, and screamed. Then, as if she were no more than a sack of spoiled potatoes, he flung her from the lighthouse. The loud crack of her body colliding with the jagged rock below cut short her animal scream.

Days later, the village buzzes with gossip and conjecture about why the lighthouse keeper leapt from her post. Most tales involve the return of Tius Vidar: Perhaps he spurned her; perhaps she could not bear the guilt of the affair she had with him; perhaps it was because she knew she could never have him; perhaps it was the stress of being in love with two men.

In the hills beyond the sea’s reach her elderly parents stand before the grave of their only child, the soil still dark and fragrant. Despite the repetitions of all their neighbors they alone know that Safiyeh did not do this to herself, but their assertions are treated with the credence of a madman’s conspiracy theories and the ravings of those too emotional to be rational. An immovable shadow hangs over their home.

Esi Balewa, ever silent, takes to the sea.

Ignatius and Bashi! The second ever Forbidden Line and.... whatever Bashi is. A living stick that gained the ability to become a Line I guess. I fucking hate coloring, uncolored under the cut. (If I do this right...)

Lines series and content are from @sandstormedd (@thelinescomic)

Bashi and Tius belong to @dragonwolf3416 <-(coolest name ever :] )