Tiberinus

[Patricus I]

The squeeze of her hand on his went unreturned but for the tightness suddenly gripping his chest. He was a mirror, flat and reflective, and the way she sought to see through the crags of his outward shell would not fracture that delicate barrier. He did not desire for someone to attempt to arrange the many facets of his identity. Long ago he scattered them to the wind. From dust he came and to dust he would return. Until then, what was shattered was indecipherable. He was no one, as he told her before, and it was a fool’s cause to seek otherwise.

She turned his own wisdom against him, though, in a way that he would rather avoid considering. What he wanted was unspeakable as it was unfulfillable. There was not enough love in existence to fill what ached within, and as much as God or Man tried, they would find only rejection. He was passive when the world shifted, allowing his eyes to close to what swirled like sand on the wind. He considered departure. The waking world was preferable to the reflection forced upon himself. There, he could unfurl the veil across his face and hide in scarlet shadows. This place for all its ethereal spirit was raw and real.

An alpine woodland rose up around them, and he turned in a circle to consider the purple beauty. The brook bubbled carefree and wild, and he found himself standing above the water, looking into his own face rippling below. He was drawn and pensive, more so than normal. Age hovered like winged shadows accentuating lines around his mouth that were always there. Grey streaked his hair, which he unconsciously smoothed into place as he considered his age. Thalia was likely all but twenty; Nimeda twenty or twenty thousand, he was still her ancient. He once joked about Father Ando’s osteoporotic hump as a Papal credential, but for all Philip’s handsome features, he was the primeval Pope.

He squat to his heels in order to pluck a stone from the water bed. Did Nimeda still have the one he gifted on their first meeting? The stone was wet and slimy in his hand, but he dropped it aimlessly when her question was posed. Philip answered automatically.
“A dream is the language of illumination,” he said.

He swiped his hands together as he rose to his feet as if the dirt that marred his fingertips was rejected by the light within. He walked a few steps, jaw tilted upward and gaze attuned to the sky and whatever it was his eyes beheld hovering there. He spoke like he stood over thousands of people baited to devour his every word, and the Latin that punctured the air was crisp and commanding, majestic as the mountains that turned to listen. Perhaps more so. 

”Semel loquitur Deus et secundo id ipsum non repetit,” the words bit straight to the soul but for all the riddle wrapped up in the meaning. Nimeda, unfamiliar with Rome, was unlikely to translate even more ancient words. 

He continued, “It is a language spoken but unheard by most,". He glanced at Nimeda, the touch of a smile followed but if he expected reaction, it was indecipherable. "But not by me." He drew in a deep breath, eyes falling low as if he was repeating the whisper of the mountains themselves, verse written into the foundations of the world. "‘Then he openeth the ears of men, and teaching instructeth them in what they are to learn.'"

"Who illumines you, Nimeda?"





**(Latin) For God speaketh once, yea twice, though man does not perceive it – quoted from the old testament.