Waves crashed against the rocks with drive and vengeance, and hundreds of feet above the sea on a grassy cliff’s edge, Almeda Slytherin felt the spray hit her cheeks. It was unpleasantly wet and salty, and no matter how often she wiped her face she still felt the damp remnants on her skin, clinging to her like the pox. Still, she kept her vigil overlooking the dark waters, rooted in the grass with her inky hair flying around her in thick, long strands; they flew in front and behind her, and up high and to the side, wrapping around her face like ropes. If she parted her mouth they would surely worm past her lips and into her lungs, filling her whole.
“You’ll catch a sickness if you don’t put up a warming charm,” a voice called, carrying through the wind in patches.
“That is not in a Slytherin’s way,” Almeda replied, barely raising her voice against nature’s tirade around her. She knew her companion could hear her just fine, now only a few steps behind her.
A sigh, practically a breath in her ear, and then: “You do love to torture yourself.”
“It’s not torture as much as…” She fished for the right words. “Strength. Stability.”
“Masochism.”
Almeda couldn’t help it if she grinned. Her hair stuck to her lips and got caught in her teeth. “Enlightenment.”
Rowena walked forward tentatively, staring over the cliff with apprehension and stubborn curiosity. The blues of the water reflected in her dark eyes; they looked stormy, ablaze with wonder and fear. She leaned forward, inch by inch, until Almeda was certain that with one more move she’d plunge into the bottomless abyss.
“I can see how you find peace here,” she said softly, almost a contemplative murmur to herself. “There’s something hypnotic about the sea. Always changing, always beautiful.”
“I am not so vain that I care about its mere image,” Almeda scoffed. “The water is a dangerous element. Nothing else can consume you so thoroughly, until all you know is the motion of the waves.” She stepped toward Rowena, her fingers brushing the skirt of her dress and bringing forth an unintentional shiver. She dipped her mouth, whispering with lips brushing the shell of her ear. “It would be peaceful at first, to submerge yourself: until you realise your lungs have been set on fire.”
Rowena stumbled back, a shocking sight from a woman so typically graceful. She was known to hold herself with perfect posture and effortless motions, the column of her neck a pale marble statue supporting all the world’s brilliance. Even then, her fingers brushing the long grass as she bent backwards and righted herself, she looked more like a dancing maiden rather than a stumbling mare.
“Come inside,” she pleaded. She extended her hand. “It’s warm in there. We could have some drink, and talk.” She cast a wary glance to the waves, now picking up in their intensity. “I’m not sure I like the sea so much right now.”
“A spot of sickness, perhaps?” Almeda jested. She picked up the bottom of her sari and waded toward Rowena. She slipped her hand into hers—brown against cream—and, just before they whisked away with an Apparition, stroked her thumb along the back of her hand, inhaling sharply as her finger trailed along her smooth, cool skin.
“Godric wants to implement wards so the students can’t apparate through the castle,” Rowena began when they landed. Aside from a bit of internal imbalance, Almeda wouldn’t have thought they moved at all. “I don’t see a point, and Helga seems to agree.”
Rowena moved through the space, now recognizable as the tower that hosted her personal chambers, setting about brewing. Her magic swept through the room effortlessly, setting everything alive as though it were spring wind. Almeda could feel it at the tips of her fingers, something numbing but soothing all the same.
“And my husband?” she dared to ask, settling herself into the chair across the hearth. Rowena stilled for a moment, though all the mechanisms around her continued their work. “What does he have to say?”
Slipping back into reality, she cleared her throat. She levitated the brew into waiting cups, and immediately a herbal scent overtook Almeda’s senses. “He hasn’t explicitly stated, but I believe he sees merit in Godric’s ideal.”
Almeda hummed, barely restraining a snort. “Of course he would.”
Rowena appeared immediately apologetic. “I’m not sure why they bother. It’ll end in an argument either way.”
Almeda looked to the window––(the sky was still blue with daylight, but decidedly greyer in the absence of the full power of the sun. It promised a storm, and she longed to taste rainfall on her tongue)––intent to keep her gaze anywhere but her face. She couldn’t bear to be confronted with unhidden sympathy and dark-eyed pity. The back of her neck prickled with the knowledge of being watched; she held her breath as her cup was set on the table beside her. Then, quiet as melting ice, Rowena slipped onto her chaise, an arm’s length away.
Almeda dared to look at her companion, and upon a glance of her tumbling dark hair and sharp gaze, heavily intent on her cup, a breath was stolen from her chest in a crushing, dizzying stroke. Though her lips were parted and vulnerable, her mind caught up to her and delivered, on a silver platter, the poison dagger of her thoughts.
“Tell me, Lady Rowena,” she began with no preamble. “Does your husband love you?”
Rowena sucked in a deep breath. (Almeda wanted to rest her finger in the hollow of her throat.) “He… passed, some years ago.”
Almeda blinked. “ Did your husband love you?”
Rowena looked down, her hair a curtain that hid her face in slivers. “I’d like to think so, yes. He gave me my Helena, and doted on her.” She tilted her chin up, lips pressed together. “He did not leave us by choice.”
“No,” she demurred, the word sitting pretty on her lips; a shock of sugar. “He was a good man, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” she agreed, her voice cracking over the syllable.
Silence rested upon them, and Almeda took the opportunity to slip around in her seat. She faced Rowena head-on, now, eye-to-eye and knee-to-knee. “You’re very lucky to have experienced such a match,” she said quietly, almost in condolence. “To have been loved by a worthy partner.” Rowena said nothing, but she dipped her head in some acknowledgement. Almeda ploughed on: “Love is something to cherish. Something to give you strength.”
“What is your point?” Rowena snapped. A blush rose on her cheeks, and she added, “My Lady.”
“My point,” she continued gently, “is that you have a power shared by few. Think, my lady: how many in our society can boast a love match such as yours?”
Rowena, the clever girl, frowned in thought. Only she would take a rhetorical question and hold it under a critical lens, determined to find the precise answer. “Not many, I suppose,” she finally answered.
For a moment, Almeda fumbled for the right thing to say. Finally, she settled on passing acknowledgement; what she wanted to say––had been meaning to say, this whole convoluted time––was bursting forth wildly from her chest.
“Salazar and I were matched because our families held equal prominence in the village we lived in,” she said, and it poured out of her like a particularly swift stream. “He came from kings and we came from warriors; they said it was in the stars that our fates were to be entwined.”
Rowena hadn’t made a noise, but she leaned forward with wide-eyed encouragement. Almeda took a breath and continued. “Salazar could have dismissed our match, but we spoke a tongue only a rare few did, and so I became a sort of…” Her lips twisted. “Curious desire.”
She looked into her cup, the dark red liquid glinting like blood. “My husband has never loved me––that much I knew when he ripped me from my home and brought me to this foreign land––but I only drowned in that hurting knowledge when I saw how he could love, and how he wasted it on some man he spends most of his time arguing with.”
“Does he not desire you still?” she asked, an earnest question. She blinked at her slowly, languid and calm and drawing her in.
“Desire is not love,” she said. “Desire is what men have for the bodies that keep them warm and provide fruits of womens’ labours. Love is––” She broke off with a high, slightly hysterical laugh. “Love is drinking rain, and floating in an endless sea, and singing to snakes in the grass. Love is here .” She leaned forward and pressed her hand against Rowena’s chest; she hides her gasp terribly, but doesn’t flinch away.
“Love is in the soul,” she whispered. “You can’t have one without the other.”
“No, you can’t,” she replied, panting as though she’d flown across a terrible distance. Her hand trembled when she laid it atop Almeda’s, and continued to tremble even as she trailed her fingers up her arm and to her cheek, cupping her face with tender abandon. Their lips brushed with every breath. “Do you desire your husband, my lady?” she asked. “Do you love him?”
“Never,” she replied, and it's the last word spoken before the sun rises on a new day.