Words of Love

[Therin]

Two swords clashed, and time seemed to slow, following the gracefully whirling weapons as they flowed across each other. Some that saw it likened it to dancing, almost ballet, others to the whistling chaos of a whirlwind. These were weapons of battle, but this was no longer a battle, or a conflict of any kind. It was a melding of spirits. It was a craft, taken to such a level of skill that the innermost personalities of its artisans could be read through the most minor differences of style; the flick of a blade here, the turn of a hilt there, each sword was no longer a sword, but an extension of the person who held it.

He had once been a killer, a hired assassin for whoever had the most money. It had begun when he lost his parents, on a black, stormy day in the spring of his fourth year of life. A man in red had killed them where they stood. They were farmers, both of them, but like everyone in those days, the father had a past. It had followed him to his farm, wife, and child on that stormy afternoon of that wet year. He didn’t remember much about the man in red who had taken him away from the dying bodies of his parents anymore, he had banished his memories rather than suffer from the pain they held. But fifteen years later, in the summer of his nineteenth year, he had killed the man in red in a duel, completing his training and gaining his freedom. Freedom, however, had come too late in life. As he had looked down at the man in red, dying on the ground before him, he had remembered his parents, and how the man in red must have looked down on them as he swung the crying toddler up onto his horse. When he left the hovel in which he had lived with the man in red for so many years, he had lacked that which is usually gained as a child grows and earns freedom slowly on his way to becoming a man: Purpose. So he had wandered, peddling the only thing he knew how to do: death. He never met anyone, young or old, male or female, large or small, with a mastery of style to match his, and anyone who challenged him died. He began to wonder whether the man in red had done the same thing, gone through the same hell in his childhood, snatched up by a towering figure out of a rainy day and trained day in and day out, without the love of parents, and without the happiness of friends, until the man in red had killed his teacher, just as he had killed the man in red. He wasn’t sure at what point during his lonely life he had first met her, but thereafter she had shown up on many of his missions, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering. Once or twice, they were the only two who had made it out alive. Over the next months, they had developed a respect for each other that had grown to an odd friendship. It didn’t happen often, but should one of them slip up, the other passed barely a thought before ending whatever duel they might be in to help the other.

She was the daughter of a bladesmith, had never known her mother. Father had told her Mother had died in childbirth, and she had no reason to disbelieve him. He had been quite good at what he did, and had been a fair handler of the blade when she was born. He had practiced rigorously every morning, and she had always been fascinated with the fluid grace that was the product of such bashing and burning in the hot forge. The first time she had tried was when she was five; she had picked up a stick and come to stand beside Father to try to imitate his movements. He had been so absorbed in his workout that he hadn’t noticed her attempts until he was finished, and had looked down to see her pulling at the leg of his pants and looking up at him with those bright eyes of hers and asking why had he stopped? She didn’t want to stop. He had looked at her in complete shock before grabbing her up and swinging her in laughing, giggling circles. From then on, she had come out with him every morning, rain or shine, to learn. At twelve, she had been his equal in skill, and he had told her he no longer had anything to teach. She had wandered down to the local garrison that very day, and asked the sergeant there to teach her how to use a sword. She couldn’t best the man, of course, she was only twelve, and couldn’t expect to best anyone full grown, but he had been absolutely dumbfounded at her skill, meager though it was. Ever since, it was the garrison, every morning, to learn from Sergeant Grimms. Four years later, she had shown herself to be better than Grimms. From then on, she practiced alone, every morning, on the side of the house opposite her father. When a stranger challenged the best man in town to a duel, she had stepped forward. He had laughed at first, but when no one else did, he drew his blade and stepped forward comfortably to trounce this arrogant snippet of a girl. She disarmed him in three moves. Having earned his respect, she had been asked to accompany him to the house of his master, there to continue her training, on things other than swordsmanship. She had balked at first, but her curiosity, and the fact that the mansion was within two days walk of her home, had convinced her to go. For the next five years, she trained at the mansion in the art of the kill, learning under the tutelage of a former assassin. She completed her first job perfectly, and her second as well. Her third was the first where things didn’t go as planned, and even then she had adapted with remarkable speed, and completed the job anyhow. She had met him in the fall of the year two years after that. She was twenty-three, and he was twenty-six. His level of skill that was frightening to anyone else had intrigued her, and she had sought every job she could find where she knew he would be. They never talked, except for the occasional yelp of a command from one to the other and even those ceased after a month. After two months, they started working officially as a team, working so efficiently together that it was as though each could read the other’s mind. A year later, already rich, but taking jobs for the sheer hell of it, they had taken an assignment to the mansion of a well-known aristocrat. It was the only assignment they had never finished. When she had ghosted through the window, the old man was simply sitting there, sipping from a glass of port and staring into his fireplace. She saw his face in a mirror that sat on the hearth, and her eyes met his. It was the man who had trained her, the man in whose footsteps she had wanted to follow, all those years ago. Her father. When he had silently opened the door, she was still standing there, across the room, staring into her father’s eyes in the mirror. He had seen the look on her face, one she didn’t even know she was wearing, and had seen her resemblance to the other man, and put the two together that quickly. He had crossed the room on habitually silent feet, drawing his sword with the unique shing that only a sword makes. Calmly, he had raised it over his head. Just as calmly, he had rammed it into the floor at the old man’s feet. Then, weapon forgotten, he had gone to her, wrapped his arms around her, and told her it was ok.

Early that morning, as they sat atop the roof of the mansion, he had asked her to marry him.

It had taken her all of ten seconds to search her feelings before she laid her head on his shoulder and given a quiet affirmative.

Now, they danced together. Each had known this day would come, for they had taken jobs separately as well as together. They had expanded as well, taking guard jobs, and hunting jobs as well as killing jobs. They both liked the guard jobs, boring as they usually were. They were helping to protect lives, rather than to take them. They had never talked about it. They hadn’t needed words since those first two months together. As blade slid against blade, their eyes never left each other, light brown orbs staring into deep green pools. The people who watched from the windows of the house, from the doorways, from the yard, stood frozen with awe at the swords that moved so fast they seemed to blur together into one. Then, visible only to her, he winked, and suddenly there was one. She froze, her blade an inch from his neck, and they stood there forever, feelings and thoughts floating across the ether, before she lowered her sword. It wasn’t until his blade rammed itself into the earth behind her that she grinned and launched herself into his arms. Something left his hand, and in a flash of light and smoke they were suddenly gone.

They lay together under the trees, the sparkling sky visible through a gaping whole in the canopy. She lay on her side, with her head pillowed on his muscular arm. They spoke the first words together that they had spoken in five years.

“Reidon?”
“Kay?”
“Let’s stop.”
“Stop what?”
“This. The killing, the jobs, everything.”
“And what should we do?”
“I don’t know. Start a family? We’ve got enough saved up, we could buy a small house. We wouldn’t even have to work, we could devote all our time to the children.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really.”
“How about Wilshire?”
“’s fine with me.”
“Ok.”

There was a silence then, like the passage of time. She looked up at his face. He was looking down at her.

“Reidon?”
“Kay?”
“I love you.”
“You too, Kay.”

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Comments not only welcome, but requested. Gimme comments!

[Enon]

This is nice. I like the way you've given so much detail and then the lack of dailougue is awsome for characters and it makes what they do say very profound feeling. I think my fav scene will be the daughter and the mirror.