Darahn

• Gennaro Gregory, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2011

There was a potent beat to his quick step, a shallow flare in his slumbering soul; heavy boots barely impacting the rippling surface of the water and grass. Crossing the flooded field had seemed but a minor inconvenience, and, to his dull happiness, he found himself at the fence in a merciful heartbeat. He flicked his eyes up and spotted her waiting, she noted the cold stab of ice in his brief gaze and turned as if struck. He allowed a small twitch of a smile to briefly spasm at the corner of his mouth at this; how deliciously ironic for her to finally find him dangerous enough, at this, the last point, much too late in the game. She began her walk through the stars on the water, the moon casting its silent spectre in the small wake she produced, and he followed suite, a beat behind. He inhaled ever so slightly, savouring the stark embrace of cold night, the elevated feeling of an absence of atmosphere. It made him alert, alert to the fact that she held the same sense, that they were both studying each other, calculation of each muscle moving, each hair shifting in the silent breeze. He pulled up his brown collar around his neck, catching a quick scent of the leather before focussing his mind back on the serenity in the tension. That was all she needed. Quicker than the flickering stars at his feet she had spun in a critical arc towards him, the long gracefully curved dagger revealed from her sleeve. But he was ready. He parried right, a single step against the fence, using the momentum to pivot back around behind her. She halted, then turned silently. He watched her stand within the moons reflection, the twin fires of her eyes revealing the smoulder of loathing that had stood guarded for so very long. All was to bear now, no intricate deceit or veiled venom. An honest finality permeated the air. There was the cold. A puff of mist released from his bated lungs. An excruciatingly still eternity in the field of stars. And then she broke pose and lunged, the painful speed of the moment warping his thought for an instant. But he controlled himself, and in the spilt-second her foot left the ground time became his. He viewed the scene in its entirety; her flowing dress frozen, the perfect beads of water drifting in an impossibly slow curve off of her hair. Breathing slow he calculated, then ready, he felt the abstract sensation of time quickening again in slow motion, and before she knew the instant had past his knife was out. Yet sooner than her lunge was completed, before the water had fled from her hair, he saw the smile on her lips. The joy of victory for him alone to see. Time returned to its normality and he whipped around with the knife, expecting her behind him. The field was empty. Darahn stood alone in the night.