Bitter Tea

I have orchestrated this scene meticulously. Arranged every element. I know how this conversation will end, even if she does not. I do not wish to begin it. And yet. “I have been called home.” I refuse to lie outright, so I give her a partial truth. The Twilight Kingdoms are always calling, and even if the Lord and Lady have not summoned me by name, I feel the mists pulling, pulling, pulling nonetheless. It is only a matter of time, which I have in plenty, but Mae—Mae is mortal. She tightens her fingers around her teacup, takes a breath as if to object, subsides. And in doing so, concedes. Rivers of regret overflow my carefully-tended banks. I set the teapot down, turn it so the spout aligns perfectly with the handles of the sugar bowl on the tray. I still my restless hands against the watered silk of my gown. I had asked her once why she loved me. What I had meant was: Will you endure? She had smiled. “You are all I could ever want in this world.” I had heard the lie on her honey-sweet lips, but who was I to argue? It was the answer I had wanted. I pulled her down beside me on the grass. I tethered her the only way I knew how. They care too much, these mortals, and burn too brightly. My passion is the tumble of an endless mountain stream. "You knew I would not stay," I say now. The words taste of bergamot and betony. They scald my tongue. She has recovered her poise enough to argue. "I knew it, but am I not enough for you?" She lifts her chin in challenge. “Is love so fleeting a thing that you would let it slip away?” I hesitate. Love is not ephemeral; Mae is not ephemeral. She is earth and salt, grounded in the material world, and I am of the mists. Almost, almost, I reach for her—for the respite of our alluvial space. But if I hold her now, she will slip away nevertheless. She is no Janet, to hold fast to me through pain and fear and the creep of time, and I am no Tam Lin, to ask it of her. And so I lace my response with absinthe, bitter and sharp. "Should I forsake the mists for you? The silver of the snowdrops in the moonlight? Should I bind myself to the passing of days? Forgive me, beloved, but it is not in my nature." She recoils as if burnt. Good. Better she should hate me or learn to forget me. I think of her golden curls and long white limbs illumined by the sun, the moon, the stars, and wonder how mere flowers could possibly compare. But I know: if I stay now, she will leave. I know this with the certainty of long experience. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but soon enough. A more proper companion will cross her path: a man to give her fat children and an honorable life—the two things I cannot. She will struggle against it, resist, resent, until the bright flame between us flickers out. She is not ephemeral, no, but neither is she constant. She is already receding. Let her believe me called back to my home in the mists, unwilling to break my vows. Let her hate me a little for what I am rather than despise me for that which I am not. Better the bitter tea than the honeyed lie. “I wish you would stay,” Mae says, and she means it, in this moment. Wishes, though, are ephemeral. They change, necessarily, as mortals themselves do. Steam still curls up from the teapot. I shape it carefully, blossom by blossom, until I can pluck a spray of snowdrops from the air. "To remember me by," I say gently, and give them to her. I gather the last of the warmth from my cup, tuck it into my heart and let the river of my sorrow carry me away, home, into the enduring mists. ∘ ∘ ∘