Fifth star: Sold

I had just bought her.
Buying her eyes, her gaze. I had just bought those hands, her back, those trembling legs. Her chest that made efforts to seem inaltered.  We bouhgt her fingers, her lashes, every sigh her throat might keep, every sweat drop. Even every teardrop.

The look she gave me, before going down the stairs to the small girls rooms, broke me into pieces. It was her look just after knowing the news. It was a look where there were no more fears. She was terrified but her dignity swallowing her fragility impressed me. It seemed to me so proud, so brave...

She was mine...

I was thinking so while I beheld her walking away, slowly. She would surely have her head full of questions and fears for her near future. I don't know if she was aware of the power we had then. I swallowed hard.
She was mine, for a handful of Ares. A handful of stolen and bloody Ares. We were able to buy her eyelids, but never her heartbeats.

No man should be able to buy a woman. I knew that she would be never sold. Her eyes told me. Something that no one could hear told me.

I thought... it is not more than a serving girl you have just force to be a one night whore. it's something that was going to happen soon or late in that bloody place. It's not your problem. Pay. Use her and clear you off witout looking back!

Pay. Use...

It had been easy. Nobody, nobody had laid an eye upon us. Take what is yours.

But it wasn't mine. It doesn't matter how much I had paid for her. Twenty Ares, two hundred, two thousand. It doesn't matter. She was not mine.

I was just saving her life.

I was just taking her away from the slaugther.

I just wanted to have her near when the storm broke.

I just wanted to have her by my side that night and I can't explain why, I can't. Because a warrior knows when death is about. When it savours the feast. When it licks its lips... and there were something in her. Something powerful, inexplicable. Something that was confusing me so that I was not able to identificate it. Something that was telling me that those eyes deserved living when dawn came and that just a few eyes were going to have the that privilege in a few hours time. I bought her to save her, although I'd never tell her it and I didn't know if she's would prefer to die that night. I didn't try anything else. Taking her away. Follow my heart voice. My instinc. It was shouting. It told me: look at her carefully. It's she.

But she. Who?

She. She. She.

She. Who? Why is she important? A serving girl in a brothel, too young for her eyes to speak of a world beyond those wet walls and not even being able to confess secrets learned in those hire undercovers. Why is she so important? We are just dogs. Too many scars in our bodies. Too much blood and mud in our future way. Why she? Why today? Why in this place?

...and then, with no explanation, without understanding it, I knew that every step had led me with no compassion to the present moment, to the present place and to that disconcerting girl who was running down tha stairs, ready to be sold to those strangers in the night the Death was chasing us. Everything I had done, everything it had happened in my life was driving me to this place. Here, without a real reason to explain it, I knew my life gained sense. Just here and her. It seems absurd. A crazy business. If Gharin had listened to my thoughts in that right moment he'd  have writhed in laugh or he'd have run away from my madness. I, myself, was between both points.

Look at her carefully: It's she. That sentence was repiting in my mind till torment myself.

She. Who?

Not even you know her name and you are already willing to kill for her.

She... The one who is going to change your life forever. The one who has already done it and you don't still know it.

There are things, sensations, certainties that you can't explain why they happen but they happen.

Those are never mistaken. Never mistaken. It doesn't matter how much you want them to be quiet. I tried to do it, I swear it, that right night, in that right place.

I had just bought what it can't be bought: destiny.

When she appeared again through the stairwell, I made no efforts to hold my breath. From then, whe played to fake each other.