If Blood Be the Price of Admiralty

300 words of Fiction

I wake up to you wrapped around me warm and pliant with sleep. Your breath is hot and wet on my shoulder and my heart is breaking. So this is goodbye. Turning to face you shouldn’t hurt this bad. My hands on your face, and I brush kisses over every part. Your nose, your eyes, your cheekbones. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Your fingers tighten on my hips but I know that you can’t hold on. This is us, maybe for the last time, soft and drowsy, thigh to thigh and hip to hip.

Last night was about holding on, your lower lip trapped between my teeth, and a bruise beneath you collar bone. Last night was fierce and desperate, and staystaystay. Last night were the last tears I had left to shed. Last night was sweat slick bodies slipping against one another and sliding away in desperation. This morning is about connection and affection between the crumpled sheets where our scents mingle.

I’ve promised not to wait for you. I didn’t lie, I didn’t need to. Waiting is moot. I will never find anyone else because you have ruined me for all mankind. After you everyone seems flat and colorless, like they’re not really there. I will never drink my fill of you, not even if we had all eternity, but even if I never see you again I will be content. I found my one.

My lips on your jaw, my lashes on your face, my legs, my hips, my finger tips, they all say the same things to you. Be safe, be happy, do great things, come back to me. But most of all they say, god I’m going to miss you. I hold you tight to me and ignore the whispers that say this is the last time.

END

Title comes from Rudyard Kipling's The Song of the Dead.

Hear now the Song of the Dead -- in the North by the torn berg-edges --
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South -- in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust
of the sear river-courses.

Song of the Dead in the East -- in the heat-rotted jungle hollows,
Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof --
in the brake of the buffalo-wallows.
Song of the Dead in the West --
in the Barrens, the waste that betrayed them,
Where the wolverene tumbles their packs
from the camp and the grave-mound they made them;
Hear now the Song of the Dead!


I

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,
Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.
As the deer breaks -- as the steer breaks -- from the herd where they graze,
In the faith of little children we went on our ways.
Then the wood failed -- then the food failed -- then the last water dried --
In the faith of little children we lay down and died.
On the sand-drift -- on the veldt-side -- in the fern-scrub we lay,
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.
Follow after -- follow after! We have watered the root,
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit!
Follow after -- we are waiting, by the trails that we lost,
For the sounds of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.
Follow after -- follow after -- for the harvest is sown:
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!

When Drake went down to the Horn
And England was crowned thereby,
'Twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed
Our Lodge -- our Lodge was born
(And England was crowned thereby!)

Which never shall close again
By day nor yet by night,
While man shall take his life to stake
At risk of shoal or main
(By day nor yet by night).

But standeth even so
As now we witness here,
While men depart, of joyful heart,
Adventure for to know
(As now bear witness here!)


II

We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead:
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

There's never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;
There's never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand --
But slinks our dead on the sands forlore,
From the Ducies to the Swin.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid it in!

We must feed our sea for a thousand years,
For that is our doom and pride,
As it was when they sailed with the ~Golden Hind~,
Or the wreck that struck last tide --
Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef
Where the ghastly blue-lights flare.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' bought it fair!