In the year 1805, under a cold clear sky so vast no human grasped its comprehension, the prince stopped his horse in grateful recognition. Yes, it is she! But how has she come to be here? No matter! Question not good fortune! He spurred his beloved steed forward.
In moments they regained their old selves, sitting at her cottage table as if at a swank Petersburg soiree all over again in the Before Times. They exchanged their tangibles: he fighting the French, she fleeing the devastation of the scorched earth. But they cared little for that as each hungered for a past of prancing parties and the luxury of heated arguments of the trivial.
His old friend dared ask him of his true history and position. "Have you ever been in love?"
They had never shared such frank words in the whirlwind of peaceful pursuits and misguided chases. Maybe they were lovers yet to be known. "I've been in, what seemed to me, love. Love as real as the stars but just as distant. Only mon dieu can truly answer your question. And last I checked He's not talking!"
"But what do you say?" she asked, caring to know. "What do you say of that love?"
"Vanity forces me to confess 'Yes'."
"And without your vanity?"
"Without my vanity I am lost!"
In the retreat of night they made love, finishing the foreplay of their words. She felt his love wondrously missing, as real as the stars but just as distant. Yet she also knew he'd given her his best.
"You really are missing someone, aren't you?" she said as though the thought had just occurred to her.
As if pierced by an arrow, he staggered out a perjurious "No!" as someone who feared if the truth became known it would be used against him in a court of law.
She sat back alone in bed, relaxing her head into the soft pillow. Like all human creatures she was selfish in love and unscrupulous in its taking. So it very much shocked her holding no resentment of being unable to share his starry, starry love that she herself dreamed of. She let it go, merrily drifting down life's stream with dawn's emerging light.
"I envy her."
"Envy whom?"
"Whoever that love of yours is reserved for. It can only be given to her alone, you know, and no one else."
"Perhaps," replied the prince in doubtful stance, fearing she was sentencing him to a sexless life outside his One True Love.
It's true, he thought, the night felt like a dress rehearsal, a mere practice for the actual event. What does it mean to have sex and yet still feel a virgin? Yes, he had left part of his feeling out of the night, but it was involuntary as in one being unable to feign a rhythm for an unmoving song.
***
The prince climbed back on his cherished spotted grey, only this time the sky sullen and moody in its cloudiness. Perhaps the sky too tired of the ceaseless wars of men; a pained parent watching over a wounded child. The night’s interlude had been welcomed as desert water but now it was time for his true journey and purpose. But galloping down a muddy road that in a few weeks the Russian winter would encrust in impassable ice, reality shifted for the rider, escaping him like a shaft of wheat blown from his hand.
When he had stopped at the cottage in sanctuary the previous eve, the harassing of the Napoleonic troops was his one, concrete purpose no man could deny. And it was to that rainbow now to which he returned, to chase the never attained good of war. Only now that seemed the diversion and the night before the true path. But the prince swallowed this inconvenient muse, and as he did so the clouds turned an angrier gray.
"Idiopuric" was the word the prince invented for moments like these - so often did he live them! He was trapped by a sense of unspoken obligation - the worst kind - and of being helplessly drawn to a fate whether for ill or good. The traveler rode with two minds. He knew once he reached camp he’d be heartily welcomed by other scared souls likewise squelching their doubts, hurling no questions against him. He spurred his beloved steed forward.
***
"The forest guards its secrets in dark corners of the mind."
Deep in the Russian winter, Spring is doubtful to arrive, the gloom's permanence ruling as absolutely as the Tsar's unfeeling scepter. The prince roamed piney woods lost and unadorned. Napoleon had retreated weeks ago, the Russians bringing spite to the lands, giving up the ghost. In this the Russians are most skilled in all the world: the art of giving up.
So vast her lands, many were the souls who lived and died never knowing the sway of politics or culture that passed through the cities like outposts in a sea. The serfs remained a cruel and backwards people, refusing human progress, stalled in petty power squabbles, literally gouging the eyes out of opponents. Russian nobles cringed in humiliation at the sight of the West's rising democratic ideals, but in their pride claimed to be on a superior path of state rule that need not suffer the people's assent.
This left miles and miles of shameful woods, undocumented to the world, a kingdom no man ruled. In this shrouded conspiracy trudged the prince with forlorn feet. The gift of passing one tree was to yet find another. His spotted grey friend long gone, the victim of a lucky French musket, the prince wandered in wordless woods, a man left to himself. Oh, the horror of nature's mirror.
Sleep betrayed his hopes. Waiting behind the trees were all the bullets that missed him before, now whistling back in wrathful vengeance, furious with his treason for first dodging their purpose. If he kept his eyes open, the bullets stayed at bay, but if ever to drift off...
But then a sound, followed by the figure of a man, appeared. Both men stopped to be sure of the other, then trusting their eyes ran to a clutching embrace, each exclaiming, "Thank God I came across you! I am completely lost!" Joy drained from their faces with their true revelations. The crunching of their souls continued in separate snows.
***
So where is home, wondered the prince. No quarter in the call to duty, fogged men fighting inner demons with external death. The cottage of the woman possessed no future. The prince cursed his flagrant honesty, he could have made a contract with her. And what of his true love left unfulfilled? Is there life among the stars after all?
Sitting his back against the solid trunk of a leafless oak, the prince prayed one last time for the forest to give up the secret of its exit. But deaf are the prayers of fools. Worst of all, he knew his clever lies would fail to fool the nature of these ungoverned woods. His mouth opened wide, the ancient riddle solved: with no one to hear his scream made no sound.
He loved no love, he loved no lust, heavenly white flakes descend over him in burial. What stunning commentary he'd make to those who discovered his decayed body! For he was not a man now, but a snowflake, but one of countless many fallen made one with the land of the Tsars and stars.
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