It was a crisp autumn morning the last time he saw Delfina...
Their matching raven hair swirling around about their calves mingled like their bodies had beneath the sheets now wrapped around them as they greet the sunrise from a bench in the garden. Peaceful brown eyes speak their connection to one another more strongly than the blood in their veins. Similar gazes anxiously await the first ray of light from over the hilltop, but twin irises already hold completion in their depths. The lovers are well satisfied with one another, now they only require daylight to bring the night of dreams into the world of reality. Instead, they were given reality by the whistling path of an arrow.
Delfina had been his one weakness and the Midnight Dragon Clan had known it. Isolated from the village because of their "unnatural love," it was only he who heard her scream that morning. Only he who witnessed her last breath as her life washed away in a stream of crimson over perfect skin and into the koi pond. There had been no time to dress before he grabbed his wakizashi, but the assassin was gone before the ronin reached the crest of the hill. Regardless, the feathers decorating the arrow shaft let him know the murderer's identity. The Clan had betrayed him as he had them - By taking his lover.
His sister's burial was the last time he saw his family. The last time he saw his home. The one night with Delfina had been the first night of his exile and his moments of happiness. Now there was only revenge and the scent of her virginity on the same sheets that soaked away her heart's blood each time he let the blood of their enemies. There was only the whisper of her moan in the words of each woman who dared speak to the battle-scarred warrior taking a meal in their kitchen or his rest in their barn.
Memories of flesh stained red by her blood ignited a fire in him - A need to bathe the wounds of his embittered love in the sticky stench of Dragon's blood. First the Clan that he once called his own, then their namesake. It would not be an arrow from on high that slay them. It would be his whisper in their ear "Delfina" as his sword's blade twisted through their hearts. The ronin lived only to present his enemies with the knowledge of their deaths in dead brown eyes ... Eyes so much like hers had been. |
