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The same way dew rose up each summer morning against the wooden panes of her windows – gradually, without a fuss, and with but a whispering goodbye – the same way did sleep leave Circe’s body that night.
She blinked her eyes open and slowly sat up. She felt warm, contended, sluggish in a comfortable way. The moon was slanting her pale rays through the blue darkness of her chambers, illuminating the soft beige of the bed, the tan of the arm around her waist.
Circe followed the arm with her eyes, arrived at the firm but relaxed roundness of a shoulder, a neck, the bearded edge of a jaw, and finally Odysseus’ face. To find his eyes glinting – open, awake – should not have been surprising. For better or worse, Odysseus often was a step ahead of her.
She was learning to like that about him.
“Was it you that woke me up?” she half-murmured, not willing to fully break the silence.
He minutely shook his head, cheek still resting against the pillow. “If I did, it was not my intention. But I don’t believe so, unless a mere gaze can wake you.”
“Were you watching me sleep, then, handsome guest?” she teased. She had many nicknames for Odysseus by now – visitor, conqueror, newcomer, traveller, all different words for different instances and moods – but one thing she never called him was king of Ithaca. It made Odysseus snappy, that title, made him frustrated and restless for a few hours before he settled down again.
It was not directed at her; Circe did not deal in hostages, and he knew that. But she supposed there was only so much delay one could take from the Fates before getting a tad moody.
“I was,” came Odysseus’ easy response. She tangled a hand in the dark curls of his hair, and his eyes half-closed. “Sleep could not find me.”
“Is there something on your mind?” she asked, meaning also what she didn’t say – something apart from the usual, the war and the homesickness and your stupid men and the circumstances.
Odysseus fell silent for a while, and she kept threading her fingers through his hair, scratching idly with the tip of her nails.
“Can I kiss you?” he finally asked, and Circe blinked, taken by surprise once more.
She and Odysseus did not really kiss, aside from during lovemaking. Just a few hours prior she had been on her back with her thighs open and her body taut, her ankles almost crossed over Odysseus’ backside, pushing and urging him closer, deeper, while they both panted and moaned, and he had snaked a hand between their bodies to touch her, because he made it a point to never get there before she did and that was how he had first won her over, and she had pulled him down to kiss him fiercely.
But outside of that? They didn’t, not really.
She looked into his eyes. “What’s gotten into you?” she asked, curious but not hostile.
Odysseus returned her gaze, a pensive smile on his face.
“Nothing. I am just missing my wife quite terribly, tonight.”
She lowered herself into bed once more, interested. He talked sometimes about Penelope of Ithaca, but rarely unprompted like this.
The moonlight made the skin around his eyes creased and blue.
“Did something happen?” she whispered. It came to her that it could be Odysseus’ wedding anniversary. Hadn’t he had a summer wedding? He had mentioned, once, the shortness of the nights that followed and the brightness of the sun. Though it could all have been a metaphor. “Is this a special occasion?”
Odysseus snorted, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The pulp of his fingers traced the outline of it, went to her cheek.
“Are you really,” he asked instead of answering, “not gonna let me kiss you?”
She laughed.
“Oh, no, I just might. I just marvel at your romanticism. Is she the only one you’ve been with, for any one kiss to remind you of her?”
It was mocking (she often was, though never mean, not with him), but he did not rise to the bait. He blinked, and merely said:
“She’s not. But everyone before her was unimportant.”
Circe smiled, oddly touched. It was a beautiful answer, so she rewarded it with a kiss. He cupped her cheek more fully and pulled her flush against him, and for long minutes it was just this, until Circe quite forgot everything else.
Odysseus was a good kisser, perhaps too keen for some tastes, but not hers. She liked that about him too, about his kissing and about all the rest, how he always threw himself into things. Odysseus had this boyish focus about him—or perhaps boyish was not the right word, perhaps it was the kind of intensity that children shared with war generals.
And it shouldn’t have, but it tied her insides into knots.
He broke the kiss, and at the smile that rose on his face, she laughed wildly.
“Are you all good now, soldier?”
“Hmm,” he hummed, tracing her throat with his nose. “Thanks to you, m’lady.”
She rolled her eyes and flicked him on the cheek. You could thank me by not going anywhere, she thought. I would make you my husband, keep you.
You would forget all about your rocky little island and its sheep.
But she did not say the words, because she suspected they weren’t true.
Odysseus kissed her cheek, and she smiled in melancholy. More and more each day, she feared she would not lack a lover once he was gone, but a friend.
“You make things complicated, Odysseus,” she said. “You are a complicated man. But I suppose I’m not the first one to tell you that.”
She traced his mouth with light fingers, and felt his next words against them. “And you won’t be the last, I’m sure.”
She nodded. She could see him grow unfocused, the way he did when he turned words over in his mind. That was another thing she liked about Odysseus, this time because it was a little ridiculous; he always thought before speaking, but that did not stop him from getting honest or speaking out of turn.
Before he could talk more, she beat him to the punch, whispering, “I am going to miss you, you know. Once you’re gone.”
He was silent for a while.
“And I,” he finally answered, his voice low and as tender as spring, “am going to remember you.”