Eyes of the Soul

            Kyros walked along the garden path, the pebbles crunching against his sandals as he strolled about. The spring air was crisp and clean. The moon glowed like a thousand fireflies in the sky, lighting the way to his beloved.

            He had met Madora three months ago in this very Eden. She had been sitting by a fountain, her fingers skimming the water while her back rested against the back of a statue that seemed to have a shocked expression on its masculine face. It seemed, to Kyros, that Madora’s hair was alive, as if she were under water and the tendrils were floating about her. On that night, when he approached and called her a fair maiden, she had made a small gasp that sounded like the last breath leaving a small mouse before she fled.

            He had tried to catch her, but she must have been a wood nymph, for she seemed to melt into the trees before him. The next month, her hair wasn’t alive and her eyes were covered with silk. She didn’t run this time, but prayed he would not try to see her eyes. They met every night after, learning more about the other and falling more and more in love.

            This, their third month, was special for Kyros. He had decided to marry Madora and have her meet his family. He had decided this when his parents had told him he was to marry and take over the family floral business that was expanding into Athens in the coming months. This would mean that he would have to leave, and Kyros did not wish to leave Madora behind. And as he waited for her at the fountain where they had first met he dreamed of their future together.

            “Kyros,” Madora whispered against the wind. He smiled and turned towards her, believing that the goddess Aphrodite had made her just for him.

            “My love, Madora,” he crooned as he enveloped her into his arms and felt her hair play softly against his skin like running water. “My love, I have something important to speak to you about.”

            “What is it, sweet Kyros?”

            “I must leave in a few weeks, to Athens. I was hoping you would—“

            “No! I cannot,” Silence fell between them. Madora sat with her head bent towards the ground while Kyros stared at her, a smile frozen on his face that could not yet fall because he had not expected this answer. When there were finally words, Kyros’ hands and lips trembled.

            “C-Cannot,” He asked, trying to look at her face to see if he could define any emotion.

            “There are things you do not know of me. Things I have asked you never to ask of me to tell. These things separate us.”

            “Why must they separate us? I do not wish to part from you! Life would have no meaning otherwise!”

            Madora’s lip curled into a wisp of a smirk as she tilted her head towards him like a cat trying to hear its prey. She nodded, knowingly. She knew what was to come because it had happened a thousand times before, to many other men, but not the man she wished it to happen to. Not to him, the beast that tainted her soul and made her into this.

            “You would not leave me if you knew? You would love me always?”

            “Always and forever, my love! What is it that separates us so? It might bind us for eternity and fasten us to one another’s side! What is it, darling?”

            “It is this,” She cooed as she slipped off the silk from her eyes. Vermillion green flashed in her eyes. Her ink colored hair moved against the wind, alive and hissing. Her pale skin aged eons and her teeth sharpened as Kyros howled in fear and shock. “Yes, you will spend forever with me, my love.”