Drabble: Heart

[maledictory]

[Title:] Return
[Characters:] Odile, Odette, & Siegfried
[Prompt:] "Heart"

Odile is winged victory today.

She has eaten the hunter’s heart, and her maw still drips with iron blood that warmed only at the vision of a maiden’s blush or a harlot’s wanton smile. (Never for a spark of enlightenment. Never for diplomatic savvy or courtly manners. The hunter cared only for trophies; it is fitting that he is now a trophy for the owl’s daughter, a reminder to all that men crave the physical form alone.)

He had wanted only the value of a woman in her youth and glory, for he had loved too easily. He gave his heart to one woman unthinkingly, and to a second without scrutiny. He could not tell the innocent from the temptress, and therein lay his folly: Odile had tantalized where Odette had charmed, and he had followed the call of base desires. Siegfried had been incapable of noting the contradiction of the two women who had shared one common form. His desires were for the flesh alone.

This and more she will explain when the time comes.

Sparing the swan from a lifetime of misery shackled to a hunter whose sole prey was beauty is a kindness. Beauty fades, men turn away to seek it elsewhere, and thus Odile is a heroine in the twisted labyrinth of her mind.

The owl has not told her that the swan spared herself from a lifetime of misery; he has given his daughter not a single thought. His concerns are for the loss of one of his pretty swans; if he tells her, it will come when he summons her for his own pleasure. He will demand gaiety of her after he breaks her heart.

Odile waits at the water’s edge, skirts gathered in her hands, an unknown mother’s tears washing over her bare feet. Surely the swan will come to her, overflowing with gratitude.