honey and sting

for my gracious and generous bidder, Dorothy1901, who requested something with Duncan and Connor (now with bonus Darius flashback *g*) With beta assist from Gryphonrhi, gracias!


Poem: A Different Wine/Family


A Different Wine (Connor)

They laugh at the joke:
same wine, different vintage.
Later, a remembered drink, shared
with an ancient priest. Darius
points out the two trees.

"The old story goes," he says,
"Eve, soon followed by her man,
ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
We all know that "knowledge" means sex:
they saw that they were naked.
What if that also meant
the ability to breed?

"We, on the other hand,
what if our tree was the other one?
Not the Tree of Knowledge,
but the Tree of Life.
The angels kept the humans from it.
They didn't want reproducing gods.
We, on the other hand,
were driven off with a different sword..."

It's they, all of them, who are a different wine.
Connor looks to Duncan once again,
and wonders what each of them,
given the choice, would choose.


Family (Duncan)

Duncan always cherishes time spent with his "cousin."
There's so little of family in their lives.
In battle's distant but inexorable song,
a mockery of the urge to shelter and protect.
When immortals fight, someone dies,
and another goes on, spent with the fury
of a passion too extreme for mortal life.
Knowledge, yes, and power. What could be more
intimate than the moment he absorbs his enemy?
Yet where, in all that, is love?
Duncan laughs, with Connor,
and pretends.