Where the River Runs Dry

“Regret is a Titan 

Inadequacy a banshee 

Releasing these myths leaves us to face reality in reality.” 

I

The cloudy sky yields no drops of rain, but I sit here drenched in a spirit of uncertainty. The river of grief pours over me. The temple choir sings their solemn hymns. The hallowing notes echo in the hollow halls of my heart. Thunder saturates the emotion of gloom, yet my emptiness is the deepest. Dalhassen has no living relatives left. Dalhassen, the closest thing I had to a parent, my consistent mentor, lays lifeless on a pure green marbled slab. The body, embalmed, is a husk of life surrounded by flowers and precious stones and adornments. Their spirit gone to another plane, yet their form still holds space in this one. The only other person who knows what it means to run an imperium is being blessed and cherished by many while I search for another anchor in this reality.

            I, I wish it would just rain so I can relieve my river of grief, but the clouds yield only thunder, reminding me what life will be without my imperial parent, an incomplete storm. On the outside, I am what men pray for six foot five, six kids, a devoted wife, and now the symbol of imperial rule. Yet, inadequacy haunts me like a ghost in the night. Waking me daily out of daydreams or in the middle of the night. My one connection to understanding is currently being laid down in a tomb. History will call Dalhassen Holy, Divine, and Blessed, but to me, they were just my guide in the world that never provided adequate mentorship.

            I look around; the judges who sent their condolences decades earlier would have brought down the gavel on me to put me behind bars. The praetorian guard now protecting me and my family, joked about me while I was in the Imperial Navy. The generals now, looking for leadership, wouldn’t have flinched giving me an order for a meaningless detail. The priests who would have condemned me for my old addiction now bless me to guide the Imperium. Even though the people who hold the offices now are not the same as before, still, it is truly a change in fate.

            I sit and wait for everyone else to leave. Even though Dalhassen’s spirit has left their body, I still don’t want to feel left behind. My wife Naumbia never leaves my side. I allow tears to slide down my face, realizing there will be no allies in my meetings. I was never a count, a general, or part of the wealthy class. I come from what they joke about. I am a testament to the imperial selection process, a common citizen becoming emperor, yet it doesn’t mean the old heads and guards won't turn up their noses. They whisper behind my back about my past. Now…I don’t have the second holiest emperor protecting me. Even after the body is sealed away. I feel paralyzed. The rain finally comes. When the outdoor funeral procession leaves, I am left to touch the marble tomb of my teacher, my parent, my mentor…I look down at the carved words on the tomb and realize there are insufficient. Naumbia touches me and says,

            “It's okay…let it out.”

            Rain washes over me, and the tears flow. At first, drips of sorrow, but when she fully embraces me, they flush out like the rainstorm around us. The Pretorian guard keeps its distance while I mourn. The Imperium lost a holy relic; I lost a monument.

II

            My coronation as Emperor is a day supposedly steeped in honor, but the setting sun in the capital, Whassa, is still eclipsed by the coming loneliness of many long cascading council meetings. I look at the population looking at me with hope, life, and vibrance. The setting sun makes the gold accents of the imperial event shine more. I drift in and out of thinking about my calling. I sense my youngest daughter knowing she is about to throw something. Before the Seenian High Priest can grab the crown, I turn to my five-year-old, Jalisa, just out of reach of Naumbia, and freeze her with the sternest look she has ever received. When the sharpness of my brown eyes connects with her golden eyes, an unspoken rebuke turns her into stone for a moment. She retreats; I didn’t know what intuition was until I had kids. Our youngest one, the most active, is the one who doesn’t know how to sit still. I turn back around to the priest walking to me. The crown is held high. Still, I bend at the waist to receive it; then, when he still can’t reach, I kneel further for the priest to place the crown on top of my head.

            My daughter almost ruining things, then my height prolonging the crowning. What’s next? After I accept the blessing and read the Emperor's Pledge, the river of applause cascades over the venue. The waves of people wash out the doubts only for a moment. Then, the moment of truth comes. Kalitrise, the Seenian Hight Priest, walks to me and asks for all to hear,

            “My Qalazir, what shall the new dynasty be called?”

            Before I can utter the name of my ancestors, Valhassen, I sense my adolescent son beginning to argue with my wife, and I call his middle name out.

            “Malhassen!”

            The sternness only alerts my offspring to my seriousness while the crowd cheers to hearing the name of our prophet. The High Priest repeats and adds,

            “Malhssen the first. A wonderful choice.”

            The priest smiles, and I want to shake my head, but such a name would be hard to revoke and take back, so I embrace it and wave at the people. My mentor is far gone from the realm of the living, yet I can feel their gaze down on me in embarrassment. When the coronation is done, I call my five present children into a private space,

            “Look…I get it. It’s a long process but stop it. Jalisa, do I need to put you in timeout?”

My youngest daughter looks at me with precious golden eyes. I am unsure where she got them from, but they are always precious in my heart. I try to hold my stern eye contact, but her voice and soft eyes perform a daddy weakness attack, and she says,

            “No, Daddy, I just wanted to throw some flowers like everyone else. I wanted to be the first.”

            I try to squint my eyes so I don’t lose my bearing, but her voice and large eyes break my defenses. Yet before I could raise the white flag, Naumbia tags in and says,

            “No. We don’t do that when Daddy is in the middle of a ceremony.”

            Backup came just in time as I switch to my youngest son, who will not be as lucky. Yet right before I can rebuke him for his antics, my Minister of Integrity, Utriarch, comes to retrieve me.

“Sire, the feast is about to start. They are about to introduce you.”

I look at everyone and tighten their ceremonial clothes while Naumbia does as well. We brush off the dust and prepare ourselves to walk out into the large dining hall. We align with the children at the front and us at the rear. When we hear the queue, we walk out. My kids, who just moments ago were about to embarrass me in front of the whole world, walk out prompt and focused, I get a little droplet of pride. As we make our way to our seats, the announcer finishes his dialogue of my governmental past with,

            “And now introducing the 16th Emperor of the Infinite Whassainian Imperium, Octavius III Tralhassen IV Malhassen I, first in his dynasty.”

The crowd flushes the remaining awkwardness away with claps and cheers. I sit first, then the rest sit. When the dinner officially starts, I look around, and the inadequacy that was drowned is fished out by my nagging itch to see counts, khanates, and other states' people. My wife touches me, but her soft hands of reassurance sink to the bottom of a current of awkward realization. I look out at the smiles and laughs. They make me feel out of place. The overwhelming sound of humans and voices makes me wish I was somewhere else. The river of worry rises, threatening to flood the banks of my sanity. My eldest son, who typically keeps an eye on me, begins to see my eyes leave the moment and hits my shoulder. I shake my head, and he says,

“Yo, Dad, Uncle Calarius wants to see you.”

I again feel the warmth of Naumbia’s touch, and she softly says,

“My brother thinks he can beat you at chess. Are you going to let him say an emperor is too scared to play him.”

I take a sip of water and then respond,

“I will show him.”

I get up, walk over to my brother-in-law, and gain some excitement. The generals and Hands surround us, looking intensely. The praetorian prefect, Ladrial, looks at me sternly and says,

“If you let this man beat you, we may have to let the Space Force be your security detail.”

I look into the eyes of the hardened warrior and see something I didn’t know I could find an ounce of jovial spirit I never knew he had. I focus on the game as my brother-in-law has always been a worthy opponent. My wife brings us mango beer, and we begin our dual.

III

            After the guests leave the palace and the staff cleans up, I carry Jalisa to bed. It won't be long before she won’t like this treatment. After I tuck her in, I kiss her and the rest of the kids goodnight. When I see Naumbia take off her earrings in the bathroom, I sneak out to the river beside the palace. I place my hand in the cool water. The current pushes my hand back and forth. I throw a few rocks. That’s when my love, my wife, comes to sit beside me. I look at the moon and think about the past,

            “You know, I didn’t know all this would happen.”

            She snuggles next to her husband, who is almost a foot taller than she is. When she is comfortable, she says,

            “Knowing is not the goal of wisdom. Nor is it the purpose of love.”

            I chide her softly,

            “There you go again with that spiritual stuff.”

            She giggles and says,

            “Spiritual stuff, you act like you don’t enjoy it.”

            She pokes me, and she lets out a kidlike laugh,

            “… it's still extra deep.”

            “That’s why you love me.”

            “True. Are you ready Nau? I will miss birthdays and anniversaries; I am no longer a Khanate or Kalzir. I am the emperor.”

            She squeezes tighter and says,

            “You were always going to be.”

            “Nau, I almost had another moment during the feast.”

            I look at her with worry in my eyes, but she responds,

            “I know that’s what we are here for. Nassalizir pulled you back.”

            I look down at my bare feet, desiring to put them in, and wonder how my wife still lingers by my side.

            “Nau, I… have a burning desire.”

            “To do what?”

            She bites her lips, hoping it’s of the copulation variety of desire, but I say,

            “…to put my feet into the water.”

            She almost sighs in frustration. We move closer to the water’s edge and then place our feet into the water. After several quiet moments, I break the silence with a depressing,

            “I don’t know if I’ll be good enough to follow in the footsteps of my mentor.”

            My forehead scrunches up. Nau grabs my arm,

            “You don’t know if you’ll be good enough? Why?”

            “I am not good enough.”

            “Why are you not good enough?”

            “I almost had to rebuke my kids on international television. I forgot to tell them the name I wanted for the dynasty, and had my kid not been there, I would have devolved into a savage or vegetable. I was in the middle of-“

            Nau closes my mouth and says,

            “You disciplined your kids without touching them, you planned for a dynasty to have your ancestors' name, and you chose the name of our Prophet, and you have not had a moment in over a year. Right before you regressed, your eldest son helped you. What was inadequate about today?”

            “It could have,”

            She moves my chin for me to look into her eyes,

            “Could have…but what was it?”

            “A good day.”

            “You were crowned today, and the best moment…was what?”

            “Putting Jalisa to bed.”

            “You’re warning me about not being there for things you have sporadically missed already, but you need to realize you will be missing moments like tonight.”

            I think back to the fact I saw kids in the crowd running or crying, yet mine couldn’t stay still in old, stagnate chairs. Maybe I was doing better than I expected. I search for more inadequacies, but before I can move my mind from the clear water in front of me into the murky water of my psyche, she kisses me underneath my chin. I don’t need a second guess to tell me what it means,

            “So, Octavius, you going to stew in your imaginative failures or,”

            She gets up and I can fully see she is wearing a nightgown with nothing underneath it. I whisper sternly,

            “Nau, what are you doing?”

            “You I hope.”

            Her smooth legs remind me how we got full-liter young ones. My son can pull me out of a panic attack with competition, but my wife uses the oldest trick in the book.

            “Nau, there are guards-“

            She places her tan, yellow-hued leg on my shoulder. Her skin glistens in the moonlight. She moves it closer to my face, longing for my lips to taste her new scented oils. The oils pull me from my melodramatic contemplation in the land of her sweet passion.

IV

            I take the boys out for a trip a week before I go to visit all my Satraps an imperial tradition. The choice of my middle son, Antonius, wanted to go to the northwest woods of the Dakorian Satrap. Without hesitation, I took them there. We set up tents, and my youngest son, Maccius, wanted to explore the forest. The rest of us, tired from just making it out to a peaceful point, look at him with the ferociousness of the bears that used to live in these forests. We convince him to sit while we start a fire. It is in the evening my inadequacy seeps over me. No ghost stories are being passed over to each other, but I still sit in front of my son, haunted.

            In the middle of Maccius telling a joke about his teacher’s comment, it comes back to me—the memory of being on the ship. The alarms ringing, running around the ship. The heightened emergence of orders. We had just come in contact with pirates. Fortunately, we were the bigger vessel. Unfortunately, they were prepared to fight. The commander hailed them three times to turn around. Still, they continued entering Earth’s atmosphere. After the third attempt at radio contact, we fired two warning shots.

            My eyes see the dark forest in front of me, but my mind remembers being on the gun deck of the battleship, Talaruse. I can feel the tension again. I can feel the tension between the crew and the stopped ship. The moments were short in the past, but in this moment, it was the deepest breath I could take. The laughter of my children drifts into the background while my soul stares at the battery of guns under my command. The pirate ship Confederate Lee fired the first shot, and that’s when we find out they don’t mind using the new tech ammunition stolen from the Jupiter Corporation. The first shot hits five decks above us, and I give the order to fire back.

            We return fire, landing shot after shot. The pirate ship returns volley. Our shots are a mix between missing and scraping the smaller vessel, not landing any meaningful blows. After maneuvering, they aim right at my deck. The shot lands a blow, and half the deck is opened up. I am sucked into a cloud of ammunition, blood, and metal shards. Right when I hear screaming, the sound is vacuumed from my ear. I try to hold on to something, but my last attempt at autonomy is taken when the vacuum of space pulls me closer to the vast expanse. When I am pulled within feet of the threshold between the ship and the infinite void, my son hits me, trying to bring me back to the fire and forest.

            I clench my ribs, realizing I hit the ground when the ship closed the hole off. Nassalizir rubs my shoulder as I can feel my eyes are watered. He and Antonius touch my shoulder while Maccius walks over to hug me. I try to hold my emotions. I try to shrink the large burden in my throat, but my heart cannot cope. Tears begin to flow out of my eyes. My mind flashes back to me falling on the metal surface when the ship’s systems closed the hole. I landed on my ribs. My ribs were broken, and my arm was broken. Yet what was permanently shattered was the feeling of ever feeling safe in space.

As my sons hold on to me, my ribs shriek with pain. My arm is stabbed with sharp hurt. My breathing wheezes, but my youngest holds my hand and says,

            “Dad, the river has run dry.”

            My intense eyes look at his grey pupils, and I feel the pain in my shoulder begin to recede. I begin to take deep breaths as all my sons tell me,

            “The river has run dry, Dad. The river has run dry.”

            I take deep breaths. In…Out…In…out. The screams and screeching metal loud in my head dissipate as the birds and flowing water come into hearing again. I close my eyes, and instead of feeling the coldness of space, I feel the warm fire. I feel my sons. I can see my oldest smile as he looks into my eyes, seeing I have returned from the atmosphere. I almost cry, realizing the banshee of my past has screamed into my present. I feel my son’s presence surround me. The warmth brings me back to the present reality.

I repeat back,

            “The river runs dry…the river runs dry.”

            They release a little bit from holding me tight. I lift my arm to hold them, and I allow the river of embarrassment to flow. They still hold me in my moment of emotional exposure. I allow the waterfall of emotional release to flow. The ground and my clothes catch a river of wet coping. I try to hold it in, but my sons allow my face to contort and let the emotional river run until it dries. When I finally allow the waves of emotional turmoil to pass, I wipe my face, and they give me space. I place some food on the fire and begin to speak,

            “I’m sorry I… have somethings that haunt me always. I hope you don’t hate me for being weak to the ghosts of my past. I have not been the father I should be.”

            Nassalizir speaks as he prepares the seasoning for the meat,

            “Father, we know you have been through things we can’t imagine. We know you love us deeply; you have been present, and you have been our father, not just a figure in the house. You were there when I broke my arm during a game. You were there when Maria sang her first song; you were there when Jalisa was sick. You are here.”

            “My body is here…but,”

            Maccius says,

            “Your heart is here too. We see it, mom sees it. You think you could have looked at Jalisa, and she respected your stern look without the respect she has for you. Look at us, dads with less responsibility spend less time with their sons. You’re the greatest dude.”

            I respond,

            “Son, sons, I still have these haunting… memories.”

            Antonious says,

            “I think we will take Dad that we have to hug extra hard instead of one that doesn’t touch us.”

            Nassalizir finishes preparing the seasoning and puts it on the meat. Maccius sits by me.

            “Besides, Dad, if you weren’t cool to us, I definitely wouldn’t have asked you to come to my piano recital.”

            “I am haunted by my-“

            Antonio smiles and says,

            “Then we will have to bust some ghosts.”

            Maccius stands up and grabs a stick. Antonious grabs a stick while Nassalizir shakes his head with a smile, knowing his brothers can be theatrical. Maccius pokes me and says,

            “You must die, ghost of Christmas past.”

            I almost burst with tears of joy, then jump and engage in the playful banter.

            “Noo, I am coming for you.”

            I pick him up, then Antonious comes over to save his brother from me, and we run around some. When I cook the savory mix of spices with the meat, I forget about my memory of broken ships and ribs. I drift into the moment, allowing myself to appreciate the starry night instead of allowingthe carnage of them to take the rest of the night.