Chocolate cake

‘I love you the way I love chocolate cake.’ Tristan said.

Cinzia laughed and blushed. The way he looked at her made her at once nervous and elated. Every moment together was a risk but, despite everything her intuition told her, she kept seeking him out. She had to be near him.

Tristan knew the risk too. If they were seen together, well, he didn’t want to think about. The consequences… They were of two different worlds. He lived in Samsara, the World of Clouds. Cinzia was one of the Bound, born in the World Below. Other than her master, she was never meant to speak to a Samsaran. It was a sin, it was forbidden.

She had been brought to Samsara as a servant. She was beautiful, obedient but most important, healthy. She was meant to work and be invisible. Nothing more. Being invisible would keep her safe, she had been told. She had tried her best. But with Tristan, she couldn’t help herself.

Samsara was a world of beauty, and he was the most beautiful thing in it.

The World of Clouds had been terraformed perfectly to reflect the balance of man and nature that the species now known has homo vulgaris had failed to grasp on their first world and now the second.

In 2141 Dr. Saiyuki Hakkai had discovered a unique gene sequence. It definitively distinguished those who could live in harmony from those who could not, homo illustratum. They called him a charlatan, a mad man, a zealot. He was stripped of everything. But he had been right. Twenty years later, the great starship Samrara left the ground outside Totsukawa, Japan with Dr. Hakkai at the helm, never to return.

Every night for the last 100 years the Bound, those who had survived the end of everything, gazed up into the night sky and watched with both longing and bitterness as the lights of Samsara passed over them like a galaxy of stars, just out of reach.

As the World Below devoured itself, the World of Clouds flourished, its only need of the World Below, an occasional replenishment of soil and nutrients to enrich it.

‘I love you the way I love chocolate cake.’ Tristan had felt like an idiot the first time he’d said it, but he meant it.

When they had first seen each other, there had been no words. Tristan knew what he wanted in that moment. So did Cinzia. For weeks now, they met in the shadows, the secret hallways and in the night, each casting an eye over each other’s shoulders lest they be caught. What he did was a crime, an unforgivable sin.

Tristan held Cinzia’s hands while they stood enveloped in the darkness, the endless, starlit sky above them and the destruction of the World Below hidden.

It was easy for Cinzia to forget where she came from and the risk she took in moments like these. She looked into Tristan’s impossibly blue eyes and ran her fingers gently through the golden waves of his naturally wild hair. Never, never in all her life had she thought she would feel this way. Life had been so so terrible before. The only value left in the World Below that ever brought the Samsaran was soil and nutrients to grow with it. It had been during such a visit Cinzia had been seen and offered a place in Samsara.

There was no choice to make. Her mother and father had long ago passed from starvation and her brother from illness. She had been alone for years, fending for herself, afraid of everyone. There was no kindness left in the World Below.

But one day, as she obediently served, she saw Tristan and her heart had dared to begin to feel something other than fear.

He was perfect. That was all she could think. He felt a dream to her, something that if she stirred or touched, would vanish.

Tristan reached into the pocket of his exquisite deep blue coat, a coat the seemed it was made of the very fabric of the night sky. He held up a silver, heart-shaped locket that glittered in the starlight.

‘This is for you.’ His deep voice declared.

She stared at the necklace, hesitating to touch it.

‘I can’t. What if someone sees me with it? They’ll know it’s not mine. I never, never could afford something like this. They might…they might…’ Tears came to her eyes. She hadn’t been given a gift since she was a child.

‘No one will hurt you. I won’t let them. You are mine.’ He gently clasped the locket about her neck. ‘You are mine, Cinzia.’

He looked at her with longing. She could feel it. How would this end? How could it end? They would never be accepted by the other Samsaran. It didn’t matter how powerful Tristan was, he might be on the Grand Council, but could he really change the minds of all of Samsara, could he?

‘I don’t care what they think. Cinzia, I will do anything to make you happy every day as long you live.’

Should she dare to dream that dream? She imagined them walking hand in hand through the tree-lined avenues, the sun on their faces, she in an elegant gown like she’d seen the Samsaran women wear and he in one of his fine suits. Could life really be like that?

She looked at the locket around her neck, the little silver heart, intricately etched with graceful swirling patterns. Something so small meant so much.

‘But if they see me with this, they’ll know someone gave it to me. I couldn’t bear the idea of you being punished. I don’t care what happens to me, they can kill me, but you…I couldn’t bear it.’

He brushed a loose strand of long brown hair out of her gentle eyes, grazing her emotion-flushed cheek. ‘Leave me to worry about such things.’

No one would harm her. He would never allow it.

He kisser her lightly three times – one on each cheek and once on her forehead, lingering.

They both jumped. Someone had opened a door and was coming down the corridor. Cinzia quickly hid the locket under her blouse, panic filling her.

‘I love you the way I love chocolate cake.’ He quickly whispered, daring to kiss her on the lips before she ran from the hall, disappearing.

Tristan turned and walked towards the intruder. A man, similarly aged, stood leaning against a pillar as if waiting, loudly eating an apple.

‘That little “I love you like chocolate cake” line is perverse.’ Gilhart smirked.

Tristan shrugged. ‘It’s no more perverse than your “apple of my eye”. At least I’m a bit more original.’

‘Did you give her the locket?’

‘I did.’

‘They go mad for a bit of shinny metal don’t the Bound?’

‘So true. It’s a small price to pay though. Everything just tastes so much sweeter when they’re in love.’

‘You can’t beat it,’ Gilhart agreed, finishing off his apple and tossing the core away. ‘the soil is just of such a higher quality. It’s a pity the Council disapproves of using them this way. I don’t see why. They just end up the same way down below.’

‘Who knows. All that matter to me is my cacao plants will have an amazing season once I add her in to the nutrient mix. The chocolate cake at the end of it all will be simply outrageous. I can’t wait.’

‘You give the phrase, “I love you like I love chocolate cake” new meaning.