Land of the Beautiful Dead

by R. Lee Smith

“We’re oil and water, me and you. You can shake us and shake us, but we’ll never mix.” “Oil and water?” he echoed with a tired sort of humor. “No. We’re flint and steel.” “Yeah?” “Oh yes. And when we strike together, there are sparks. Fire, by its very nature, cannot help but consume and destroy, but still it can accomplish great things.” He threw her a glance and half a smile. “If properly contained and controlled.” “And you think you can control me?” “Ah, but you are not the fire in this metaphor, my Lan. You are the steel.” “Not the flint?” “I am flint.” He held up his mask, the one in faceless grey stone, before fitting it to his face. “Enduring and immoveable as only stone can be.” “Flint breaks, you know,” she reminded him. “So does steel, in a reckless hand.” Making a final adjustment to his mask’s strap, he came back to the bed to cup her cheek in his cool hand. “But in a master’s, it melts…” His hand moved, following the curves of her face downward, along her neck, around her shoulder. “…and is made malleable to every need…” He came teasing-close to her breast, only to slip away, the backs of his fingers brushing now at the hollow of her throat as they traveled on. “…as willing to be spoon as knife.” “You just keep telling yourself that,” she said, amused and—might as well admit it—blushing maybe just a bit. “I need no convincing. Any eye can see you are surely steel. Resolute as iron, with a sharp edge and the shine of silver.”