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"Good day and happiness, dear -- Rosalind." Orlando called to the youth in the field, red-faced and breathless, nearly stumbling on the youth's 'name' and his own untied bootlaces at the same time.
The youth waved goodbye to that terrible courtier Jaques - whom Orlando considered with much disdain for his previous insults towards Rosalind - then the youth rounded on Orlando with the furrowed brow and downturned frown of a scorned woman.
"Why, how now, Orlando, where have you been all this while?" He demanded. While doing so, the shepherd boy looked over Orlando's uncharacteristically unkempt attire, perplexed.
Orlando had always been a meticulous man: trying to live up to the noble legacy of his late father that Adam claimed reflected so strongly in him, trying to prove to Oliver that he too was worthy of being his father's son. Even in the Forest of Arden, he had tried to look as proper as he could in the wilderness.
But for the first time in his life, Orlando had mussed up his hair and forced his collar crooked, staring into his reflection in a nearby stream and thinking about what the shepherd boy had said.
Speaking such wise words about time, speaking of the 'careless devotion' and unkemptness of men fallen deep in love. The youth had tilted his head, wind-tousled hair and fair skin, with a deliberate knowingness, claiming that he knew Orlando was 'not prisoner' to love: his sleeves buttoned, his shirt too neat. Tearing apart his lonely lovesick performance, its desired audience far from this idyllic forest.
Orlando had thought himself mad with love, speechless with the force of it rushing through his heart like a flighty deer, leaving him to hang his affection over all the branches of the forest just so his heart would not burst containing it. Yet he had stared into his tenuous reflection in the water and wondered, wondered if he was truly in love.
Orlando wanted to prove it to the youth. So he left his hair and his shirt collar alone, refusing to even run a hand through it. When he realised he was late and raced through the greenery like a hunted rabbit and his boots became untied, he did not stop to fix them.
The sun threw itself over the ripples in the water, dappling the edges of the brook with its golden light. This sanctuary in the forest could have men waxing poetry all day long. Orlando wished he were here in better circumstances. He wished Rosalind was here with him.
"My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise." Orlando breathed out.
Still irritated, the shepherd boy responded with his usual sharp wit, and Orlando replied in kind. When Rosalind herself was brought up, the youth made some insulting joke about unfaithfulness, filling the space between them with imagery of horns and devils in the bed.
"Virtue is no hornmaker!" Orlando spat, outraged, "-and my Rosalind is virtuous!"
"And I am your Rosalind." The youth sang, and Orlando shut his mouth, cowed by the reminder of their game. Yet through the light-hearted demeanour, Orlando noticed a subtle glint in the other man's eyes that he could not name. Before Orlando could ascertain any more, the youth named Rosalind burst into cheer.
"Come, woo me, woo me! What would you say to me now and I were your very, very Rosalind?" He sat himself on the dewy grass, eagerly looking up at Orlando for his answer.
He barely took a moment to think. His response was immediate, pure nature.
"I would kiss before I spoke." It would be soft, gentle. Everything he wanted to be for her. Orlando was rough, young and noble, but still he wanted to treasure Rosalind like her necklace which he kept tucked in his shirt, close to his heart.
The shepherd boy motioned for Orlando to sit next to him on the grass. So he did.
He spoke, nudging Orlando's shoulder, "I will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition and, ask me what you will, I will grant it."
Orlando turned and boldly requested, "Then love me, Rosalind."
The youth's lips curved into a winsome smile, eyes shining, "Yes, faith, will I. Fridays and Saturdays and all."
"And wilt thou have me?" With Nature itself as witness to this practice.
"Aye, and twenty such." The shepherd boy agreed, though not without his own sort of nervous energy running through him, tapping his thumb against the crook of his elbow where he had them crossed.
"What sayest thou?" Orlando's hands wrung the hem of his shirt for lack of anything else to hold on to.
"Are you not good?" The youth smiled alongside the joking query, but Orlando's grip on his shirt involuntarily tightened until his fingers ached. He swallowed down the sudden tremble that overtook him.
"I hope so." Escaped his mouth in a hushed breath, quiet and honest. He hoped he was a good man. He hoped Rosalind would believe him a good man. Maybe her belief alone would transform him, make him good, even if he did not believe himself to be.
Rosalind's smile softened. The whistling birds in the branches sang out in loving harmony. He hauled himself up from the ground, brushing off his pants.
"Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us." Rosalind offered his hands to Orlando, palms facing the sky, ignoring how Orlando flushed down to his neck in shock, "Give me your hand, Orlando."
Carefully, Orlando took Rosalind's hands in his own. They were almost too gentle and soft to be a shepherd by trade, far smaller than his. This flirty youth, cajoling Orlando to woo him in place of his dearest Rosalind, seemed so much like his beloved that it was not difficult to superimpose her image over him. There must be something magic about him, some spin of Fortune's wheel that brought Orlando here.
"—What do you say, sister?" Rosalind grinned wholeheartedly at his sister, hands unmoving from their place between Orlando's.
"Pray thee, marry us." Orlando rushed, eagerness unbound and far too taken-in by this game of pretend.
Rosalind's sister - Aliena, Orlando recalled - had her eyes blown wide open watching their exchange, looking somewhere between scandalously horrified and near to bursting out into laughter.
"I cannot say the words." She stuttered, but Rosalind hastened her, coaching, "You must begin, 'Will you, Orlando--"
"Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?" The name of his beloved flowed smoother in Aliena's voice, as if the name had been in her mouth her whole life. Orlando felt a strike of envy, he wanted to say Rosalind's name like that.
"I will." It felt impulsive, yet as natural as breathing.
"Now?" Rosalind, despite being the one to suggest this in the first place, appeared flummoxed. Orlando laughed joyously, disbelieving. Of course he wanted it now.
"As fast as she can marry us." Orlando replied. He gently tugged them both closer with their joined hands.
Let him see Orlando's sincerity. He was in love. He could prove it.
He threaded Rosalind's hands with his.
"I take thee, Rosalind, for wife."
Silence. Rosalind's face completely flushed red, matching Orlando. Rosalind regained his voice.
"I might ask you for your commission, but I do take thee, Orlando, for my husband." That suppressed accent, sharp consonants and all, made Orlando's breath catch in his throat. When he first met Rosalind, his voice had refused to leave his throat. He couldn't say a single word. All he could do was listen to hers.
So alike.
They seemed so blindingly similar. Orlando could barely believe it.
It was hardly an official wedding. More like an elaborate act, more like an overcomplicated rehearsal, but it felt so real.
Orlando let Rosalind's hands slip from his.