Not with a battle, not with fire and power poured out over bodies in relentless malice. Just whispers layered under a graveyard of hopes. A new sleeping beauty to be tangled in thickets of dead thorn. There's not even worms for company or caress. Trying in a desperate attempt, swim until sunken. Drowned after all instead of come to hither shores. A year since.
A year since. The prescription bottle for antibiotics was a strange keepsake, tucked with some rattling few inmates of expired painkiller from a surgery a May ago. An arrow pierced lung and the surety of an identity revealed. Year ago, he'd had lover lost by foolish decisions and incomplete convictions, Saarlander caged by self-determined damnation, to tar-folly. Hope's demands, hardships and winnings were so much harder then despair. Given over to carelessness in despair. Wonder comes back, looking at notes, putting on his shirt, or feeling the bones, could I have stemmed the tide before the blood flowed? Should I have insisted to go with him? The sudden hope of life elsewhere completely did not include me, even though it was freedom. Did I- no. There is no grudging that. Worry bones like a dog, looking for what end the marrow lies in. If's are cheap. They are not given to grace, or daring to continue.
If I had not loved, and he had never come to the depth of despair to finally know error, then experience wonder again?
-----not demanded exclusivity, would there have still been trust? Would there have been more than the first night?
-----not let faith in a sword overcloud my own hands?
-----not stepped in before Ida?
-----told him I was Thraen, would he have stayed from Tartarus?
Could the second try with the Great Crystal as well as a lesser have worked? He blacked out whole parts of the city. This war goes on. Without him, without us in our due times. No signs in the sky, or in our dreams except vague futures already shattered of portent. Will it be in five years, whoever the players? When we are released...it will not be because the universe cared.
Alois reached out, and finally found some who did. Is there more to offer others to hope for? To offer to those I pretend to protect, teach, or guide? To friends? If I despair in my heart, at least it means I believe in something. Something to mourn. Something unhealed that is given over as antidote for other to never be wounded- senshi, knights, and cats to come who will be more concerned with how to rebuild societies in the stars and genetics instead of whether the last bastion will become The Metropolis. Thraen set aside the small box of photos, notes and keepsakes along the perimeter of likewise small storage spot in his campsite. It was near enough to the flags of stone that in a sentimental, stupid way it felt like being in company again.
It was time to start stocking goods in the place, his 'Homeworld' asteroid, if there would be any hope of actual study and investigation. Bringing camping gear, personal items of too volatile existence to leave to Earth, and the start of stockpiled water was first. Books, a handful for now, recovering source material on brutalization hypothesis, capital punishment as a deterrent, and preventative justice proportionate with the culpableness and discussions of legitimate elimination in the face of loss of essential humanity. Hvergelmir, a devout pacifist, had sent a days-old page to speak to about purpose and action with the power they were entrusted with. It was a point that came heavy onto the palm of the hand where bones sat in civilian clothes.
Bones of one failed on the back. The warm hand of life new and young in the palm. The front. I have to know better what doors I open with these hands, and which I close. Too much is happening to defer further thought. The Black Watch allows for a forum of many ideas, but we must know our own thoughts before we can discuss them. Is it tenable? One man's works may be very different from many hands put together. So much weight depends on what influence is given to the fear we must face against the reality of the odds fought. Our weapons are not infinite as swords, or our healing instant as a taking a life. Is there any possible deterrent? The Negaverse's goals and infiltrations are at least suspected- when will they be complete? When is the point of no return? Learning cannot stop, not when there can be new data. How to escape from shadows of the Pillar? Evenings spent here can go to pages and thought. And it will be good to see how often I can come here. I have never tested it.
Thraen settled in the thin, ten-dollar recycled fleece blanket against the little tent wall. There needs to be so much more research. Plenty who should be talked to again. "But I miss you, and would talk to you first, given the chance, Alois. 'Nowadays men can not love seven night but they must have all their desires: that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded and hasty heat, soon it cooleth.' Right so we fared, soon hot and May a year later, this 'lusty', empty May I lay at end of by your tomb. A year, less or more some small number in passion and worry and you are too soon cold. 21 years."
"Do you remember omen I spoke? 'Time turns all loves into corpses.' "
Too appropriate. 'Schade. Lead ze way'
