Post by Valentinian de Layne on Sept 29, 2011 12:01:54 GMT -5
When they told me the news, I received gruff sympathy from the Prefect, and then a tactful withdrawal. But they need not have worried, I would not have shamed myself, for I felt nothing save a sort of distant discord in my thoughts. I went to the Temple of Elua, and knelt awhile in prayer. Time passed, I knew not how much, and I realised that I was waiting. But waiting for what?
My brothers' faces swam before my eyes, slipping in and out of focus. It seemed impossible to me that I would never see them again, that they were relegated now to memory in perpetuity.
I had lived on the memory of them long enough already, but underpinned by the substance of real hope, knowing that if I only worked hard enough I would see them again. Time had swallowed so many of their years, and now it had taken their futures too. There was a sour taste in my mouth, burning like bile at the back of my throat. Something came to me upon a dulled roar. All that lost time. I should have been with them. And now it was too late. All wasted.
I realised why I was waiting. I was waiting for the sense of peace. The surety. As if the silence of the temple was a great well from which I could draw strength. But it did not come. There was only the chill emptiness of a stone and marble prison, sealed within a dome of sky.
My brothers are not warriors. Constantine, like my father, is a scholar, a statesman. And Arcadius. Such bright eyes are not made to watch men kill each other and die.
The tense was wrong. But I could not, even in my own head, correct it.
I stood, thinking to centre myself by going through my practice routines. But the edges of the circles were blurred as if my dry eyes wept. I staggered, and almost fell, having no place of myself in relation to the world. It was though I had been struck blind. All of it was receding, flowing away from me like ink.
Like blood upon a battlefield.
It was probably a blasphemy of a kind but I threw myself backwards like a tumbler, arching through the air and landing once again on my feet. Nothing. Motion. Form. Nothing. Motion. Form. Nothing. I did it again, traversing the length of the Temple, spinning faster and faster, turning my body over itself, like I was made of water. When I reached the far pillar, I put my hands on the stone – a dull slapping sound breaking momentarily the silence – and launched myself again. Back and forth. Back and forth. I ran up the walls, I leapt, I rolled, I twisted this way, twisted that, turned somersaults. I waited for the pain.
I felt my palms tear. There was a burning in my heart. My muscles ached but distantly. I heard the rasping in-out-in-out of my breath.
And finally I fell.
My body ceased to obey and I tumbled onto the cold, well-trodden grass, anemones, scentless, crushed beneath me.
I lay there, waiting still. For peace. For understanding. For peace. For understanding. For the strength to bear it.
For a fucking reason.
Yet there was none.
And when the dawn came, and I uncurled my bloodied hands, the careless beauty of the fresh-made light cut my heart to ribbons.
My brothers' faces swam before my eyes, slipping in and out of focus. It seemed impossible to me that I would never see them again, that they were relegated now to memory in perpetuity.
I had lived on the memory of them long enough already, but underpinned by the substance of real hope, knowing that if I only worked hard enough I would see them again. Time had swallowed so many of their years, and now it had taken their futures too. There was a sour taste in my mouth, burning like bile at the back of my throat. Something came to me upon a dulled roar. All that lost time. I should have been with them. And now it was too late. All wasted.
I realised why I was waiting. I was waiting for the sense of peace. The surety. As if the silence of the temple was a great well from which I could draw strength. But it did not come. There was only the chill emptiness of a stone and marble prison, sealed within a dome of sky.
My brothers are not warriors. Constantine, like my father, is a scholar, a statesman. And Arcadius. Such bright eyes are not made to watch men kill each other and die.
The tense was wrong. But I could not, even in my own head, correct it.
I stood, thinking to centre myself by going through my practice routines. But the edges of the circles were blurred as if my dry eyes wept. I staggered, and almost fell, having no place of myself in relation to the world. It was though I had been struck blind. All of it was receding, flowing away from me like ink.
Like blood upon a battlefield.
It was probably a blasphemy of a kind but I threw myself backwards like a tumbler, arching through the air and landing once again on my feet. Nothing. Motion. Form. Nothing. Motion. Form. Nothing. I did it again, traversing the length of the Temple, spinning faster and faster, turning my body over itself, like I was made of water. When I reached the far pillar, I put my hands on the stone – a dull slapping sound breaking momentarily the silence – and launched myself again. Back and forth. Back and forth. I ran up the walls, I leapt, I rolled, I twisted this way, twisted that, turned somersaults. I waited for the pain.
I felt my palms tear. There was a burning in my heart. My muscles ached but distantly. I heard the rasping in-out-in-out of my breath.
And finally I fell.
My body ceased to obey and I tumbled onto the cold, well-trodden grass, anemones, scentless, crushed beneath me.
I lay there, waiting still. For peace. For understanding. For peace. For understanding. For the strength to bear it.
For a fucking reason.
Yet there was none.
And when the dawn came, and I uncurled my bloodied hands, the careless beauty of the fresh-made light cut my heart to ribbons.