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Passencoree
Forum Moderator Member
In just-enough-legible hand, a vote of yes and a single name is written upon a section of the page:
”Eddi McClearn”
Ominous.
The wind is biting, and you are standing atop the watchtower. While you try to distract from the cold in your bones and the despair ever-creeping about the edge of your consciousness as you stare westward, your mind begins to wander. Moments of beauty, flickering little memories that you let yourself wallow in. “They’re just the beginning.” You are quick to prod yourself with. “When she arrives, I will embrace her. Memories. We will make more.” With that firm reminder, you let your mind wander away from the cold, the wind whistling through the gaps in the stones, and the present state of separation you find yourselves in. For a brief and lovely time, you are warm as…
…you remember something from your shared time aboard the airship. She stood on the deck, staring up at the night sky. Her hair caught the moonlight as if loathe to leave it. She was still. Stock still. As if modeling for one of your engraving projects. Even her chest barely heaved with breath. You smiled. Like a direct invention of the gods, an angel against a backdrop of stars. You’ll have to commit her to sculpture someday. About to announce your presence, a hand reached out to gently tap her shoulder, when her eyes shifted to look at you from their corners. She still doesn’t move. A furrow of brow, rising hint of concern, when you follow her change of gaze up to the top of her head. A frog. A frog in her hair. You don’t even think to ask how it got aboard the ship, or how it lived that long. You’re paralyzed by quiet and breathless laughter. You’re not sure why it was funny. It just was. Her lips were between pursed and smiling, as if to ask half-jokingly how you could dare laugh at such a predicament. You had quicker hands than she did, so you snatched up the well-traveled green fellow, freeing her at last. “We’re keeping him.” She signed, smirking. You quirked a brow. “He reminds me of you. Likes to fall asleep on my hair.” She explained further, with a few more movements.
You kept him in a box in your cabin, and fed him dead flies. His name was Rhys. You wonder if he survived too. Shaking your head. Anything, grasping for anything else as…
…you remember the plans the both of you made for after your arrival. A little log cabin at the edge of town. Somewhere close to nature, while it remained. She couldn’t hear the birdsong, or appreciate a summer night filled with the sound of cricket-chirping, as you did. You suspect she likes the option of privacy. The two of you, her in the garden, tending to flowers and vegetables. You’d have a forge in the back, where you’d practice your craft like your mother before you. You’d take your jewelry and crops to town on market days. You and Anwen, uninterrupted save by invitation. She has always lived in her own world. How privileged you were, to be invited to dwell there forever.
Are. You ARE privileged. You remind yourself, eyes fixed on the horizon. That will happen, that log cabin in the woods. Hold it in front of you, the image of her with a crop-basket at her hip, her lips upturned in a smile, her green eyes sparkling. Happy. Use it to stay warm. Place both hands behind your back. Let your mind wander back to thoughts of warmth as you remember…
There is a layer of dust upon the books, so long have they sat placidly on the shelf. Undisturbed, untouched by the snow and ice which the Library of the all-Peasants’ Congress sits nestled, snug, and warm inside.
These volumes have a proud history of neglect. Some of them had not felt the touch of mortal hands in centuries, before the building was anything but the Palace of the Formori Kings.
Take one volume, however. Break the traditional cycle of ignorance, now that the world is ended and only paper and warding magics remain. Brush the dust off. You might find that it sits less thick on this tome. Perhaps driven by curiosity, sniffing for crumbs of knowledge, you flip it open too eagerly. And furthermore, perhaps this causes a photograph to slip from between the pages, like an errant breath from between clenched lips.
You’d see a group of youths, rendered in black and white. They are filthy, dirty. Tired. Haggard, with sunken cheekbones, these teenagers and young adults. But there’s an element of relief in their bearing, triumph in their smiles, flickers of light and hope shining through pupils and ringed by sclera irritated and heavy with the dust of the bombed-out city surrounding them.
How full of inner life they look! A noted contrast with the blank, bugged out eyes and lolling tongue of the royalist general’s head one man has balanced like a shillelagh-ball beneath one foot.
Flip the picture over. On the back, in quickly-scrawled hand, is a missive that clearly never made its way out of the country. It reads, all cant and misspellings excised:
“To my Dearest Edith Mouse,
The lads and I struck a great victory for the cause. If my correspondence was lacking, my love, know it was no fault or desire of my own. I still intend to marry you, but the royal gaolers are hot upon my tail. Wait for me. In warmer times and better weather, I will find you in my arms, and we will dance again once more, the evils of this world left long behind, this war-torn hell a lapse in time, like the dwindling memory of a nightmare. We will dwell in each-other forevermore, and this will be our heaven and solace.
Yours Faithfully,
Lorcan McClearn”
But in that great vault of knowledge, in the frozen-over city, there is no-one to see this and read it.
hi im passencore
dont look at me too heavily or ill cry
