[Lost] - Memory Games

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

The training takes place mostly in dreams, my teachers hurling images at my mind to be sorted and catalogued, ordered and memorised. Emotions whirl and tumble, fighting the order I try to bring, my Beast-mind impatient and heedless.

Over time, I learn control. I think that my teachers are disappointed that I choose not to put my emotions away entirely, that I continue to purposely allow them to impinge on my judgement, but then they see them as a weakness; I do not. I simply learn to step aside from my emotions; to know and feel them in every detail, but to think clearly in spite of them. I may still act emotionally, but increasingly that is a choice I make, rather than something that is forced on me.

I order the images and mark them in my mind, recalling them in perfect sequence, night after night. As I do this, I feel the animal haze fading from my mind. It's still there, at the edges of ability, holding me back from the kind of inspired leaps of logic that most people take for granted, but within the sphere of my mind there is clarity now; clarity of thought and of memory.

When I have completed this test, I stand and speak the Oath that will define me; that has defined me since my return.

"Every night, I shall be better than I was in the morning; tomorrow, I shall be stronger than today."