[Requiem] Pangur Ban

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

He told me once that he found old buildings comforting. They were, some of them, as old as him, if not older; a reassuring constant in a changing world.

But as my feet find me walking the streets of Ballinasloe, I realise with some sadness that these churches were all erected after he left this place.

I do not know why I sought his church; I have long fled my own.

I think, perhaps, I had naively hoped to find this place as untouched by the world as him; a pocket of Ireland preserved in the dusty unworldliness of times long past, long before I was even born.

Forbidden is the word he used.

One does not become a heresiarch on the technicality of a word.

Perhaps that hurts more than anything else; because I think he knew it as well as I did.

The countryside here is beautiful, it’s true. And if I close my eyes, I can almost imagine him walking this road, his footsteps laying the foundations for mine some two hundred years ago.

I think, though, that even in the peace of one of these little cottages, in the company of books and artefacts and that endless sky, I would have grown restless. Perhaps I would have given in to wanderlust, always returning here a little more jaded, a little more broken. Perhaps I would have taken him with me, uprooted him time and again, house after house but always home in his arms.

Perhaps it would have been I who broke his heart, in the end.

I court sorrow in all my nights, but I do not indulge in it myself as deeply as I ought. Perhaps, in seeing how cruelly I can wield it against others, I have learned rightly to be afraid of it.

Who could stand in the face of this emptiness…

And not be filled with terror?

If I stepped back into my car now, I could perhaps make it to the border by dawn.

I find, though, that I am not yet done.

And so, instead, I sink down on to one of these benches, the brisk sharp wind buffeting against my bare calves as though I might feel the cold, not half as cold as I. I eye the brightening sky with a sad gaze, matching grey for grey. Across the road, I spy the face of a feral cat peering out from the shelter of a car, watching me in turn, and a poem drifts to mind, murmured in a soft Irish lilt as the ghost of a forlorn memory strokes the curve of my cheek.

And I am grateful for small mercies, that no one walks these streets this hour to see me cry.

Comments

[lucifermourning.livejournal.com]

always nice to get a little insight into a character who comes across as being in control.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

She is, usually! Breakups are hard, though. :(

[lucifermourning.livejournal.com]

aw.

i think one of the things that makes it most interesting is the contrast.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

Yeah. Darcy very definitely has something she refers to as a 'court face' which is quite different from the way she is the rest of the time -- she's my only Requiem PC that consciously does that.

[lucifermourning.livejournal.com]

that is really cool.

Scarlet has a public face which is distinctly different to who she is underneath, but it's on display pretty much any time i'm actually playing her.

some day i will fail a derangement check, and then i will get to do something different. otherwise, she's always acting a persona.