The Urge to Wander

Re: The Urge to Wander

Postby Rance » Wed Sep 18, 2019 2:21 pm

The sounds come to her like second nature; hers, as a Jernoan tongue, was one for languages, grand sweeps, low troughs, great aeries. "Gwedi treiglo pob tref," Gloria said, finding a rhythm on the edge of the words. "Teg edrych tuag adref. 'How pleasant it is, to return our footsteps home.'"

She spoke this in the darkness of night with the satisfaction of a soul overseeing the breast of a new verdant world, the very breadth of secret wonder and vast responsibility that must have befallen the pioneering beings who'd first found this place and etched a landscape of futures from the patient earth. How was it, she wondered, that he possessed such clarity, such an inexhaustible font of wisdom? And none, for that matter, of force or of presumption; Sylvius Duquesne was wisdom embodied, had always been such to her; he knew the words to charm storms, the sentences to bridge great chasms of fear, and brought sight to blind eyes with the Right Words.

Yes. She knew it. She loved this man. Not with the confusing urgency of a woman seeking partnership, but rather, the smooth and effortless affection one possesses for forces beyond understanding.

The way one loves the wind, she loved him. The way one loves breath...

To Aithne and beyond she'd come for clarity — and found him instead, as she was meant to.

"Do I remember you?" Gloria chirped as she finally saw Dilys, perhaps later than she should have. She thrust her chin forward, eyed the beast, and said, "I think I remember you. You patient girl. But I—" she thrust a pointer-finger in the mare's direction, broaching lighter matters before heavier ones. "I came by foot. I'll walk beside, ser, and happily: if I ride without being on the reins, I'll vomit before long. Of all the natural curses I suffer, an illness for motion is by far the cruelest.

"I'm happiest on foot."

So she drew up her skirt-hems, stuffed them into her belt, and cared little for the shame of road-dirtied underskirts and drawers. The lantern rattled like Dilys' tack.

She turned, glanced one last time at the grand, smeared shadow of the crumbling house. Then back to him. Now, they were faceless shadows and long, far-reaching silhouettes flicker-flickering by candlelight.

"Did you love your mother's people? Or are they but obligation? r'Chyr'laud," the girl dared, repeating for understanding. Then: "It is a good saying, this struggling. But it dares death to be the worst consequence of life. And for those who see death as relief..."

She snuffed the candle. Darkness. Nothing but crickets, stars, and hoofbeats.

"I'd not begrudge them the comfort of escape."
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Re: The Urge to Wander

Postby Duquesne » Thu Sep 19, 2019 10:39 am

The mare shows her interest, ears forward, larges eyes involving Gloria in their scope with a turn of her noble head; a throaty whicker softens the night.

Things a man searched for when choosing his horses are demonstrated here in Dilys — interest in people, animals, and activity, as evidenced by her alert ears, and large eyes with which to take in the breadth of activity in a given environment. Large eyes able to see more tended to encourage a steady disposition; small eyes and less sight produced what his breeders called a “hot” horse, a flighty and nervous animal prone to fits, best avoided at all cost.

Dilys — genuine, steadfast, true.

Weeks of travel have dulled her energetic edges, but though she is subdued on the ride, her feathered hooves still high-step her into a prance and her elegant neck still arches under volumes of long mane. And there on her withers, the rein lies abandoned; so too are the stirrup irons, swaying darkly near his boots.

To this matter of riding and illness of motion, the man would say, with a hint of teasing humor in his tone, “Tell me if you change your mind — I will let you steer,“ suspecting Gloria would not, but the offer remains. One never knew.

Out goes the candlelight then, snuffed from of her swaying lamp, and they are folded for true into the embrace of night; starlight will be all that lights their way on the trek to Darkenhold.

Her questions and thoughts carve comfortably through the dim, and the man muses on these things as he rides beside Gloria’s walking pace. Gloved hands sunk low into low coat pockets — no use for the rein here — he guides Dilys by subtle cues from thighs, knees, calves, ankles, and more rarely, spurred boot-heels. The man could sit a horse well.

“Death is – surely not the worst consequence of life,” he answers, voice thoughtful, emerging from an even more thoughtful mind. But there is an edge of humor to his response. “To escape life by way of death is merely to realize after one is dead that, perhaps, the next phase of existence is no better or worse than what occurred before. Consciousness exists, whether or not fragments of it appear in the living world, and it continues on after all matter degrades, becoming part to new parcels. Like a bird, it matters not if there is earth or air beneath it — it flies on regardless.”

Dilys tongues her bit and the sound of steel is a clean punctuation in the quietness around them. The architect withdraws a hand from his low coat pocket, reaching to draw his hat down for a while, resting it on a high. Leaning his head back somewhat, he gazes up at the sky and its starry scatter as the mare’s proud gait carries its motion into his posture. In Provincta, there were too many lights ablaze at night and the sky was often drowned by them. Not so here in Myrken Wood, where the cosmos are clear and bright; it is yet another feature that snares his sentiment.

And in these moments, he understands — with a quietly drawn breath and an ease of shoulders after — this place is truly his home now. It feels right and is.

“Revisiting my family’s tombs,” he murmurs, in the midst of this heady awareness, “and recalling that struggle is a living privilege is not to admit death is the worse consequence, not for me. Consideration of this sort allows me to be aware in moments of doubt, a reminder that struggle yields wisdom, that there is much left to do and appreciate before the call of death and dust comes; that a moment of inner turmoil is not an all-consuming doom. I once figured death a promising option; a welcome escape from turmoil. And there was good cause for it — pain and sickness beyond measure, turmoil of mind and heart beyond measure; the summit of these combined is too high a peak for anyone to endure for long before contemplations of death become an invaluable solace.”

Night-sight is retracted from the eyes; he wanted to see the night as others do, as he once did. A comforting, quiet darkness. “Did I love my mother’s people?” a wondering tone for him. “Yes. I do still. Love and obligation are intertwined in this case; inseparable. In the r’Chyr’laud and its tribes, there is little distinction between the two for the Matriarchate and its bloodline: love and obligation are one and the same.

“Lanesse’s more worldly lowland regions, including the royal city, Provincta, allowed less for this kind of sentiment, something I long despised, something my late king and friend worked many years to improve. The ruling class — prior to the invasion of years past, that is, the invasion that ended his family’s dynasty — tended more toward austere rule and there was a distinct division between the upper and lower classes there. Yet the people, whether the tribes of the r’Chyr’laud province or the classes of the lowland counties, are one and the same. We share a vast heritage among us.”

A pause for thought and qualification. “Lanesse as a whole I love, else I would not have sacrificed so much to rescue her from certain doom. But — the desert tribes are different.” It is not like him to be so open about these matters. Perhaps the man has arrived at another realization, that to freely discuss formerly private topics with those he trusts is itself a deep privilege — a privilege of the living, as much as is struggle itself and much more beside. “That bond is blood, bone and soul, as old as sand. It is — sacred and necessary. A defense against the extinction of our culture.”
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Re: The Urge to Wander

Postby Rance » Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:58 pm

In the darkness, beside Sylvius Duquesne, it was safe to wander. Though her feet stitched a familiar path along the rough-run roads and through valleys cut by carriage-wheels and hoof-prints, her mind could travel the spaces it rarely dared to go: to its furthest corners, doors opened at the behest of his ever-calming words. He spoke — had always spoken — to storms, redirected their energies from the desolation of shores toward the hydration of thirsty plains.

Here, in the darkness, with Dilys's leather squeaking, Gloria felt calm. Sometimes she snuck a glance to him, to read his ever-cool composure, the relaxation of being that infected him: his shoulders drawn back so that he occasionally looked like a marbled still-life as moonlight struck him, the sheer, silent joy of simple pleasures. The moon. The ride. Good company.

...the summit of these combined is too high a peak for anyone to endure for long before contemplations of death become an invaluable solace..

Her boot-tip struck an exposed root. She almost keeled forward, but caught her hips and knees below her.

The mind had wandered too far.

"It — comforts me," Gloria whispered in the night. "Sometimes far more than I believe it should. To wonder if I should close my eyes, and never again open them, that the next step would simply be to drift away, and eventually I would float so far that I'd never know I even lived in the first place." And everything would be dashed away. Every happiness she ever derived. Every love she ever possessed. Every fury she ever came to know. "Or I would become — something else," said she, daring to balance upon this thread with him. "A consciousness desperate to find its new trajectory. Implanted in a new body, perhaps, or in a distant time, well before now, or endlessly beyond. Or on another star, or just floating on like a spark above flame.

"That seems nice. I dream of it. But I cannot fathom much more of the next world without imagining what I would lose in this one. Genny, Cherny, Ser Catch. Elliot." A brief damage struck her lips. "Ariane. My par'dak, who I wonder after too often — if he lives, if he misses me.

"And you. Nameless," gasped the woman, as if seeing a dark pit beneath the lip of a precipice, or an ocean stretching on for eternity. "Nameless, I can't think of it; I can't — can't imagine it."

So they forged forward. Her silence invited his story. How thankful she was for it. To think of deserts and their cruelties. To flee the cruelties in herself of which she'd never spoken to anyone. Seeing her Lanesse, with all its stony edifices (they were all breathtakingly beautiful, formed by him, all his creations), wandering through the bending alleys of Provincta. All of it a Sun-hot blur, a smear of sand and paint and blood. She did not know how close she had come to Dilys in those moments, or to him, but she held to the stirrup with her hand, and her low-hanging skirts whispered a serpentine rhythm across grass and dirt.

"How did you protect her? Lanesse," she clarified. Simple questions, these, and regrettable ones, for he deserved far greater. "What deeds did you do to keep her whole, in the wake of what you realized they did to you? And r’Chyr’laud. What does it mean? I want to understand."

That bond is blood, bone and soul, as old as sand. It is — sacred and necessary.

He was sand. So was she.
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Re: The Urge to Wander

Postby Duquesne » Sat Sep 21, 2019 7:27 am

The man takes time to balance his hat upon the pommel, reaching after to draw the edges of his coat closer across his chest; the desert is still on him and even a mildly cool night affects him now. Regal and well-worn buttons are fastened, tightening the man’s coat to his frame.

“It does comfort,” he says, voice light enough to match her whisper; there can be no softening the rasp at this hour and no need. “As you describe, it does — “ a high collar turned higher against his neck and throat “ — but I am with you. I cannot imagine the consequences. Terrible thoughts, unproductive.”

He rides in silence for some moments, anticipating the movements of the animal under him and absorbing them into his posture without ever losing seat. But looks at her here, observing her profile in the light reflected from the moon’s surface high above. A musing study, this.

“You speak eloquently,” he says, his interruption of the quiet nothing like interruption at all, but a natural and seamless addition to the quality of the atmosphere here. There is a sound to his voice, a sound like a smile. “That rhythm of thought is powerful; a platform.”

Listening, he hears the cadence of her skirts’ whispers and the hush of grass bending as she passes over, the sound of her footfalls joining the high step thuds of hooves, the sometimes flick-swish of tail and clink of tack as Dilys controls her prance. Beyond them, insects chirp and purr, though not as exuberantly as they had during Myrken’s warmer nights. An owl screeches distantly in the forest. And somewhere into this choreography of sounds, the man discovers Gloria’s proximity, a hand on the stirrup iron, a pace to match Dilys.

Into this, she asks him a thing that quiets the breath in his lungs. Questions no one asks — and ones no one has ever asked in quite this way before. Direct, innocent questions that reach into the heart of a deeply complex matter.

And what must she think when the man says nothing at all for long moments, long and meditative moments — and then, “Answers to those questions do not exist. They do not exist because no one has ever asked them, not as you just have. People prefer to take their measurement from assumption on this subject, using a narrow strip of understanding to inform their judgment of events and of my role in all of this. They never ask, only assume, only weigh the realities of what happened there against ignorant preconception." The architect falls silent after this, for a time, viewing the threads of hard-hearted sentiment he feels here distantly; views them as what they are, but artifacts of consciousness. "You had the decency to ask, so I will tell you what I can: I will give you context.

“There are things in this life we do and then do not remember, with intention.” He is in mind of something Glenn wrote. “Moments of history that serve us better forgotten or else heavily cloaked. We do this because to observe them in remembrance is equal to untold pain.”

A pause to breathe a near-silent breath, allowing the filling of lungs to straighten his spine, there under the weight of his pack. And it is not the sword causing this heaviness, but something else; sensation on the spine.

“I took an oath," he says, voice steady and evenly paced throughout this accounting; the voice of a man in reflection as he peels back the cloak on this story, for her sake. "My friend the king gave me a task and I did it to the utmost of my ability.” Utmost is the not the word for this; it falls well short. And in those days, his was unquestioning loyalty, three-quarters foolish, the rest being genuine heart. Naiveté at its finest. “This was to investigate a list of individuals and determine their connections to a troubling rumor, one that pointed to invasion. That — reality — was already in motion by the time I uncovered enough to understand. By then, my entire world was collapsing — neighboring forces crossed the border and tore a swath into Provincta and she fell in a matter of hours; too quick a victory to not be engineered by someone. There was absolute chaos everywhere. No one was prepared for defense. Many military leaders were on leave for royal holiday. The armies, cavalry, and archers were assembled in parade training in the south; supplies had not been replenished in the city; war machines stood idle without operators. Soldiers rushed to assemble themselves in defense but lasted only minutes in frenzied street combat. All shortcomings and slight inconveniences in the state of our military and civic defenses on that day rapidly became overwhelming disorder and confusion; an elegant and destructive choreography of errors. People simply – fled – in panic without provisions, without anything at all, into the countryside.

“And there they were slaughtered by the thousands as the enemies we did not know we had left a swath of destruction hundreds of miles long, all across Lanessian greenlands in a matter of weeks. Provincta, bright and regal, became a city of bodies, fire and smoke. Troops took the palace. The entire royal family, dead. Civic leaders, lords and ladies, almost all were dead. The realm was suddenly without its ruling body.” The man draws a slow and stabilizing breath, asserting control over a stir of instinct, here low on the spine. He is calm, but his memory is not. “And all I could do was — continue my investigation with narrow focus, hunting for those responsible. I took an oath. This was my guidepost for a time.

“The force that drove me to calculate my enemy, it was my fuel to burn. I was already suffering the smoke by the time I left Myrken Wood to return there, as the invasion was happening. And navigating the madness of the countryside to reach Provincta was — “

A small gesture of hand, a gentleman’s effort, as if to clear away a darkness; and not the night, a different darkness.

“So ensued a self-directed course of action. Single-minded, foolish, dangerous action. Though the chain of command was broken, I had my orders and I had authority, and these were the only tools available to me at the time.” Calmly, the man has just passed over years of occurrence. "There was no thought of turning aside, of stopping. I — had to fulfill my oath to the king and try to secure justice for him, for us all."

He lifts his hat from the pommel and places it on his head, mindful of the tilt forward and to the right; this so that he might free hands to return to coat pockets. “The rest is not important. What is, the story of how Lanesse fell to such betrayal and how she stood up after and retaliated.

“If you truly desire to know my part, you must ask someone who was there. They will have the truth — real knowledge of the nuances of my actions there, for good or ill — knowledge I do not have.”

The man narrows his focus down onto the night sounds around them, casting a net of senses across the landscape to help calm and distract his thoughts. He cannot be certain he represented himself well a moment ago; it gives him pause. He looks to her again now, walking beside Dilys, hand on the stirrup iron still, with all the sounds of night flooding in. It is a peculiar moment, seeming as if he has just returned from a very different environment. Perhaps he has, in remembering.

“It is an ancient name for the civilization that once existed where the desert now sprawls, formerly the seat of power in that region. r’Chyr’laud means nothing in the language today, but in its archaic form and context, it roughly translates to Seas of Qas, a reference to ancient tribal lore surrounding the origins of my mother’s people; my father’s also. r’Chyr’laud is not the name of that point of origin, that original people — so ancient we cannot remember what they called themselves. So, we call them Qas, the r'Chyr'laud — cumbersome word and the only name we have for that much older kingdom; an empire. Our ancestors.

“So few know that," he says after a breath, and looks at her. "Only a handful now. We have gone from the mightiest of ancient empires to less than one hundred. A troubling perspective, why I will not stop fighting to protect our tradition and mythology, our language and those few surviving kin. Lanesse, she stands on her own now. The desert tribes, they do not have such luxury; not yet, but they will."
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Re: The Urge to Wander

Postby Rance » Sun Sep 22, 2019 12:38 pm

Their feet and hooves chewed away another mile as Duquesne spoke. There was so much she wanted to interject, but she refrained; it was best to hear it all before her curiosity thought itself more necessary than her patience. But as they continued on, and he spoke — their feet following a winding path that unraveled down the side of a hill and doubled back upon itself like an old serpent — she found eye-hooks in his words, places to attach an understanding of his world through visions of her own.

...the enemies we did not know we had.

As he described the gravity of it, did he sense the faint tightening in his voice? The way it constricted itself in his throat, like rawhide drying in the Sun. The way mud turned brittle, dry, and cracked under heat, as he spoke of lost lords and lost ladies. Of death. Coarseness in him. Bitterness, or so she believed it. For himself? For the circumstance? Dilys walked, and so did she, but all he had was the rhythm of the hooves, and a spell of memory to charm him.

So Gloria reached across time and strife, and touched his knee. Right then, he looked down at her, as if waking from a dream. I am here. This is now, she wanted to say. "To answer an oath is a matter of loyalty, but to answer what we believe is right and true, that is a matter of heart. Your King couldn't have asked to have a better friend, so willing to answer the needs of home that — that he returned from afar to answer his dedication. You did not need to go," Gloria reasoned, and not with cruelty; rather, with clarity. "But you did. Such a thing speaks of you more than any lesson you can teach.

"At'chemso," she said. Her own desert words. Better, in that moment, than Standard. "I'm sorry, Sylvius. For your loss. For the things you saw, and — and what you had to return to. I wanted to ask if your king was a good one and a just one, but I know the truth. Because he chose you. That alone is enough to answer whatever curiosity I may have. To the Veldt with those who presume. You have nothing to prove. Nothing to explain. You went, you answered your loyalties, your rule, and your blood, and then you came back.

"The Qas exist now because of you. You saved a hundred worlds. That, to me, sounds like victory — even if ruin finds it fit to lie to you."

On the horizon, an ancient glow ebbed over an army of hillocks and rolling mounds. Still miles out, but closer. The warm burn of civilization, of a familiar place. Of a home.

"All of it sounds so familiar. It's what I fear for Myrken Wood, what befell your Lanesse. I can see it. I can see it."

Then she stopped.

"You should walk. It will help. Clears the mind," she explained, "to batter the feet."
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Re: The Urge to Wander

Postby Duquesne » Thu Sep 26, 2019 7:50 am

Gloria stops.

And Dilys walks on until the man brings her to a halt by leaning his body slightly back. Between the last clop of hoof and the ongoing present moment, there is a unique atmosphere here on the path; trees seem to dampen sound and restrict the light breeze that had drifted in the more open spaces they had walked. It is peculiarly quiet here.

It is just as well Gloria stopped when she did, because the man was already of a mind to do just this, being utterly stilled by what she said to him and suddenly needing a change of pace. She will join all of one other soul who had offered comfort on this subject and it has surprised him, shocked him into a wordless condition. He studies her in the darkness and quiet for long moments, the small un-diffused light of the moon casting all but his jaw and mouth into shadow, but here he looks aside in preparation to dismount. A boot kicked over the pommel, he drops to the ground in a heavy slide of coat-skirts — and turns toward Dilys a moment to mask his face, to mask it further in the deeper shadow under his hat brim. Unclipping and lifting the strap of his pack up over his head and off his shoulder, the man pushes it up behind the saddle and ties it down. A small but practical busywork.

And when this is done and he can turn toward Gloria, he simply keeps turning toward the path. As she said, walking clears the mind and his mind needs clearing, or at least some measure of order. So he walks, expecting Gloria will join. Dilys, minding her own rein, walks off his right shoulder. On her back, his sword remains within easy reach though he would not be needing it anytime soon. He hoped.

Every word she said hit him like waves, each seeming perfectly weighted and sent; the woman and her words like arrows. Hours or days from now when his mind is far clearer regarding the contents of these minutes, the architect will find himself deeply impressed by her conviction, her clarity in speaking what she spoke. In these moments, though, he is wrapped in a cloak of thought and private emotion and silence.

It’s what I fear for Myrken Wood. Haunting sorts of words, these.

After perhaps five minutes of silent walking, the man reaches aside and closes gloved fingers around her arm, a firm and gentle grip as he slows to halt. He looks sideward at her. “Thank you,” quietly spoken, “for what you said.” There are not words enough to satisfy this, but they, along with the texture of his tone and expression, must support his mind on this matter for now. Gloria will know what it means to him.

And though he addresses what she said of his actions in Lanesse and his ongoing efforts with the desert tribes, he finds himself unable to ignore the potential she spoke of — and the potential similarities between the fate of Lanesse, the fate of Myrken Wood, and a man named Farazh.

The longer that one lives, the more difficult his subtle and not so subtle poisons will be to eradicate from the world. A deep breath is drawn and exhaled nearly without sound as the man gently releases her arm and looks toward the road, leaning to walk on. With every step, a great glass wave follows but has not yet begun to roll; it bides its time with him.
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