Dwelling in the past - Aedan Gilter's Journal

[TheBrogueadier]

My past.

I am the prisoner

I’ve come to fear the light, the pain it brings. The Black has become a comfort now, in its embrace I am free of the confines of a body, free of the tortures of the light, free to escape to where there is no pain, no fear.

If I lie still enough the cold flagstones against by back slip from my mind. I can shut out the aches and pains of my daily sessions and become nothing but thought. Sound never reaches here, there is nothing but my thoughts and the freedom that brings.

The dark never lasts long enough. Soon the light comes and I am dragged from my cell, this daily ritual of ours. I’ve lost track of the times they’ve taken me now, it could be a dozen. It could be twice. It doesn’t matter, in the light I am broken, I am theirs.

A long time ago I’d have said I was a strong man. But I know now I am not.

They cut the truth from me with dispassionate ease. They took an arm, a salami thin slice at a time. I’d confessed to my crime by the time that heavy cleaver had reached my second knuckle, By the time they reached the base of my thumb I’d confessed to every crime I could think of and begged them to tell more so I could confess to those as well. But they carried on to my elbow.

So many times they’ve taken me to the edge of death, they’ve cut and burned the truth from me. Each time I’ve reached that terminal end, they’ve held me back. Kept me from the sweet freedom of death. Their healers and their clerics have attended me, rebuilt me. And with a nod they’ve begun again.

I know I am to die here. But I fear it will not be soon.

….

I am the lover.

I sweat and writhe in my mistresses bed, her golden hall beneath the city.

I have never seen her face, though I know its perfect feel. Her mouth is millimetres from mine as we move in unison, other mouths bless my face and neck with a thousand kisses, each one a toxic mixture of ecstasy and agony.

I am lost in her, in the moment, in her taught coils that wrap around my body. As we both scream in climax I feel my ribs begin to pop.

I do not care, for in that moment I know there has never been a purer love.

….

I am the listener.

I do my task not because I enjoy it, but because I know it must be done.

I never leave the light, for it is my ally, my destiny. I sleep beneath a crystal dome, bathed in soft starlight, when the sun is risen I am always in its light, I glow with it.

Each day I do my tasks, I take my light, the truth of the stars and sun, and descend beneath the city. They bring those masked in shadow, tainted by the black stains of evil, and I cut out their sins.

I know there is a darkness in everyone, for before my shining self and my glittering tools I have never met one who has not admitted some guilt. Some evil.

But I am an honest man, a good man. I do what must be done.

….

I am the child.

I live in two worlds, one bright and shiny, full of riches and sights. The other a blackness absolute, it contains nothing save what I imagine, and the love of my mother.

Our home is a hall beneath the city, a temple to riches and success. It’s walls and floor are lined with the golden coins of many nations, I always feel safe knowing that I study and learn under the eyes of a thousand glittering kings, queens and emperors.

I have never seen my mother, for she only comes in the total black. There is no image to go with to my love for her, only sound. The soft susurrus of her as she moves across the floor, her happy laugh, her calm and amused voice, the way she sings.

I am content.

….

I am the farm hand.

I know that there is no true rustic ideal, but I work hard on the farm and love my girl.

At night I dream of adventures I do not want and monsters I never wish to meet.

….

I am the dying soldier.

My body is broken by another mans sabre. I am splayed, Spilt and spread wider than nature ever intended me to be.

I cannot help but think of my lover, the tears in her eyes as I left her at the gate promising her a better life when I returned.

I wonder how she will take the news that I am dead?

It is a jarring thought, the last one that passes through my mind, that with my last dying breath I am breaking my promises to her, making every word I whispered to her a lie. Our hopes for a family, a happy life, marriage and contentment are all to die with me.

In some foreign field, some strangers land, fighting in the name of a cause I do not quite believe.

Mortality makes me a liar.

[TheBrogueadier]

Thin, gentle fingers stroked the side of his head, feeling the rough raw skin of his branded scar.

“Oh my darling, what did they do to you?”

The voice woke him with a start, the hand that had been stroking his head clamped down over his eyes before they had a chance to open.

“Sssh my dear, best keep those closed” Her voice had a smile to it “Safety first.”

“You? You're dead.”

“Patently not.”

“I could be imagining you.”

“Perhaps.” She darted forward, her lips pressing hard against his. They kissed, full and deep, his hands running into the thick, curling locks of hair. She broke away suddenly. “Could imagination do that?”

“I need more convincing.” He grinned broadly.

“Oh, of course. But first there's a small matter of business to attend to” She moved onto the bed, pressing and wrapping herself around him. “Just a simple task. Almost insignificant.”

They moved together as she whispered her task, her pronunciation made breathless by their rocking.

“Now, let's see what we can do about your pretty face shall we. I want to see my love again.”

She kissed him again, harder than before, the curls of her hair falling over his face. The pain was explosive, each darted kiss seemed to set his skin on fire. His body coursed with a hedonistic cocktail of sensations, hot pleasure mixed with a burning cold agony, a base urge to feel and be felt battled with the heavy numbness of over exertion her scent, a bitter-sweet mixture of sandalwood, oranges and musk, undercut with some almost palatable sweetness of indescribable her.

As they moved to climax he worried for a moment that he might loose himself to the swirling sensations, that they might swamp and burn his self of sense away. As his back began to crack in her tight grip he heard a screaming on the edge of hearing, dimly aware that it was his own voice.

He sprawled in the bed. His body spent, mind burning and joints aching with fatigue. His ears pounded with a beat that seemed to press into the core of his mind. It slowly resolved into the sound of someone trying to break his room door down.

“Aedan?! Sir!”

“I'm fine.” He dragged himself toward the door, his voice cracked and broken.

“I'm fine, just a dream.” He ran his hand over his face, feeling the unblemished skin where the scar once was. “I'm fine...”

[TheBrogueadier]

Dawn Chorus

It had fast become one of his favourite diversions, an indulgence that even a few short years ago would have required far to much effort to have been bothered with.

It meant staying in the Sundren Comfort, not a huge problem of itself seeing as money worries were a thing that happened to other people, but the general clientele could grate on his nerves. He'd learned to amuse himself on such evenings by bribing the minstrels to play the most inappropriate songs he could think of.

He'd have a servant raise him before dawn, the extra cost of fresh water an additional indulgence, but one that always seemed to suit the mood. Dressed, washed and prepared he'd make the short walk across the park and through the streets behind the Triumvirate temple and richer houses to the old river bank. Once used for the rich and well bred now given over to to a curious mix of uses, the skeletons of private ndings and the occasional boat looked strange and abstract stranded for ever more on the swathes of green that had voraciously reclaimed the fertile soil of the empty river bed.

He'd wait patiently as the first dawn light probed the sky, finding the right spot along the bank as close to the edge as he could get. He'd look for solitude but it was rare to be truly alone here at this time of day as some from the Triumvirate or the cities Lathanderite population came for the same thing. Lovers were another thing to be wary of, out to enjoy the romance of the dawn or hoping for a more fertile blessing, to stroll into some bushier sections of the dawn riverbank was certainly a risk for the morally prudish.

He'd often be put in mind of some alchemical mixture in the pre dawn light, the rich blue black of the night sky curving overhead the spread of stars still bright in its dark embrace, below was the equally dark expanse of the ground thousands of feet below, dotted with the pinprick points of light from the few houses, farms and travellers active in the early hours, on a clear morning the Sunderers Gate burned like a man made constilation. Sandwiched between the two swathes of dark the growing amber to blue strip of lightening sky.

The strip would expand slowly, clouds caught against the growing band of light would put him in mind of sheets of paper cast onto hot coals, first darkening in silhouette then erupting into fiery orange edges as the power of the rising sun became too much to resist.

It wouldn't take more than a few minutes for the sun to arrive from there, the horizon growing ever more heavy with the mornings potential, the clouds and sky aflame with the passion of a new day, then it would truly arrive, the first kissing light of dawn would chase the shadows down the buildings behind and bathe all those stood along the edge of the flying city in that bright, fiery light. In his darker moods he would imagine it as literal fire, scorching away all life as it went, wishing it would boil the city and it's inhabitants, flaying rich and poor alike in its burning magnificence. Other days he would have to fight the urge to leap off into the void, arms outspread to try and soar amongst the magical hour of dawn forever, he certainly wouldn't have been the first to give into such a compulsion.

On most days though he would just close his eyes and feel the force of the new dawn wash over him, the faint tingle of change and potential that seemed to infuse those first golden moments of the day.

He'd always make sure to toss an offering out over the edge before he left, a way of giving thanks for a special start to the day, after that he'd trail back to the Aspirations in quiet contemplation with the other dawn admirers.