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Post by eirawenrohana on Oct 1, 2011 21:37:07 GMT -8
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; background-color: #343434; padding:20px; border-top: 10px #af9390 solid; border-bottom: 10px #af9390 solid;] You seemed to harness the light Even though I felt cold inside when you told me it would be alright. Welcome to the journal of Eirawen Rohana. Please note that it works differently from most journals.
First, there are no dates or chronology involved. This journal will eventually consist of a collection of blurbs written at various points of Eirawen's life, capturing some pivotal moment in more detail than her history provides. There's really not much else to say about it. My will cannot endure if my heart is torn away. |
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Post by eirawenrohana on Oct 1, 2011 21:39:19 GMT -8
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; background-color: #343434; padding:20px; border-top: 10px #af9390 solid; border-bottom: 10px #af9390 solid;] You seemed to harness the light Even though I felt cold inside when you told me it would be alright. Closing the door behind her without a sound, Eirawen stared at the walls of her room without really seeing them. Reality was such a cruel concept, particularly when it made you pay a price for realizing it. She'd lost track of the time she had spent with Connor - lost track of the days that turned to months and the months that turned to years in which she had found herself swept under by his all-consuming charisma and lost to the world of her loved ones. In the travesty of realizing what she had done, the loss that had so quickly followed the delicate path of healing had left her a ghost in her own body.
Dwythe had carried their father's coffin. Standing at the front with their Uncle Landen, he had been as solemn as stone in his uncharacteristically modern black suit. Uncle Charles and Uncle Gideon had brought up the back, their expressions proud and serene despite the tears that streamed down their faces. The great red beard of Uncle Charles had dark tracks that did nothing to diminish the calm he steeled himself to. While Uncle Gideon's normally clean-shaven face sported the shadow of a man too distraught to shave, he too ignored his tears as he carried his eldest brother to the cairn.
They didn't blame her - none of them did. They were her family - more than that, they were Rohana. Rohana looked out for its own, especially those like Eirawen who could not, or would not, look out for themselves. Not a single one of them blamed her for Gawain's death, but that didn't stop Eirawen from blaming herself. She had been the one to fall under Connor's spell and regardless of his motives, she had been the one to bring him home. She had been the one to bring Gawain into it.
He was always protecting her. Gawain - her father - had made it his life's goal to keep her safe. She was his miracle child, his amazing and improbable little girl who survived everything that nature had handed her way and he had no intentions of allowing anyone or anything to change that. The only payment he had for such a low benefit occupation was the endless devotion of his daughter, who loved and admired him more than life itself. His daughter, who had allowed a beautiful man to convince her to act above her station. His foolish little girl, who believed the smiles and stepped into the shadows, only to walk away with the blood of her father on her hands.
Sinking slowly to the floor, Eirawen wrapped her arms around her legs and placed her head upon her knees. The guilt that gnawed at her was as painful as the loss itself, if not more so. It had taken the last of her tears from her - she had nothing left inside to shed. More would come in time, she knew.
For years, those tears would be there, but not today. Not on the day when she had laid stones over the body of her greatest hero and wept with the rest of her clan, not once making even the slightest sound. Her tears had dried up in the dry, acrid air of the bonfires and she had hugged aunts, uncles and cousins with an expression that could not begin to capture how shattered she was inside.
Returning home with her mother and brother, she left them in the living area cradling cups of hot tea, unable to bear the sight. Her father had adopted the truly British and utterly unshakable belief that there was a tea for every occasion. If the herbs didn't help, then the warmth of the liquid and the very act of drinking would give you something other than your troubles or excitements to focus your attention on. Tea was as much a social convention as it was a calming, healing one. At this moment, Eirawen did not feel that she deserved either calm nor healing. This was her kismet, the cosmic return for what she had done when she chose Connor's lovely laugh over her father's calloused hand.
It would take years for Eirawen to believe anything different. Years before the blame she gave herself for her father's death faded from kismet to weltschmerz, and from weltschmerz to the simple, ordinary grief of loss. It would take far longer for her to reach a point where she would overcome her bone-deep terror of men and what their smiles could bring in order to help a wounded colleague in the Forbidden Forest.
Perhaps if she had the ability to see through to that future, Eirawen would have moved to her bed that night and slept soundly. Perhaps if she had known that one day there would be hope, she would not have deliberately lain herself upon the floor and slept, knowing full well the chill could destroy her ravaged systems and leave her in a desperate state of health. Perhaps if she had known, she would have cared about herself the way she cared for every person who ever reached a hand to her for help, for health, for a cure.
But she didn't.
My will cannot endure if my heart is torn away. |
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