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#Post#: 483--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: September 23, 2015, 7:05 pm
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[quote]I think I have resolved to stay for the time being, as it
becomes ever more apparent that this order would collapse
without me and I do not need another order chanting after me,
pursuing me, speaking of all of my broken oaths. I know the way
that Eveya thinks of Marus and Marus was but a stranger to her-
she knows me and claims that she loves me, loves me for being
callous and utilitarian. I would not love me for that. Not if I
was as sentimental and ever-feeling as she was. Nonetheless, I
have resolved at least for the time being to remain and hope
that I can organize the Silent, rally them such that when I do
leave , I will not have its death on my conscious, not can I be
hated and blamed for breaking oaths that I did not make.
Leeun is one such that will need weeding out. After he attacked
Marus, and Aleifr and I arrived at the catacombs where such a
thing had occurred. Those crypts bring out that which is most
toxic in the body, they cause an imbalance in humours and person
-- though I suspect Leeun was imbalanced to start with. Had I
been the one to induct him into the Silent, we would not be
facing this problem. Nonetheless - he is possessed, plain and
simple , and been possessed for so long that he believes the
demon to be part of him, inseparable from the whole. Already
this becomes a problem with three simple, logical solution that
can be executed in a relatively straightforward fashion. First,
I can call upon a contingency of Golden Law Paladins, perhaps
led by Jonathan Caste - and perform a simple exorcism. If he is
not possessed - as he claims- I'll call in Berthroy - with whom
Yumna maintains a connection with - or Gewn to enter his mind
and lock away whatever consciousness dwells within, just I had
done long ago. And just as I had helped Marus with, months
prior. The third, and neatest option would be to just cut off
his head. I'm quite attracted to that one.
Nonetheless , whilst these options were discussed Leeun fled
into Stormwind. After alerting the Silent, he was tracked down
in the local pub, the Slaughtered Lamb, and unceremoniously
captured. I shot two plague blots into his face, and I only
slightly regret using a forbidden thing within the city gates.
Nonetheless, the Lamb is not a place where the traditional rules
apply- thus, I am sure I will not be reported for my actions.
Ryhek managed to tackle him and bring him into prison. I don't
know where he's being held and I don't particularly care -- but
it's certainly the most I've ever liked Ryhek. I suspect Eveya
will demand he be spared and I suspect I will have no choice but
to acquiesce to that. I have made many such actions of late,
partially out of lack of energy and partially because Eveya is
only too happy to ignore me and no matter how loud I should my
disapproval she still is the master of the Silent - or so she
claims.
In three days I have recruited three into this order : Thaegan,
a strategist who is clearly disciplined but a bit of a loner--
if Ryhek had thought I would believe them to the the same,
Lynoc, a soft thing but one I hope will fit into a role, and
Mimi : whom I am most endeared to. She provoked a paladin late
last night, and the discussion of the Light was addressed, and
he was uncompromising and rigid. I caught the words he spoke to
his squire as he left us behind; ruthlessness is the greatest
kindness. I hated him in that instant. I had not hated him
before - merely felt he was the generic, typical paladin that
rages and hates under the veneer of righteous fury, a term which
I have come to loathe — but in truth, he was something far more
evil than that. It is vile to say that ruthlessness is kindness.
I’m cruel and not kind, and I know this about myself. I know
that I will never be capable of kindness, true, unmotivated
kindness. But I also know that it is not kindness to be cruel.
It reminds me of what I spoke about with Landen - The Bishop of
Northshire Abbey - I had gone to him earlier that day to speak
with him about what his expectations would be of me, and to
assuage my fears about how my being would be accepted within his
Abbey. He looked genuinely sympathetic to when I told him of the
indignities I had experienced at the hands of other paladins. I
think of Cyrell Lucavi, who called me a dog and knighted me int
he dead of knight, with only Daenal and Martigan looking on. I
think of how Adam was knighted earlier than me, despite his less
than committed take on the virtues. I did not tell Landen that
my horse had died, and had she lived, I would worry that the
paladins under the Bishop’s command would wish for me to kill
her. He told me that I would start at the same place as the
paladins and priests - which is a comfort to me. I worried and
fretted that I would be placed on some exterior position, should
I join with them. It made me reconsider my decision to stay. I
suspect I shall leave within the month, in truth. I have
resolved to stay only until I am certain that the Silent will
survive utterly without me. There is is this strange instinct,
this ever burning desire to be a paladin again, even though I
shall never be a paladin and perhaps, never really was one. I
miss it, though. I miss discussing the Light with people who do
not revile it, I miss feeling part of the clergy and cosmos
alike. I do not miss the self-important sermons or the never
ending push to punish would-be-heretics like Mimi ; but there’s
something about it that I find myself ever missing.
I suspect I miss the idea that I could be pure. But I know what
Daniel said is true and wrong all at the same time. I miss the
lie. But I can always lie some more.
Daniel is anxious for our wedding, I think, but not helpful. He
has only described the date as “when it is convenient for all
parties”. I do not know when that it. I do not know -what- that
is. I think I shall arrange for it to be in early November - but
I am uncertain of whether or not I should begin submitting
invitations, I am uncertain still if this is the right move to
make. Nonetheless, it is a move that I am making. Knight takes
Rook. King takes Knight. I do not want to think of the chess
games of strategy anymore. I wanted Daniel to come to me,
though, and I wished for him to stop speaking with the paladins,
stop speaking with Gewn, and stay with me. I wanted to kiss his
knuckles and feel his gauntlets tear at my lips. I wanted the
rot to consume us both down to the bone, ’til our consciousness
was only left in the beetles crawling in and out of our
ribcages. But those self-destructive, lustful impulses die as
they are spoken. They die and I am left behind.
Eveya and I spoke at length, finally. I made her play questions
with me, as Philomene Asteris made me and all the others play.
You do not win Questions then and there, you win it only when
you have accumulated enough answers to resonably know and
destroy that which is before you. I do not think I won, but I do
not think Eveya won either. I think as it is with many things,
it has reached a terrible stalemate. She told me a story though,
a story about how her sister’s soul is in her rifle, and how her
sister was killed by the Legion while she fled to Azeroth. I
wondered if she had killed her sister, because she had told me
in advance that the story was a lie. She said no, but I do not
think that was necessarily true. Eveya has a secret, and
apparently I will learn it one way or another, just as I will
know one way or another, what she intends to say to me, as I
intend to leave. Gewn, at the very least, approved of my
assessment of Eveya’s character and I appreciated that vote of
support. I am hopefl these new recruits will support me, as
others have. They don’t have much other choice.
I heard a rumor about Elsiere and I am loathe to write that
down. She is my Moon-Wife, the one who waxes and wanes in her
affection for me, she is my forever. She is something that is a
never changing aspect of me, and in my memories of her, even
though her entire life is so outside of me. I have built her up
to be this… thing. This conglomerate of feelings and thoughts
that have long since stopped being the Elsiere of reality, but I
miss that Elsiere too. Eveya asked why I did not return to her
and find my children, why I insisted on an isolation away from
her, fromt he children. I replied with something like the turth.
We are terrible or one another. Ever since she grabbed me
infront of the cavern and begged me, pleaded with me - turn
back, turn back -ever since I slept at her side in a bed that
wasn’t mine, while her husband was away; we have always
corrupted one another and I have corrupted her. It is as Daniel
says. I corrupt people. It is better I stay away.
I heard a rumor she re-married Zemptias Fireshield, and has
journeyed to far off shores. The children are with their father,
Martigan Lighthammer, after a much publicized mental collapse. I
wonder if its true. I wonder if Martigan would mind. I am still
their — I am nothing to them. it has been years. They may not
recognize me as the man who held them, who changed their
wrappings, who kissed their cheeks, who their mother loved. They
may only see me as their father does, as an interloper. No, I
cannot return to them. Elsiere’s ship has sailed away, and she
passed my wreckage as she rounded the bay, a boat without a
bottom crashed on a Forgotten Shore.
Eveya asked me if my leaving the Silent was the same as ever.
Self-destruction. An effort to escape and submerge under the
water - to leave, and become anonymous again. She wanted to know
if I was leaving, so that I could be new and whole once more;
Caleb Norwill with all of the mystery, with all of the
strangeness. I could try again, and not make mistakes this time.
I scoffed and told her no, of course not. This was about her
mismanagement of both the Silent and me, personally. I still
think that is true, but I also wonder if she was right, in some
way. Maybe I am trying to run away from it. But that desire
cannot be the only reason. That cannot be the only thing. I am
not trying to submerge, because I am not trying to sink. I am
Fish, the one who rises to the top, and grows to fit any pool I
am placed within.
The idea of drowning may not appeal to me - but I have this
image, of floating. Floating along the bay, eyes looking upward
at the endless sky, all of the sea creatures of the depths
rising up to sing to me. The forests may not whisper my name any
longer. But the sea still sings, and it is always calling me to
return. That is why I hate the ocean. I am terrified that one
day, the song will take me back. [/quote]
[quote]
To Do:
Updated Guest List:
Aleifr, Gewn, Eveya, Marus, Yumna, Etharion Longsight (plus
one), Brommidor Stonebrow, Daenal, Oliver MacGlynn (plus one).
Harkon Maxwell (plus wife, Alucion) Consider: Martigan
Lighthammer. Maybe he will bring the children around.
Location: Thesalmar / Menethil Harbor / Discuss with Daniel
Officator: Marus, almost certainly. But, the idea of Bishop
Landen is interesting, as is Daenal. Daniel should meet them
both, if they are to be options.
Consider applications in the upcoming weeks to both Bishop
Landen and Servitors. Weigh pros and cons, and determine
capabilities about commitments.
Leave Silent, or not. Determine what is the most beneficial.
I do not think I wish to kill Eveya anymore. But the idea of it
is still worth thought.
Make arrangements for upcoming Westfall efforts as well as
tomorrow’s venture in Pikesford. Ensure that Cath’s forces are
in play, and that the Plaguewood group does not falter.
Find Glory.
Kill Gellexine. [/quote]
#Post#: 484--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: September 26, 2015, 3:09 am
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[quote]This is a story about you.
You are the hero of this story, because you do not have a
choice, save to be the hero. You’ve been the villain a few times
too, and you’ve been a monster for even longer than that, but
this is ultimately, a story where you are the hero. maybe not
the hero. Maybe protagonist is a better word for it. You life
cannot continue as a series of events that happened to a person,
it needs to the be the story of a person who made things happen,
who did things. One can only be a passive observer for so long.
You have to remember where you came from. The Bard knew you.
Damn what Eveya says, damn it all. She truly knew nothing is
merely an excuse designed to end a growing obesssion. I only
pursued Eveya’s plan to get to her, to talk to her, to speak to
her, to take her in my hands, and demands that she tell me
everything that she knew about me, to tell the story - the story
about me. Perhaps it is vanity that motivates me. No. It’s not
vanity. I know what it is. It’s a story about me. A story about
you.
I need some space from me. I need the room, to tell the story
about me. There was a Caleb Norwill, once, and I wonder about
him. I know he had a brother, Alivore, but I know so little else
about him. I cannot look back in the Burned Book because it is
all gone. I cannot look back in my mind. Her curse has finally
fulfilled its purpose. There is nothing of Caleb Norwill left. I
have only artifacts of him. A vague memory that he once existed,
and I was once not so far away from him. He was Gilnean, I must
assume - this body is tarnished with Gilneas’ blight. He was
small, he was fleeting. He must have been sick of body, for I am
small, and thin, and sickly. He must have been unloved, because
surely his family would have come after him, at this point? I
can only imagine. I imagine, sometimes, a Norwill walking into
the crypts and demanding that they speak with Caleb Norwill. I
imagine, sometimes, a mother, a father, sisters, brothers
rushing to my side and pestering me. Where have I been? Where
has he been? What have you done to him? But they’ve never come.
Caleb Norwill was unloved. Caleb Norwill died alone.
I must make note of this, for my own sanity if no one else’s :
we are not how we used to be. I fought with myself, and myself
fought back. He would taunt me, tease me, berate me for not
being more. It was neither a split in personality, nor a
discourse of two sides of the skull. It was me, killing what was
left of Caleb Norwill, it was me, strangling him beneath the
waves. We tumbled back against the serf. We held each other,
tightly, and then, when we were poured out onto the beach, the
only one left was me. I remember so little of Caleb Norwill that
I fear - I fear he does not exist. I fear that I have made him
up. I fear I made it all up. If there was a Caleb Norwill - what
would he think of me? He was a paladin, in a way. I imagine he
would gut me, pull out my insides, and call it justice. I would,
if I were him. I begged Eveya to do it. I begged her to tear me
in two. I begged her to rip me apart. I do not want to die, but
I want my death to mean something. I know she wouldn’t. I knew
she couldn’t. I lied about wanting to kill Ryhek. I don’t.
I don’t want to kill anyone. I just wanted something to fill me
up. Whether it was the Bard’s knowledge, with her memories of
the Caleb Norwill that was, the person who I was but maybe was
never - I wanted to hear that story. I wanted to hear the story
of me. I thought about whispering to Daniel, in dreams. I
thought about calling him to me, and begging him to stick
himself inside of me, cutting me lengthwise and gutting me like
a fish as he did. I’d like to engulf him. I want something to
live inside of me because i am afraid that this emptiness will
eat me from feet to throat and I will be a raging, hating,
killing nothing for the rest of my life. I struggled with my
nature. I struggled with being a Prince because I feared it
wasn’t me. There was a nagging part of me that still demanded I
be Caleb Norwill. But there may have never been such a person.
Caleb, in an old story of Lordaeron not found in any books of
the Light, considered apocryphal at best; was an abbot that was
tasked with bringing Light to a heathen village of no name.
Caleb journeyed to find the village for forty days and forty
nights. When he arrived, the town elder asked him of his task.
Caleb told him that he was there to save them. The elder
laughed, and did not know of what he spoke of. They broke bread
together, and shared of salt. Caleb grew to love and trust the
heathens, despite their worship of the demons and darkness, and
he took some part of that darkness into him. But death came for
them. Dark things poured out from the earth, and Caleb called
upon the Light to protect them. The Light never came. They were
all slaughtered, save for Caleb - who survived by running tot he
temple of the heathen village, and hiding behind the totem. The
totem was that of a giant wolf-hound. The name, Caleb, in the
Old Common no longer spoken in all the world, no longer voiced -
it is the word for dog. It means me.
Perhaps I invented the persona of Caleb Norwill. I did not
invent the Sepulchre, I did not invent the war. But the name
could be fake. Perhaps I, killed and dead and dreaming, lay
beneath the sea until I could crawl out again, strong and not
knowing of what had occurred before. Maybe I was cursed to look
a dog, maybe I never set foot in Gilneas. In this story about
me, I remember nothing of how I was bitten. It happened, I
assume, but I do not remember it. There is no stark memory of a
wolf’s jaws closing around my arm, there is no story of Caleb
Norwill the Bitten. There are many stories and I suspect i have
only invented a few of them. But there is none of a Caleb that
came before the paladins, before the war, and before the death.
I am angry that Ryhek killed the Bard. Beyond furious. But it
was mostly to gauge Eveya’s reaction. I have engaged in
something more terrible, but only because she asked me to. She
wished for it. I will not write it, in the case that all of my
plans fail, and this entry becomes my death sentence. I needed
to know how she would react. I needed for her to understand. In
the story of me, the story of you: I don’t remember anything of
Caleb Norwill. I know that I fought in a war, the war of the
Sepulchre, and there are memories of specific instances. I
remember Glory’s death most of all, her legs snapping, her eyes
wild, her voice afraid and calling for me. I remember sitting by
Belethial at the plagued lake, my hand moving to press against
hers, and knowing all the while that I was going to die within
the hour. But the Bard knew something. She knew something of my
life. She knew that I had existed, then. She knew my titles, she
knew me, and she was afraid of me. There is the odd priest or
paladin afraid of the death night - especially one as afflicted
as I am - but my reputation has never caused fear like that. I
saw it in her. Terror. Terror and death.
It was no trick, as Eveya claims. It was not a look that knew
nothing. It was a story about me.
Eveya rebuked me. My feelings were not real. My need for the
bard was childish. She did not know, she could not know, but she
never even asked me why I cared about such things until I told
her to ask. This is always how it goes with Eveya, who says she
does not understand and would like to, but never takes the
chance to ask. They never ask. They only judge without thinking,
without knowing the story about you. So I stabbed myself through
the throat in the vain effort to feel something, to have myself
have something to fill myself with since my Bard had been denied
to me. I wanted Daniel, then. I wanted him more than anything,
and I suspect I needed him. It was weak. But I wanted him to
brush his hands against me, bend me back against his thighs, and
hurt me so I didn’t have to hurt myself. I stabbed myself with
my former runeblade, Nathaniel’s runeblade. I could feel my soul
slipping away inside of it, sucking, sapping, straining.
But it cannot suck away that which doesn’t exist.
I know why I’m not pure. I know why, now. I know what about me
was so evil that Meduna needed to cut and slice. I know why I am
always aching, always hungry for hurt, always dreaming of that
final blow but too weak to bring it down upon my throat. There
is nothing within me. There is no soul. There is the memory of
somebody that I may or may not be. There is the memory of Caleb
Norwill who I know nothing and the memory of a Prince who I know
everything about. There is only one person that I am. There is
only one consciousness, but there is no soul. I am not corrupt.
I am not pure. I am nothing.
This is a story about you. You went into the craggy foothold
where the cultists had made their home, and you killed them,
demanding that they wait to kill the Bard. You wanted to talk to
her so that you could know something about yourself, or,
perhaps, know that there was some realness in you. You cut a
path, all swagger and bravado. You could not help it. You were
filled with pride at the possibility of finally achieving your
goal, what you had gone on five missions that you cared little
for. You had her where you wanted her, and a third party blasted
away your only opportunity. The only thing that had ever showed
the barest hint of knowing you. You ran away, tears burning,
fears high, heart gone. You determined that somebody had to pay.
It had to be you. If only you had been faster. If only you had
been kinder. You needed to be punished.
So you vowed to kill Ryhek. Because cruelty to another was the
only way you would be hated enough for Eveya to break you. You
needed her to, because otherwise things would never change. You
would always be the Leader, but always waiting on a Matriarch
you hated, because you could not leave. You could not subtract
yourself. You got too tangled up. You were what they wished you
to be. Meduna said that, the first time. She said it because she
was going to make you a monster, and the paladins made you a
pet. What could you do, but let it happen. Even now, as you
write this, as I write this, trembling hand - you are not an
agent of your own fate. Fate does not exist. It has left you
behind.
I’d end my story, but a character can not erase himself from the
pages. Only the author can do that. And I’m not the author. I’m
a character. I’m the hero - the protagonist. Writing a journal,
as a character, is an attempt to mimic the author, whatever they
might be. It’s vain and selfish and stupid - but there was hope,
for a moment. There was hope that I could learn a story about me
that did not come with a character so unlikeable, so badly
written. There was hope I could be something memorable. But this
is a story about me. I am Caleb Norwill, but not quite, and I am
very afraid of what will happen when the next page turns.
[/quote]
#Post#: 492--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: October 17, 2015, 12:10 pm
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[quote]This is how it went, and it was not as expected. I called
upon my last knight because all bad things come in threes.
Truthfully, I could not even remember his name. He was a foot
note in my own history and I did not remember him or care for
him. But I called upon him with all primal fury, with shadows
and my face. He knew me, then, and was able to see me for what I
really was. And what he saw was his King, his long dead lord
asking him to perform one final task, to do something so simple.
It was always like that. They bowed and scraped before me and
then questioned me. How had I survived ? All the Knights saw me
die. They saw Esmond and Marrigan and they saw me choking on my
own blood, flooded with Light. They knew I had died. But there I
was standing in front of them all so it could not be so, Light
forbid such things be so. They wanted to believe that I was
still around, so that they could be themselves again. When I
found him, Vollinger was hiring himself out as a mercenary for
the warlocks of the Slaughtered Lamb. Arcerus and his lady were
in the service to some minor lord, dreaming of slitting his
throat.
And the third ? All bad things come in threes. I found him in
Icecrown as I knew I would, wandering around the quarries that
had made me, looking for something but not finding it. And then
I approached him, our eyes met and he knew me, he knew exactly
what I was and what I was capable of. He knew me for his King. I
felt a sickening feeling turning my insides into tidal pools.
What was I doing ? What do I think would happen? The same thing
that always happens. Daniel and I talked about this. We talks
about my greatest and most destructive sin. Cruelty.
Insurmountable cruelty, that lets me use people as pieces in a
chess game. I wonder who I am playing against. I used to know ;
Her and Cyrell and later Philomene Asteris. I never beat
Asteris. I had my pawns in black, set the across the white and
black squares and I moved them with lampreys in my guts and
water rising in my throat. It could be Eveya. It could be her,
but she doesn't want to play the game.
Every move I have made has been a calculated effort to force her
hand. To make her pick up her queen and take the knight off of
the board, smash the pawns into bits. But she hasn't moved. She
sits there, paralyzed with thinking and perhaps unthinking,
waiting for the right move to come to her. But there isn't any
move she can make, except to get her King out of check, lest it
become checkmate. Her bishop moved though, sweeping me off my
feet and taking my rook apart, snapping off his crenellations.
Daniel was the only one, save for Eveya, who behaved as I
anticipated and intended. I wanted him to make a scene - I
wanted a scene. I wanted to be caught and called out for all of
the evil that I have done, all the vileness that I do. The
others slowly became increasingly violent, increasingly aware of
what had happened and what was happening to them. What I had
done, in all clarity and in all wisdom. Arcerus, Vollinger, and
the third -- it had all been me, my hand, pushing them in a
direction, winding them up and watching them go. The one who
struck, was Gewn. That was unexpected beyond words. I
anticipated Aleifr letting loose arrows, i expected Ryhek to he
there and try to blow me away. I had taken precautions so that
such assaults would be all together pointless. But it was Gewn
who called for blood and I loved her for it.
Sprawled on the ground , my to cage irrevocably shattered, Gewn
looked to Daniel. She shot shadows and tendrils at him, smashing
him and pummeling him. I heard the snap. I heard the crunch. I
rolled away. The last I saw, Gewn was moving to cut off of his
head. He did not die. I would felt if he had died. But out from
trees, out from darkness my Glory returned to me and I clutched
to her. I have ridden her with worse injuries. But to see her
again nearly knocked all life from me, any remainder of the
person who was loved and lost nearly slipped away. She was burnt
and beautiful. I clung to her and she smelled like ashes and
horse. She had appeared because of a miracle. She had appeared
because even if the Light turned away from me long ago, there is
always the stained, tarnished memory of wanting it, and that is
more powerful than anything in the world. She appeared because
if Glory hadn't, Daniel and I would both be dead. Maybe the Ebon
Blade would avenge him. He is loved by them. But nobody will
avenge me.
She carried me far away. We rode through Duskwood, we rode
trough most of the night. She took me all the way to The
Wetlands and our knees sank in the mud. It had been raining for
three days , according to the locals , and there was no sign
that it would let up any time soon. I paid for a room at the
harbour, stabled my horse - told the stable lad that if anybody
touched her, they would lose their life. I laid in the bed ,
staring up at the ceiling. I closed my eyes and tried to feel
what Daniel was feeling right now , trying to touch the edges of
him, i couldn't feel his hands, I couldn't feel his arms. I felt
the edge of darkness instead , and I found myself sailing in a
boat without a bottom, and all of the creatures of the sea rose
up to sing to me. I realized , with horror, I had fallen asleep.
Two dreams in two weeks.
The first dream was when all of these schemes were in motion, it
was what promoted me to sail to Northrend. I stood on the crags
of Dragonblight looking over the edge of my initial point of
contact. The ships were all there, smoldering. I walked down to
the beach, and my legs slid down the rocks and snow. In between
the rocks were many small fish skeletons , and the brittle bones
snapped beneath my feet. When I reached the shore , I watched
the waves for some time. Out of the surf came white arms, a
white torso, a white head with long gold hair that dragged
trough the water like seaweed. The man washed up on the beach,
and pointed straight at me. I moved towards him, and tried to
help him up but my hands grasped only salt and foam. "I cannot
stop myself." The man said, "Myself I cannot stop." He then
began to dissolve in the water, and the only thing that was left
behind were salt crystals. I climbed up the cliff again, and
stood on a cave. She was there, with her black hair and orange
eyes. She pushed her hands into the snow and came up with a
handful of ragged feathers, wound about her wrists with white
hair. She smiled at me. "You know this is how you died." She let
the feathers go. "No more lies, Norwill."
And then I woke up.
The second dream I was in a boat without a bottom and the
creatures of the sea rose to sing to me. The sea was black. The
sky was dark, and it was raining. It had been raining for three
days now. The boat was tossed against the surf, and we crashed
on a tiny island with a lantern hanging from a single pole in
the center. I had been here before. I found myself choking and
crying. I can't be dead. I've still got time. I'm not ready. I
closed my eyes and willed myself to go away to wake up, but I
felt soft fingers against my cheeks, I hard the familiar drawl,
the self confident purr. I can't remember what he said. And I
woke up.
When I woke up, I realized I had left Daniel to die. Maybe not
now. Maybe not in this instance - I did not feel him slip away.
But he was gone from me. I left him to die. Oh my Light. I let
him go. Maybe it's for the best. Maybe he will never speak to me
again. Maybe I will wither and die without him. And maybe that's
the best thing that could happen. But I still want more. I still
want Eveya to understand. I want them to know that it was me.
It's always been me. [/quote]
#Post#: 495--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: October 31, 2015, 2:42 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Final Entry for specific Silent stuff.
[quote]I could have burned this book too, but there are still
pages left and thus there is still something worth keeping. The
Silent behaved as anticipated , although their arrival was
unthought of. I could have fled, I suppose, torn open a death
gate and let Menethil Harbor be overwhelmed , but I couldn't do
that. There was too much life there and I felt too much
obligation. I have not been stopped from destroying whole keeps
before - Pikesford and the Wollerton Stead were engulfed in
plague and fire - but I could not see Menethil Harbor in flame.
It was too close to home and I felt too part of it, too much
like I belonged there - too much like my roots were taking hold
and choking me. Nonetheless, the Silent arrived as I was
mobilizing the defense, and they had no choice but to work with
me.
They were operating on behalf of Ardhal Cathoir, who I only knew
a little of. A member of the Argent Crusade and Ebon Blade,
Ardhal is thought of as both crucial and soft for his dual-role.
He was not well liked, but well-respected ; thought off too
harsh and officiating by most. He had the uncanny ability to go
from smiling and persuasion to the more realistic grimness that
all death knights have. If we had humours, it would be said that
he has an excess of black bile, and that he is afflicted with a
melancholia. I keep switching tenses. Cathoir is dead, now. I
watched Daniel push him off of the side of the road, suffocating
and broken, his body like a child’s toy. I do not know if he was
truly lifeless, or if he simply was left in pieces - close
enough to destroyed to understand to not involve himself with me
again. Then again, I have heard that Cathoir is unflinching and
uncompromising to his duty, and his duty is my destruction.
But the Silent worked on his behalf, and I imagine that the
story that he told them was a pleasant one. He likely spoke of
re-education, of the peaceful way to make me docile and no
longer wanting and hungry. That is what I would do, if I was
Ardhal Cathoir. But the truth of the matter is that the Ebon
Blade re-educates with shadow and scalpels and they would have
endeavored to remove all parts of me, strip out my core and feed
it to the deathcharges. Then, mind broken and no longer hungry,
I would tend to Acherus' everyday operation, ensuring that the
death Knights , who I was never the equal of, were cared for. I
would lose all of Caleb, and all of everything else. All of the
experiences, all of the memories. I would only know service,
duty, and devotion. A desirable outcome for the most wayward
son. But that is not how the story goes. The story ends with
Ardhal Cathoir twisted and mangled on the side of the road.
Daniel took me to the Blade , and I faced trial for the murder
that I did not commit , and half a dozen other crimes. The
largest of all these crimes was disloyalty , interaction with
known traitors, and my violation of my ever present, eternal
parole. Daniel smoothed it over by kicking me to the ground, by
treating me roughly : but I do not think that the trial believed
that he truly had any revulsion towards me. The Blade knows how
Daniel and I are, and they see him as my keeper, my handler, to
make sure that I do not lose myself or cost them. The same role
that Tsali occupied so many years ago. Nonetheless, I think that
they understood that breaking me into dust and bones, no mind,
no self, would be a betrayal of the original reason that they
had taken me in: an undead with a mind, but unusual construction
and misplaced loyalties. They let me live, and Daniel argued
that I be placed in the care of the church. That would be the
greater punishment - and for Daniel and I, we both knew that I
belonged there. I didn't belong with death Knights. And I never
did.
They passed their judgement , and I ended up bloody and battered
in Northshire Abbey. I thought of what Landen had said, I
thought about the position he offered me, the role I would have
in teaching and helping - they way that I would be able to pass
my experiences on to others, so that my existence would never be
repeated again. One hopes, one hopes. But I also remember Gewn.
I remembered when I told her that I thought I would be leaving
The Silent for the Abbey; and she just looked at me with that
small smile and said; "Good luck." Yumna Shatterhaze said that
no matter what the Abbot promised , there was no way that I
would ever be granted any station beyond an aberration to be
gawked at, that I would never have my goals or desires satiated.
I can only hope that I will prove both of them wrong. I cannot
run from this position. I could try and leave, if it turns out
the way they think , but the only place I can run to is the
waiting arms of the Blade. Those arms will only be too happy to
break.
Northshire is too familiar , and too strange all at once. I see
the books that I read as a child, I see the pages with my
handwriting in the marginalia : I see little traces of Caleb
Norwill everywhere and I wonder if I will ever feel anything
towards those traces. Anything other than absolute fear, fear of
this Caleb Norwell who scrawled drawings in the corner of his
notes , who wrote "Light, spare me from this reading." in the
corner of the Eccelesiastium Odda. I do not know this man, but I
remember all that he learned. I remember my hand smudging the
page of freshly printed Manuals of Swordplay, I remember being
part of all of that. But the Caleb is foreign. And I find parts
of him everywhere , little scraps of this person who I used to
be. I wonder if Caleb would cut me down, if he saw me and knew
me now. I would, if I were Caleb. He'd earn honour and fame and
have everything he ever wanted.
I, on the other hand, seem to just drift. I have been in this
Abbey for two days and two nights, and I have yet to speak to
the Abbot. I fear what he will say , but I will be firm and
resolute in what I believe Ivan offer. I have met others. Father
Jordan Schtauff and I have known each other for some time now,
and he remains my largest advocate even though his age clearly
shows : he is so unbearably young. I do not think he is well
respected by his brethren , and I think his support , while
welcome, will not provide me with much friendship and kinship.
Lady Ellera Boltthrower reminds me very much of Eveya , if Eveya
was better natured and baked sweets and was not utterly
aberrant. I suppose what I think that they have is that they
both desire to be liked and loved , seen as mothers to their
men. Maybe they don't realize it , but I think it drives the
both of them. Father Whyte seems somewhat cold: I believe he is
estranged from the others, but also deeply intrenched in Jeane ,
the mother who brought me into the order. She's pleasant.
The Paladins are different. Daern is their Lord or Marshall - I
am uncertain as to the particulars of what his title are.
Teranas and Schtauff both professed that they know and care
little about the inner workings of this Order , which I found
profoundly disturbing. Daern, not only in name, reminds me of
Daenal, if Daenal hadn't seen everything that he had seen, he
reminds me of the Daenal that was; the Daenal I first met. He is
thoughtful and quiet , but I can sense the mistrust and
judgement seeping out from within him. And why not ? I am
divisive.
Daern, and Sir Dantil spoke after I left his office. In passing,
as I walked away, I caught how that conversation began. I had
made Sir Dantil question his faith. If I had questioned my faith
every time I had come in contact with someone who I saw as
aberrant to the teachings of the Light? I would have long
succumbed to the monster that they anticipate me to be. Dantil
was the one, after all, who in no small words threatened me ,
belittled me. Amends were tentatively made with an exchange of
Librams. I have been studying his. The notes on the side are
more interesting than the content. He professes his intention
with how little he has written and for how battered the book is,
going beyond the worn. My own book is not so tattered (largely
since it is the third or fourth Libram I've possessed) but there
are pieces of me in it, but too small for Dantil to find, in all
likelyhood. I doubt he will look. At least I had somethign
authentic; something not dead.
I journeyed with the Silver Hand chapter of the Northshire
Abbey. Their leader, Daern Truefaith and I spoke at length,
earlier. He remembers the Sepulchre, and remembered Cyrell. I
wonder if he knew I was the first afflicted, or maybe that was
my brother. I cannot remember how the time worked, then. I only
remember that the way that Daern looked at me, and I could see
both the contempt and confusion. What does he do with me? I
suppose he is still consdidering. But while they sleep, I read
and am anxious. As it stands, the work with the Silver Hand in
Darkshire was stock. Undead, commander in servant to a larger
undead. The same narrative trope that I have used to my
advantage time and time again. I kept laughing during the
fighting. The paladins screamed at the undead that they had to
be punished. The ghouls likely didn't understand a word - and
more importantly, what did they have to be punished for? For
being controlled by another? For being dead? It was comical. It
was excessive.
The Sepulchre is on my mind, because I saw Martigan Lighthammer,
and his new wife, and his children - my children - again. It was
the first time in a long time. Jossilyn said that the children
were seven now, but I remember Maria in my arms like it was
yesterday. I looked at Martigan and we tried to relate to one
another, but we were like strangers who knew each other very
well. He had killed me, and knew me before, from when I was
still really Caleb. I wanted to ask him things, ask him
everything about the person I was, about this new life he had -
but the more I asked, the more the sense of dread closed in on
me. Martigan is in his late thirties now, his wife is older. His
children are growing up. He smiled at me, and told me about how
he intends to retire soon, focus on the Light, focus on the
theoretical - and more importantly, focus on his family.
And I felt empty. Here he was, surrounded by those who loved
him, those who had no idea about me, about us, about our long
and strange history. We just stared at one another and small
talk turned awkward. I looked back at him and realized that I
was staring at a face that was aging. I was staring at somebody
who would soon be an old man. And I was still me. I felt like,
not that we both had become old - but that he had. He had a
whole life, and I only had this great, overwhelming desire and
ambition to fling myself into the waiting jaws of the clergy. He
was satisfied, contented, domestic - and I have a lover who is
countries away, who I left to die. I have a horse. I have bits
of Caleb Norwill, collected in scraps and memories. I had a
brother, I had a sister, but I do not think I will ever be
Martigan Lighthammer, surrounded by love and family. I have
chosen the hard path. He invited me to dinner, and I felt myself
suffocating. Martigan pierced my lungs. I cannot suffocate. But
it was there, all the same. My throat closed. I excused myself,
and ran away. Give my love to the children.
Jaene Bradbury is a romance author. I have a book for Prikka - I
will bury it outside of Ironforge, and hope that her swarm finds
it. More importantly, Bradbury staged a murder mystery game of
sorts, without informing anyone attending the party. I do not
understand the game, and I do not understand how this is
something that can be practiced in cloister. Storytelling, card
games, even occasional drinking - this I can understand; but
there seems somethign morally repellant about staging a murder,
and pretending one of your friends has died, and that another is
the murderer. And then I understood what it is that has been
gnawing at me since I arrived here, three, four, five days ago.
These paladins, these priests can chase each other around the
monastery, laughing about each other's deaths. They have not
watched each other die. They have not been guilty, ever, of
anything, in their life. They don't understand the motivations
behind a killing, they don't understand, even, why killing is
wrong or right. They just accept the Light will tell them, will
guide them, will point them. Dantil, when threatening me,
commented that it was the Light's will I be destroyed. They say
these things, and laugh and jape about each other's deaths. They
have no fear. It is sickening. But it is also youth. Every
single one of these paladins, these priests, everyone in the
cloister - everyone is younger than me. I can feel their youth
like a cancer in the bones. It's eating me.
I wish Daniel would talk to me. In dreams, in the mind, in the
heart. I have been silent, and so has he. I am surrounded by
life, surrounded by youth, surrounded by a group of people who
have never felt guilt in their life. Or, if they have, it is
only to give creed to their actions, to make them relatable.
They do not feel guilt or disgust as a weight. They like
themselves. It's strange and competitive, for me, but I wish I
could tell Daniel of what these people are like, what they do. I
miss confiding in one another, but more than anything ; I miss
the sense of kinship. I have always liked the role of outsider,
but in the Silent, I was everything, and now I am nothing. It is
a shift. It is a renwed challenge. But it is one that comes with
a great and terrible sense of loneliness.
I need to speak to Landen, to address what is to be done with
me. I asked for Daern's permission and support to help him with
the instruction of the paladins - Light knows, he needs it - but
I do not think it will come to anything. As it stands, I have
been given no role, other than to watch and think, and take
advtange of the resources provided to me. If he does not give me
a purpose, I will make one. Teneras respected a man who ignored
the metaphor, and gave an answer other than the options
presented. Perhaps Landen will see that value as well. [/quote]
#Post#: 498--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: December 24, 2015, 7:46 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
entry divided due to length.
[quote]The days are marked by ever increasing apathy. I keep
thinking about what would have happened if Darion had cut out my
brains, my mind, whatever residue there is of my soul. I keep
wondering about what would have happened if rather than
squirming and squealing like a child as I was dragged there -
what if I had just walked , unflinching into the waiting embrace
of not knowing? Maybe I should have let myself get caught. If
this story had any sort of point, any logical conclusion- that
would have been the point of no return. I would have walked into
the darkness without any indication that I would ever return.
But that's not what I did. Daniel saved me from that and he
saved himself because of it. If there had been the cold
unfeeling mass of meat and ventricles rather than the one he
loved - that would have been the end of him. Without a mind, I
am nothing. I am not anyone without it. But because I did not
submit and because the story did not end as perhaps it should
have, I subsist in pastoral care. Apathy has taken over, in
absence of mindlessness.
For the first weeks I felt an odd elation. I was something not
entirely new and something I knew I was good at. I was loved and
hated all in one breath but ultimately it ended as it began:
utter apathy towards me and mine. Landen and I spoke about
teaching but he didn't seem to have any faith in the idea. He
was a skeptic. What would I talk about ? Spoke at some length
about the rampant issues of corruption and elitism within the
church structure, and suggested that I speak about my own
experience with the living and the dead members of our clergy.
He encouraged me, but ultimately it all ran hollow. Knew what I
would speak about, and I knew exactly the reception it would
receive. I would be accused of slander, of misguided belief and
perhaps even named an enemy of the faith. I have been named an
enemy of the faith so many times. That is not what would bother
me -what would bother me is spending my time to assemble a call
to action - a plea to restore the standing of those who were
believed to live outside the proper practices.and as I poured
over drafts of my lecture, attempting to make it palatable to my
audience: I realized what Gewn and Yumna had been saying since
the beginning : I was a jewel in an already heavy crown.
Everybody wants to save me. The first time I meet Paladins and
they're impressed that I co duct myself like a member of the
faithful - they forgive me, or tell me that the Light will
forgive me for what I've done. I hate that. More than my hatred
of bigotry, of ignorance, of oppression - I hate the idea that I
must be forgiven. The Light has forgiven me time and time again,
if every paladin I've ever spoken to is to be believed. But I
have long tired it. Everybody I've ever met has wanted to save
me from myself- from the world- from my sin- from my faults, my
grievous faults. If I wanted to be forgiven I would have cut
myself open and left my body for the gulls the first time I shed
innocent blood. I would have cast away the sword and never taken
it up again. Violence should never be forgiven. It may be
necessary but it does not need to be forgiven. You must carry
that weight. I am no different than the Paladins in that regard
- I am willing to believe that Daern Truefaith and I have shed
the same amount of blood but the difference is I believe that
none of what I did was ever righteous. Maybe needed. But never
righteous. I do not believe in righteous fury.
All of this was contemplated while trying to write a draft for
my lecture. I wrote it away from Northshire because the thought
of writing something that so contradicted the will of the people
there within its halls made my skin crawl. I wrote t down by the
riverbank, where long ago Cyrell Lucavi had thrown a stone into
the water. She looked at me, and gestured to the stone and the
ripples it formed. "That is you." She explained, "you disrupt
the tranquil waters. See now how the water flows around it, but
never through it? That is the Light. Ever will it be worked
around you, but never through you." She was right. When I wrote
the lecture draft , I stared at the stone that was me. It was
still there, a smooth grey rock. It had once been rougher, but
the water had rendered it smoother, softer. After the fifth
rejected draft, a pile of crumpled paper at my side, I walked to
the stream and pulled the rock out from it. It was palm sized,
and cold. I looked down at it, and then I sat it down next to
me. The river continued to flow. The only think that had changed
was that the current flowed unimpaired. There was a deep gauge
in the riverbed where the rock had been, but in a manner of
hours free flowing silt filled the hole. Without the stone, the
stream flowed faster and more directly - and there was no
indication that anything was lost.
The sixth draft began with an analysis of current ecclesiastic
politics and policy, the state of panic without a named
archbishop and thus the lack of direction - which seems to
account for the more and more religious subdivisions and orders
within the past years. Then it went on to describe the problems
that occur because of the proliferation of these orders as well
as the church's increasing emphasis on noble blood, and Light
affinity rather than preaching a doctrine to a population that
is, in general, not skilled in the Light and is not descended
from nobility. Further more: this church refuses to accept the
very people who need the Light's guidance the most. Death
Knights and foreigners come to the church expecting to receive
instruction, to be given some indication of why and how the
Light can exist. I remember one incident where a death knight
asked how the Light could exist , when the Light had let him die
- how could the Light exist if it let so many of its followers
die ? The paladin he spoke to looked as if he was going to smite
him on the spot.
Paladins don't ask questions, it seems. When faced with
questions, they see it as an effort to spread dissent, or an
effort to make said paladin question their own faith own faith.
Faith should be questioned - otherwise it is just blindness. And
that is how, halfway through my six draft of this lecture I
realized that I absolutely couldn't give this lecture anymore.
It's how I realized that I needed to leave, to get away from all
of this. Because I had faith, questionable and strange faith,
but the faith that I have is not the faith that is written
about. All the great theologians of our day are so certain, and
believe the light works through them. I looked at the rock of
me. The light had tempered it, and with enough time maybe the
Light would wear it away entirely, carrying the pieces of it to
distant places. I picked up the rock again, and threw it back in
the lake. Ripples formed and then, the surface settled. But the
riverbed was changed until I fished out the stone again. I
folded my drafts of the lecture into paper boats and set them
adrift on the river. They drifted away.
I considered tossing this book in and starting well and truly
over but there is no starting over, not in actuality. I called
for Glory and mounted her, fingers pressed against her hair. She
likely smelled of death and decay too others but I swore I could
smell hay and changing leaves in her hair. I squeezed her sides
and we set off into the night. I did not leave a note or an
indication that I was gone. With any hope, the Paladins will
assume I went on pilgrimage, or perhaps, simply faded away to
bones and dust. Where I was headed was a pilgrimage of a sort-
but more secular than any pilgrimage has a right to be. I rode
up to Menethil harbor, and it had been secured by the army. They
had reduced my efforts and that of the Silent's to a mere
memory. They did not greet me a war hero, just a man. I took the
first ship out to Northrend, and paid with some of the wealth
for the family I had burned alive within their house. I am not
above such things. Would the Light forgive me for that ? Would
anybody wish its forgiveness on me, if they knew ?
In a weeks time, we made it to the edge of Northrend and docked.
I rode up to Icecrown, cutting through the remnants of
Dragonblight. Everytime I go to Northrend, the ghosts rise up to
sing to me. The moment that my foot made contact with the ground
a thousand different lives played out infront of me. I saw them,
Knights and heroes, sometimes just poor and damned infantry. Men
who I had trusted, and had trusted me - and men that I burned
alive. That is how you dispose of what is no longer wanted. I
saw them cling to my arms and legs and beg me to join them. That
I belonged, like them, buried in an unmarked, mass grave that
has yet to be discovered. They whispered to me , they cried for
me and I shook me off and ignored them as I had done countless
times before. You cannot give into the pressure of ghosts. If I
had rested or made camp they would have dragged me deep beneath
the snow and crushed me with snow and stones. So I rode on
Glory's back and left the ghosts crawling amongst the snow and
ice. I felt myself longing to join those ghosts by the time that
hooves reached the glacier's edge. But that too, had to be
ignored.
The tournament was going slow and dully, few knights of renown
and even less of fame. I entered my name on the lists. The
herald asked me to prove my nobility and I professed I had none
to prove- I was a lay brother of the Order of Northshire, and
was jousting on their behalf. She asked me how a holy order
would condone such a nothing and I asked how indeed, the Argents
could. She waved me in. I draped Glory in white and gold and
donned the tourney armor with the thick front and thin back. I
wore old, silver chain. What I wore when I was in the Silent,
when I was lying through my teeth. I fought, then. The time had
come for such a thing. I have not been a tourney knight in a
long while but it was always something i was good at , and
something i simultaneously reviled. it was not the nobility of
fighting on the battlefield, fighting for a purpose and a point
- it was a blood sport, for the sake of being a blood sport. But
I understand the purpose of it, now. It fills space, fills time,
and fills my ever present hunger. When there is nothing worth
fighting for, anymore, you go to the tournament and that is
exactly what I did. I jousted for a long while. My name on the
lists rose up and up and up, and eventually I was a champion. Of
nothing. Of nobody. Not even myself, anymore.
I have always been good jouster, largely because of Glory and
I’s kinship. But I have never risen to any rank of notoriety,
because of my utter failures to play the political game, to
receive recommendation and commendation - and also because I
simply am not as good as the Argent trained jousters. Certainly
not the Argent Champion; Eadric. Eadric and I have come up
against each other once before int he jousts - we crossed lances
, but I did not face him. I know myself too well, and I know
Eadric well enough to understand how our joust would play out.
And after a month of continuous jousts - my name rose up with
Eadric’s . We were scheduled, in late November, to go against
one another. The Oathbreaker and The Pure - the play-battle of
evil and good, when a true evil is hard to find in the world.
But like my sermons and lectures, like my loyalties and
obligations, I did what is in my nature to do. I left. When
confronted with responsibility and all the trappings of it I did
what I do, and gave into the ever increasing inertia. This
abandonment was less out of apathy - and more out of realization
that I did not want to be the villian. Everybody is the hero of
their own story, and I am no exception to that rule. When the
Lais of Caleb is finally written, by somebody more talented than
me, I will smile. [/quote]
#Post#: 499--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: December 24, 2015, 7:46 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote]
I left Eadric, and rode to the place I knew I would end up. I
took an Ebon boat, and rode across the waters to Hrothgar’s
Landing, and laced my fingers in the water. I looked up and
watched the sky on my back, nestled in my vessel. The sky was so
large and threatening. I was small. I closed my eyes, and I
brushed up against the beach of Hrothgar. From what I have
remembered, Drótinn Hrothgar had oppressed the natives, and
claimed the island as his own. He was then killed by the Argent
Crusade. I wonder what became of his crown, I wonder what became
of his children. Did he have a son? My mind drifts more and more
towards my family. I see my sister’s face in the ever changing
shores and rocks. I see my father’s eyes in the stars. I know my
sister is alive and my father is dead, but I have lost them
both. When I disembarked from my boat, my feet sank in the snow.
It was slush. I wonder if the North is melting. I wonder if when
it does finally melt, I will be gone along with it. Dissolve
into nothing. I stayed on the island for a while. I’ve stayed
here for a while. I have made white chalk marks on the wall to
remind me of every little obligation I’ve removed, to stay here,
on the edge of the world.
It is winter, and it is very dark here. There has been no
sunshine for a while. With my arrival, the sun fled. When I
remember to breathe, to give the idea of life, I breathe out
Daniel. In the crest of the surf, I see him, fingers, legs,
mouth. I see teeth and bruises in the tide pools. I see him, in
every little bit of landscape in the way that I saw Elsiere. i
thought for a long time that Elsi would be the love of my life,
despite everything that happened between us. And in truth, i
think she was. She was the love of my life. I ate her, breathed
her, sipped her, and left her, and at my death, she was there.
She was the great love of my life, but Daniel is the great love
of my death. I cannot eat, breathe, sip, leave, and die with
him, but I decay, hurt, mislead, and despair of him. I don’t
want him to love me. I want him to be terrified of me. I dreamt
of his arms encircling me, his lips on mine, and then biting
back, so furiously and strongly, blood dripping down my maw. I
wanted him to cut me apart and stuff my corpse with sea life. I
wanted him to dream of me. But I don’t think he’s dreaming of
me, or of anything. I dream of wanting. I dream of endless
hallways, of frozen locks. I dream of shadow magic, and
mindscapes. But in all my dreams, he stands there, hands on
mine. Hand on mine. he stabs me in the front. I wanted him so
badly, and I kept calling out to him, but there was no answer.
Maybe I was too far away, maybe my heart was too hard and cold
and distant. Maybe Hrothgar’s ghost has made a barricade between
me and him, a small vengeance for his own ripping from the world
too soon.
When my calling fell on death ears, I called for Mouse, knowing
she could not hear me. She has gone where I cannot go. Maybe
she’s with the Light. Maybe she’s not. But it doesn’t matter.
She’s not here, and to call her was foolish. I called for Gewn,
next, and dreamed of what she would think of me. What she would
think of me, is that I’m useless, and weak. And she’d be right.
I am the weakest person I know. Weaker than people that I’ve
hated, weaker than Ryhek, weaker than Alvarik - weaker than
people i’ve loved, weaker than Elsiere, weaker than Daniel. Gewn
would look at me and feel nothing except contempt, and when I
realized that, I stopped calling for her. I miss our needless
bullying. I miss our hateful friendship. I curled my fingers in
the slush on the beach, the signs of change, and clung to it, as
I called out for Eveya. Because if anybody was going to judge
me, it would be her, and I know she would judge me as fairly as
she could, based upon her own perception. But she wasn’t right
either.
I went into the saltwater, with the surf clogging my lungs. I
called for them all, and that felt right. I called for Ryhek to
abuse, I called for Aleifr to lead, I called for Yumna to
manipulate. I wished for Cogs for my own alleviation, and wished
for Etharion to rely upon. My hands sizzled in the salt, and I
closed my fists. I waited for Marus to arrive, so that together
we could be fatherless. I wished for something to happen, some
grand arrival. I wanted to see a ship on a horizon, see its prow
break through the waves, and see on it all the people I loved
and hated, everybody i ever knew come to either my rescue or my
damnation. But when I opened my eyes, there was no ship on the
horizon. There was a fog over my vision. No amount of faith
could possibly dispel it. I was still lost in the dream, but i
knew the dream for what it was, and thus whatever comfort it
could give me was utterly lost. That is when I realized that I
was an estuary. I was part of an age of heroes and saga; the
legendary. I was also part of the new world. A world where there
is no need for somebody called Caleb Norwill, a world where the
person I used to be is nothing more than a grim reminder of the
decadency of the past. Nobody came to me when I called because I
had already been left behind. And the water had swept me away.
Part of this is my doing. I let things go. I leave things
behind. But I cling too tightly to what pieces of the old I can,
and cultivate a memory of myself. And it was on that stony,
frozen beach, that I sat down, and I have stayed here for
months. Writing. Watching. And waiting for the ship to come in
on the horizon. There have been no ships. But what prompted me
to write this journal, what ended this inertia, and killed the
apathy was the ghost who visited me instead. Perhaps ghost is
not the right word. The illusion that visited me, the dream, the
memory. I have often hallucinated my father condemning me, I
have often dreamt of the other cutting me down with his words,
but what i dreamt on this time was a spectre that has never
spoken to me, not directly, only appeared in shadows and
crawling coastlines. I sat on the beach, with my fingers deep in
snow and sand, and watched the waves. A white crest turned into
white arms, a white face, and long golden hair that trailed in
the water like seaweed. She was clothed in white and blue. And I
knew her face, long, narrow chin, strong jaw. Her eyes were
blue. And I could see myself in them. I said her name, then, and
she shook her head.
“Brother.” She said, and the word was cold. She was angry, and
why should she not be? I had killed her father. I had destroyed
her home. I had broken the bloodline. She ran her hands through
her hair, and then snapped a finger at me. I felt myself rise
up. “I am your death.” She spoke, and I believed her. In her
eyes, I saw the inherited pattern for curses. I saw massacres. I
saw her as a vessel for tangled black and green seaweed, that
she had consumed, hating me and loving and fearing. She told me
she was my death, and to all other people, I would have said no
- no, i know how I will die, and you are not it. For all other
people, that would be true. But she told me that she was death,
and I believed her. Her hands were not bloody, they were pure,
and that was the most frightening thing about her. She smelled
of death and the ozone before a thunderstorm, but her hands were
ever clean. She stepped out of the waves, and onto the beach.
She stood on the dissolving ice, and did not seep through.
She placed a hand on my cheek, and I knew it was not really
there. But it was cold, nonetheless, and felt like family. She
studied me. I looked back at her, unable to say anything, other
than to whisper her name again. “Calia.” I said. She looked at
me, and when she looked at me, I felt bile rise in my throat. I
felt my lungs expand and contract tightly, the tissue clustering
around shell life and fossilized bits of hard water. Her fingers
dragged across my neck. She moved away, moved up the beach. She
stared at the waves, for a moment - and then skipped a stone
across the water, as we used to do with caprices at the moat.
She lifted her head, and her blonde hair flashed against the
dark sky like a comet. She looked at me, and I felt my throat
close. Her face began to melt away. Her form started to blur and
become waterlogged. But her words crept into my ear, with a
gentle breeze.
“Live, brother. I am coming.”
I watched her fall back into the ocean. Then, I laid in the boat
that had brought me to Hrothgar, and pushed off of the beach. I
folded my hands across my chest, as if dead. And then, I
drifted. I am still adrift. I have not seen land in three days.
Wherever I wash up, there she will be. Her fingers on my face,
her eyes so blue, her hands pure and terrible. Live, Caleb.
Live, whoever you are. As she comes to meet me, I sail to meet
her. Our shores will not be foreign. It will be family. [/quote]
#Post#: 519--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: February 27, 2016, 3:37 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote]What do you call it when you exist again, but do not know
why you exist? Maybe that's living. Maybe that's entropy.
Nonetheless , I do exist, once more I exist and I feel the
curious need to reassert that. I am here and I exist and my name
is Caleb Norwill I say to myself all the while knowing that
there are lies in that. But that is what Daniel tells me to say,
that is the narrative I have been told to speak. Given my
contrarian nature, I am disinclined to say it. I am disinclined
to be Caleb Norwill ever again. But when we laid there , arms
entwined, guts holding us together, fingers curled - I knew that
I would have to return home. I knew that there would be no other
way than to sail back. I wanted to crash. I still do. I wanted
to sink , and maybe I did. My sister is here , and I know it.
Daniel speaks vileness and violence and maybe that's what I
wanted. When we were on that boat without a bottom , he was the
one who kept it afloat. Our relationship was almost equal, I was
not dependent on him, however. He wants so badly to be needed by
me, and when I look at Daniel I no longer see that need. He was
essential for a long while , and the essential has faded.
Everything rots, though. Especially love. I should have stayed
silent when I needles me, when his vileness began to leak out
from his mouth. But violence follows vileness and he hurt me. He
beat me in that boat without a bottom and maybe I deserved it. I
had been cruel after all but cruelty is in my nature : I did not
retaliate, or could not. All magic was impotent and desperate
from disuse. All violence was unpracticed. Daniel told me many
things. So the seawater mingled with my blood. It was not the
first time and it will not be the last. Even now, the ocean is
calling me back, begging me to sail across it and find her.
Live, I am coming. But I did not ever make it, because he was
the one who stopped me because he could not bear to lose me. It
was selfish but it was understandable. Daniel has always
clutched at me, like he would clutch at his mother's skirts. The
words he said to me were inherited , a hereditary hatred, and I
wondered how much else he had gotten from me. I suspect that
everything that he is he borrowed from me and recontextualized
to suit his history. They say imitation is flattery.
He said I was delusional. He said that he would not let me go
down with my ship, he denied me that. Daniel believes that
because i eventually said yes to his offer of marriage ; he
believes that he holds some power over me. He does not recall
that he had to yank that "yes" from the back of my throat. He
lamented that I had made him into a monster and in my
vulnerability that stuck out at me, a knife in my ribs. But now,
miles and miles away from the sea. I know that it is not true. I
know that I did not make him into a monster - I know that he was
a monster all along. I may never have been pure, but I was not
born a monster. I did not come into this world deformed. And I
suppose, neither did Daniel. But he did not become a monster
because I shaped him to be one. He became a monster because he
decided to be one. I never wanted him to be anything. I
encouraged him to become himself , to stop serving me. But that
is a story that he has decided to forget - and he has since
decided that he wishes to be the monster of some impure,
impotent, failure.
He sees his world as war, and all I see are heaps of dead men
and dead horses. My sister stands amongst them. She is beautiful
and terrible and washes the dead's feet in her hands. She does
not look at me.
But out of everything that Daniel said the thing that hurt the
most was that he did love me. He did, but now he doesn't. Or so
he said. Then we had sex and I regret that now. I shouldn't have
done that. I regret it now. Deeply. But it was something
wonderful, at the time. There was too much bloodloss and ashes,
an experience unique to being dead. It gave me a way to be dead.
Rather than to pretend to be living. But Daniel smirked up at
me, and told me to give the ghosts a show of power and I wanted
to, I wanted to so badly - to be the person he fell in love
with. I remember that Caleb. He was cruel and cold, and only
spoke in one voice , but was understanding and tried to relate
to others. He believed he was a God. But as I mixed my ashes
with his guts; I realized that I had changed , irrevocably.
Being in the cloister had exorcised me of everything that made
me happy. Everything that made me sure. When I slid off of
Daniel, he told me wetly that be loved me, and I did not believe
him because he did not know me and I did not know myself.
I don't think I love him anymore.
We took the boat to the shore, and then began to hike through
Dragonblight. I steered clear of grasping hands and dead eyes.
They wanted me, they begged me to stay, and I almost fell back
into the permafrost and let them take me. We were trying to get
back to the Argent Tournament grounds. They have a small harbour
there, thanks to the Silver Covenant, and the hope was to take a
boat from there, a real boat, and sail back to the small port at
Menethil Harbor. Then, we would walk back to the Plaguelands. We
could have easily taken a gate, but we did not. We needed to
wander, at least, for a little while longer. Daniel and I did
not speak, only pausing in our journey to briefly part. I asked
him to meet me in Zul'drak, and I went away. I crawled to the
northern rock ridges that border Dragonblight and Icecrown; and
combed the landscape for the cave. It did not show itself to me,
for the first time in thirty, forty years. I was lost, and I
could not the only person who might know me. But there was
nothing but snow and hills and old Scarlet Crusade towers that
had fallen into disrepair. It reminded me of The Sepulchre. I
kept trying to find the cave, where this whole damned thing had
begun. But there was nothing for me left in those hills. There
was only a quiet sense of wanting. Wanting to come back, wanting
to be back. I didn't come back to those hills though, I came
back to different hills.
There is a genre of Lordaeronic novels called "bilderomans." It
means book of knowledge, or book of thought. I do not know where
the "bilder" derives from. Maybe dwarven. It doens’t matter.
They are stories about how a heroic figure educates himself ,
and through his enlightenment, he is lifted away from his
provincial town. He falls in love with beautiful, but dangerous,
women. He finds that his religion was falsified. He despairs,
but then recovers. He becomes a modern man. And then, he returns
home after a moment of great upheaval. Nothing is the same, and
the hero is uncertain of his identity, his place in the world.
He joins the war. He does not die, but he does come close. He
returns home again. He returns to the orthodoxy of his homeland,
and becomes provincial all over again. It ends in a difficult
death, from an old wound. But the moral of all of these stories
is always the same, and always true: you can't go home again. I
was struck with the realization that I had become a bilderoman
hero. No. Not even a hero. Just a person, who had followed the
plot of a story that did not belong to them. I saw my other face
smiling in the hills. And so I left.
I rode on to Zul'Drak and there was nothing for me there. There
were old ghosts, and burnt out ziggurats. I felt the ground sing
to me. It sang to me, and asked me - wouldn’t you like to lie
down in me, wouldn’t you like to rot with me, wouldn’t you like
the light to leave you? It has already left. That is what the
rotten floor did not know. So I kept wandering, reaching out for
Daniel. In truth, I didn't know if I really wanted to see him. I
didn't know how I felt after the battering and the brushing and
the realization that we both had darkness inside of us, and he
believed i brought that darkness into being. But I went to him
because even if I couldn't go home again, I had to go. He was
the only thing that was close to home but it was a cold home,
and an unfamiliar one. I was afraid of what I would find when I
found Daniel but what I found when I found him - what I found
was pieces of home come floating back to me. They were on a
mission, no doubt. They were pursuing something evil and rotten,
and maybe that was Daniel.
I saw Alefir, Harkon, assorted others, all with the Silent. They
did not believe that I stood before them, and when they did come
to an understanding, they had their weapons and spells locked on
me. I was ready to take their shots, but they did not shoot.
Maybe they were afraid to hurt me. I think the truth is that
most of them didn’t even know who I was. In order to be
familiar, I took on the role that they knew - the smug snake. A
villain archetype that they could feel about defeating,
interacting with, spiting bile and poison at. It didn't really
fit me all that well. It was stretched at the seams. I smiled at
them but the mouth didn't suit me anymore. I wanted them to hate
me, and I wanted them to take me back. I didn't believe that
either of these goals would be fulfilled. But I wanted it
anyway. After bantering about like heroes and monsters in pulp
fiction, I collected Daniel and rode away. I tossed words to
them as we left. They spoke them into communicators hurriedly
and dreamed of approval from their superiors , they dreamed of
taking action into their own hands. They dreamed of conquering
me but I defy conquests. I am a conqueror. I was not conquered.
We rode away.
We came to a rest at Stratholme. It was beautiful and terrible.
I thought about when I used to sit on the ramparts and talk to
Belethial, before both of us rotted from the inside out. I
thought of Nathaniel Roderick riding up on his white horse,
golden and silver. I thought of him begging me to stop what I
had done. But I couldn’t stop it. And I can’t stop it now.
Daniel and I talked, but there was no truth in anything we said
to one another. There had not been truth since the boat. When
the bottom fell out, so did our love. One of the Silent’s
youngest, a boy, came to follow us. His name was Raithe and in
him I saw all strains of youth, all symptoms of a childhood. I
saw his youth and it hurt me. He wanted to know about me,
genuinely. All children want to know about the monster under
their bed. He asked me questions but Daniel would not let me
answer. He was too busy rooting around inside of Raithe’s mind,
too busy with his own desire to build himself up and sever
himself from me - a little rebellion - that he didn’t let me
speak. So I stared out at the waves, and looked for the ashes of
the crusaders I had killed. I found pieces. I remember my
brother flinging me off the side of the bridge, because I wasn’t
the person he remembered me being. I would have flung Daniel
too, if there had been strength left. Raithe asked, Daniel
twisted, and I said nothing - I just watched the fire signs.
Daniel left, and when he left he asked if he could kiss me. And
I told him now. He asked me if I was angry, and I said yes. He
told me that he didn’t have to live his life to my expectations
anymore. It was said so haughtily. It was intended to cut at me.
It didn’t. It was childish. His rebellion has come too late.
Nonetheless, I am sad that I refused his kiss. I now know that
there will never be another kiss for me. Daniel’s fingers will
never touch my face again. Daniel and I will never marry. We
will never have the life in death that he wanted so badly. I
knew from the start, that there would never be anything that
lasted. But I loved him. Light, did I love him. He was the love
of my life-after-death, and I miss his kiss. It was cold. It
hurt me. But I was just as cold, and I hurt just as much. And he
was beautiful to me. Even with all his rebellions, even with all
of his protests, even with his victimhood and false
manipulation, I would give anything to kiss him before the end
comes. But death is coming. So I must write. That is what she
meant, after all.
Raithe asked me what I wanted. What was my goal. And I had a
hard time answering him, because I had so many schemes rattling
around in my mind, so many oaths that could have been broken, so
many dreams that still could be snuffed out. But all of them
felt unreal. They would never be. So I told him the truth
instead. I wanted, from the very beginning to the very end, to
belong to something. To find my place in the world, a place that
was really mine. But the trouble is, that when you live the life
of another, you cannot find that place. You can’t go home again.
But I don’t believe in absolutes. So I went home again.
When I arrived in the catacombs, Eveya was meant for me. I
walked to the sword that I loved, the sword of my friend. I
plucked it from the shelf, and stares at the skulls. I remember
Mouse and I sitting there, discussing them, dreaming of when
more skulls would fill that shelf. We were so idealistic, and
hopeful. Eveya demanded to know why I had returned. I told her
that I had come to submit to whatever punishment she saw fit.
She shouted at me, and called me a fool - aimless. But then the
horror crossed her face, and she realized that I was not a fool.
She looked at me, and she said what she saw. Chaos. The blade
that lived only to spite others, to exist where it should not.
made her afraid. Of betrayers, of fools, of loss, of men like
me. She couldn’t suffer a man like me, a blade in the dark, she
couldn’t suffer me to live. I wouldn’t let me live either. So I
did what I had to do. I sheathed my sword, and told her the
truth. If I lived, I would kill her. Not now. Not directly. But
slowly, overtime. All the loss, all the foolishness, all the
chaos — it would come back, and kill her. I am not a man
anymore. I am an infection. I am plague.
She is coming, soon.
I am standing by an old appletree. The bark is knitted and
knotted. I see the faint marks where a young boy with blonde
hair and an eager smile carved the first letters of his name
with a skinning knife. I see the half-faded heart from a
youthful pair of lovers, who did not make it out alive. Glory is
with me. I have braided into her hair leaves from this old tree.
There are no flowers anymore. I kiss her bony nose, and tell her
that she is going to have a life beyond me, that she will wander
through the shadows and watch over young paladins, and I know
she understands. Maybe there will be another Northern boy, who
comes to the South with nothing but the shirt on his back. Maybe
the squires will laugh at him too. Maybe Glory will crawl out of
the darkness, and that boy won’t be afraid. Maybe he’ll hand
Glory and apple and smile at her, because he knows that she has
goodness in her, and maybe she will love him. Maybe the whole
story will repeat over again, and maybe in that story, the boy
will be a hero. I stroke her back, and sing to her. She fades in
my hands, and I clutch bits of her memory to me. I will need
her, for when Eveya returns to me. She is the only thing that
could make me less afraid of what is coming. I leave the tree
behind.
As I walk across the farmlands, I see the Balnirs tending their
fields. I wave at them, and they smile at me. The dying sun
casts purple light over the fields. The rotten wheat becomes
lavender in this sunset. The church bells are ringing. I look
towards the woods, the woods where my father and I hunted stags.
I hear his voice, I hear his laughter. My sister darts through
the woods on red courser, and she is laughing too. I want to
join them so badly, but I can’t leave yet. I walked to the edge
of their fields, and scooped up the soil in my hands. The ground
feels damp, moist, fertile. Maybe something could grow in it
again, something that is not plague and death. I can see small
worms crawling around in the soil. I set them in a bush, and
crush the soil in my hands, smearing it across my gauntlets. A
man should have dirt from his home under his nails. I turn
around, and look towards the minarets of Lordaeron, which are
tall, dark marks that just skirt the tops of the trees. My eyes
trace the corridors and passagemways of the castle that I grew
up in, the rooms where I lived. I can see the streets. And then
it happens. I feel a pressure in my chest. It is as if my heart
is going to explode. I was watching the road. I was looking for
her.
My sister is there.
I see her for only a second. But I know it is real. Not a dream,
no hallucination. Real. She is so real that I could touch her,
hold her. I want so badly to run to her and tell her that I have
been waiting for her. I have been dreaming of her. I want so
badly to tell her that our father is dead, and that I am sorry.
But I can’t move. My feet are frozen to the ground, the ghosts
are holding me down. I watch her, and I write her. Calia is
riding on a white horse, in a white gown. There is a hood over
her head, but she turns. She stares at the fields, and I feel
her eyes meet mine. Her face is not anything like I remember.
She is thinner, papery, older. There is hurt in her eyes, there
is age. There is a terrible sadness in her. She walks with
undead in robes, who carry staves of the church. They beckon her
to move on. Her eyes glimmer. She realizes that she has stopped
in the middle of the road. She nudges her horse forward. She
moves down the road. And then, she is gone. The ghosts release
my feet. I take a breath, and my lungs fill with blood, which
dribbles down the hole in my chest. I clutch my head, and press
my fingers against my eyes. She was real. She was death.
Eveya will be here any moment now. I do not want my last words
to be to myself. So, I will do what I have always done, in
moments of absolute uncertainty. I will write letters.
[/quote]
#Post#: 520--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: February 27, 2016, 3:41 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
<A folded note.>
[quote]
Eveya, this is for you.
I thought I hated you. I truly did. I thought you were absent
because you did not care, but I know why. You were absent,
because I wanted to lead so badly. It was my destiny, it was
what I was fated to do. I was born to lead. And when I did it, I
did it well. Nobody ever granted me the opportunity to do what I
was supposed to do, because there was always a belief that I was
too unstable, or too young - maybe, simply,t hat I was too evil.
But all of that evilness fades away with purpose.
I don’t know what to say to you, other than that I am grateful.
You were the only person who ever let me become what I was
supposed to be, rather than the monster that others tried to
turn me into. I do not want you to hate yourself for what I have
asked you to do, I do not want you to kill me and imagine you
are killing a monster. I want you to know that I think that even
if I hated you, it has changed. There are so many feelings that
I, about everything you have told me - about your secrets, about
your dreams. I wonder if you will think of me, when you think of
that shelf. I wonder if you will think of me, when you look at
the Silent. I wonder if you will think of me at all. Know that I
will always think of you.
The following message, please deliver to Daniel. It has been
folded up and attached with string.
I think that I can finally say that you are my sister. My true
sister. You were my death.
And I am happy that I was killed by you.
-Caleb
[/quote]
#Post#: 521--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: February 27, 2016, 3:42 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
<A folded message is attached.>
[quote]Daniel;
I keep writing what I want to say, but none of it comes out
right. I would send you feelings, but then you would know what i
intend to do, and I believe that you would try to stop me. I
cannot let you stop me. I can only let you know that when you
read this, I will be dead and gone. For the final time, for the
true death. I have surrendered to the rot. I have given in to
the darkness. I wonder if I should have forced you to make the
blow yourself, when we first met. I wonder if I should have made
you kill me before you fell in love with me. I wonder about too
much. What’s done, is done. I do not know how she has done it,
but I am dead. I do not know if you will even care. I do not
know if you will rant and rage. I do not know if you will sit
there, with stone face and cold hands and say nothing, only
remember the moments we had together. Perhaps you will do none
of this.
I am dead, now. I am dead and I am sorry, because I have left
you in the world with only a part of me, a tiny part of me left.
That is in Myriad, which I have left you. A knight should
inherit the sword of his lord, when he has served him so
faithfully. I know that metaphor is old and disused. It does not
matter anymore. You are my brother and my lover, and you are not
subservient to me. But I want you to have Myriad nonetheless. I
should not be buried with it. Dispose of it, melt what’s left of
me down into saronite and gird yourself in me, or wield me as
your own. Wield me as I once wielded you. I am so sorry.
I wanted to tell you so many things, but there are only dead
words on a dead tongue now. I wanted to tell you that I think I
will love you forever, and that I think I meant everything I
have ever said to you. All of the good. All of the bad. I wanted
to tell you that I regret none of it, and that I regret all of
it, and I believe that you will know what I mean. I wanted to
tell you that you were the most important thing in my life, and
now that I’m gone, I hope you realize that I was never that
important to you at all. You have a story ahead of you. I hope
it has a happy ending.
But I think what I really wanted to tell you was that I should
have kissed you. I go to my grave knowing that I will never feel
your kiss again, and it is killing me more surely than any
intentional mutilation. It is breaking me faster than rot. I
have lost a part of myself, when I lost you, when I refused your
kiss. I should have told you that I loved you.
I should have kissed you.
I am no longer anyones, but I wanted to be yours.
-CAM.
[/quote]
#Post#: 522--------------------------------------------------
Re: Caleb's Journal (Age 21-24)
By: Caleb Norwill Date: February 27, 2016, 3:42 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
<A small note is attached. It is not folded.>
[quote]Caleb;
This last note is for you.
Death is not a beginning, it is an end. I wish I had understood
that. I wish that I had done thigns differently, but I know that
if I did it all over again, I would end up in the same place
that I am at now. I would always end here, in the field, with
your soul in my hands, with my memory consuming yours. Devour
me, devour me, I say to you, and you say to me. You have often
fantasized about what your last words to me would be, when you
finally cast me off. I have fantasized what my last words would
be to you, when I finally rid the world of you. You have dreamed
of saving lives in Light, and I have dreamed of cities in dust.
But that is not how this ends. This doesn’t end int he fires of
war, or the flames of salvation.
This begins and ends with you.
Once, there was a boy named Caleb Norwill. He came from far
away, and he wanted, more than anything else in the world to be
a paladin. He gave everything to be something that he could
never be. He became twisted and wrong, pushed along by
machinations of those who loved him and hated him. He hated
himself, for a very long time, and took that hatred to his
grave. He died very young, and crawled from his grave with spite
in his heart. He could not bear feeling so hated, so he cut his
heart out and threw it into the sea. He killed by the very
people he wanted to be. And so, he became somebody else. That
persona was so overwhelming, that he believed the lie. He
believed it forever, and then was no distinction between lie and
truth. He learned to love the lie, even if he must, forever,
hate himself. And when people pricked at the flesh of the lie,
only the lie’s blood came out. Caleb Norwill was invincible. He
could not be touched.
And then, one day, Caleb Norwill woke up.
He forgot part of the lie. He remembered being young. He
remembered his brother, who loved him, he remembered his
mentors, his arrogance, his smiles and his sorrows. He
remembered something over than the hatred and the lie. He
remembered being careless. But he could not go back. He had come
too far to become anything else. So he had to not be anything at
all. He felt small, and sad, and strange, but in his heart - he
knew that there was something other than the plague. He knew
that there was something other than the lie. Caleb Norwill did
exist. Just as I do. because I am the only thing that is left. I
am shed skin. I am the last of the lie.
There is no happy ending for you. But the ending doesn’t have to
be happy to be good. There was a whole life with happiness and
goodness. There was sorrow and evil as well, that took root
within you. But that’s how life is.
If that’s life, what’s death?
Death is your hand in mine. “We’re leaving,” I tell you, and I
see you smile. It is your real face, and it is beautiful.
You leave with me.
Your last thoughts are of all the people you ever touched, all
of the people you loved and hated, all of the people who loved
and hated you. Your last thoughts are of them knowing you,
really knowing you, the real you. You laugh with them. You’re
still sad, but you’re real at last.
You belong.
[/quote]
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