(no subject)
"They define all amounts of time not by the number of days, but by the number of nights; they celebrate birthdays and the beginnings of months and years in such a way that the day is made to follow the night."
Such is De Bello Gallico, and the ambition of Caesar Deo, and his wonderment at the ancient Celts. They were no great strangers, no monsters of the earth, but he would tell it as it has pleased him. But then, he did everything as it pleased him.
I have thought of you, Mael.
It should not surprise you, you were and are the Druid, much as the times have changed you, shaped you. Much as they’ve shaped all of us.
But we are ever what we once were, and so it is the Gift perhaps only conserves a spirit, with little chance to enlighten it. And then are not the lesser of humans, who reach the peek of their maturity, who settle in an arc? Are we not underdeveloped, restless in our minority, starving, anxious, breathless adolescents? Are we not the children, we, have no death to fear, no war and no plague?
We are spared Dread, Mael, but we are spared life also.
And that is what you would not understand, my friend, my old friend, my never-friend and my Druid. You, who once danced for the grass and its dead, for the leaves and the forest, and the Grove beneath. You, who would begrudge Avicus, and Eudoxia also, who would have saved Amadeo, and buried me on this night.
Who would waken me from Sleep, and it is Sleep that tempts me.
I find no courage in you, as you have found in me. And I have no more of the West and the East to consider. As always, you brink mockery instead, quick irritation and my less immodest furies. I am allergic to judgment, Mael. Tell me, the discomfort between us, must it always be so? That you would find blame with me for every minor inconvenience sprinkled on your countless years, that you should despise my endurance, my sleep and my ennui?
Trust in me and part amicably. I have said this before, and was warned that we’re no Greeks for such things. Derided. But Eudoxia, you are dust and bone now, and the ashes betwixt, and the Mother was fertile and kindly, once, and gone now also.
And Mael, I have survived another night of the dead, and I have thought on it at length. I have thought of my dead, and they have been many. And dear. They are always dear.
I have thought of these bodies, which walk and work without question, though they are corpses, same as they under the earth. I have thought of the living minds in them.
We are dead, yes, we of the Blood.
We are the dead who’ve risen, and, Mael, this was our night.
- Marius de Romanus
"Men fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other."
I am told our Lord Viscount Francis Bacon was much hated for such words, that he wrote them with impunity. That he regretted nothing.
Think now of this great feat, to live life in darkness, to choose it and despair. There is always despair. There must be. Yet it is a strange thing, to fear night as we do, the absence of light and its penitence. Do we not sleep in darkness also? Close our eyes to find comfort? Shy from candles when we are ill, from the great beast electricity, when there is ache given to our eyes, or our temples? Is death such a great and fearsome thing?
No matter.
We have seen Samhain, then, the newly wedded year of darkness. Samhain has passed. And would that there were a Witching Hour to speak of, and great harvest, and weeping, and an embassy for the dead. But there are no such things. Gone is the time for witches, and put the brooms away. They gather dust easier than they remove it.
And if dust is the order of the evening, then I confess that there must be much of it to be seen in the library.
I should see it.
private :: vc crew
What is this? And why? No. No. You have been idle. We have been idle. We have seen one another, and communed, and done all the things of peace that needed doing. We would share bread and salt and a roof also, were they convenient, but they are not. And if it is generosity that must bind us, then I shall gladly dispense with the books and the fine clothes.
But lethargy does not become you.
Lestat, you were the traveller. I see no journey, no burning, and no qualm. No question. Would you not benefit, to walk the realm as you would? Freely, and an eagle, and a man too, if you must?
Armand, you have not written. I would say more, but that is enough, and you would know what to do.
Young Daniel, I am the foreigner again, and this is my Otherness: I do not know how you keep, beyond the words in print, and they are few. But surely it cannot be that your way is looming, and surely you will find a way to entertain yourself.
To blend in with these mortals, is that so unnatural? They have, after all, only a lifetime to compare, and such is the lie that their revelations will be brief. May they linger through eternity in our memory.
- Marius