( modern!alyosha -- excerpt from a magazine article. )

Mary Oliver - Why I Wake Early.

Hello, sun in my face ( Read more... )

*sitting on the porch beside a lilac bush, legs hanging over the edge and face in the sunlight, Alyosha patiently ties a prayer rope; each step of each knot contains the shape of the cross, and though the work is painstakingly complicated (and his hair has gotten curly and thick since he cut it last, falling too often into his eyes), it puts him at ( Read more... )

And an old priest said, Speak to us of Religion ( Read more... )

*has been cooking again, after bringing in cherries from the cherry trees and deciding on a whim to make varenyky -- perhaps it's careless of him, for he doesn't think of where the flour comes from and whether it ought to be rationed, but it's an innocent, open-hearted sort of impulse, and it would be spoiled with too much worrying. he only takes a ( Read more... )

*carrying flowers, crocuses and hyacinths and yellow daffodils -- they are not cut, but growing from bulbs in his hands, and he winces as he untangles the roots at his fingertips* Lady Freyja? *calls out at the tree-line, no one in sight* Lady Freyja, if it pleases you, I'd like to see you once more. I've ... brought an offering ( Read more... )

*stole away before the sun rose from a room that wasn't his own -- perhaps he told himself it was only a moment, perhaps he told himself he would return (and that's such an odd expression, "told one's self" -- why should one "tell" one's self anything? better to say he thought it, whether or not he believed it) -- and the Lord only knows where he ( Read more... )

*even with the plot hole gone, the library still seems to contain every book ever written and then some -- Alyosha finds this out, when he goes there to read and to calm his nerves while he waits for news of Buzz. there's a script for a stage play, apparently, and he hasn't even opened it, but he looks very interested in the summary on the back.*

*it's late, but Alyosha finds himself unable to sleep, finds himself feeling restless and lonely for the people he loves. he cannot love a person without at once working for their benefit, even if his work will be patience and prayer -- and it did his heart good, to hear the fate of his family. but still he is uneasy, this tossing in the night, ( Read more... )

*it's a nice day today, the sort of midwinter spring that one does not expect to last but can enjoy for its own sake, snow still on the ground and the sun bright enough to make snow shine, warm enough to settle almost-glowing in the skin -- Alyosha is out, in waistcoat and jacket instead of his cassock (somehow he could hear Lise teasing him for ( Read more... )