Living in Trinity

After Will left for Nottingham, Marian walked the edge of the lake watching the stars reflected upon it. She wished for his safety and then she recounted the names of those who had died in the last month. Remembering each for a moment with silence, to see their faces each clearly. Some she knew well and others not, but she made sure to remember their names. They were the ones who needed remembering.

And she chose to remember all of them.

Years of remembering.

Her sleep wasn't spectacularly peaceful and she found herself awake in the dark early morning hours. The hours she'd usually be delivering food and medicine at home, but there was no reason for the Nightwatchman to be needed in this place. Sitting at the desk she studied her face in a small mirror.

How was it she looked the same when so much else had changed? Finger to her face she noticed the ink stains of Will's letters on her fingers by the single candle light.

She drew out a paper from the desk, and, in the silent night, began writing very slowly.

One cloudy day follows another and I wonder whether I shall lose myself entirely. I am drawing taunt, as wire or bow string, become invisible in the sight of all those I would have know the frame of my fate, thinking I shall dissipate like the clouds in the northern sky, over the tumbled hills and chattering stream, before morning.

It is not death, nor darkness, but monotony that frightens me now, and the loss of something lost already. To go forward is to be undone, to go backwards is to be stripped. Hands tied or cut off; there is no path before my willing feet. My voice hollow of things I wish for them, my mind devoid of the countless ones I used to gather for myself.

Temptation to give in sleeps with exhaustion, wars with rebellion, while reality calls for me to fly into the sky's haunted faces.

I am lost, before you standing.

And, still, I hear them crying. The sound cuts its teeth on my heart.

...how can I worry this much of myself when their pain is so much worse?