(no subject)
"There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return."
Shall I tell you, O Queen, that I fear? But you know this, and you know me, and you have known me always. And you know my fears, much as they elude the eye and the mind, much as the Mind Gift no doubt should find them inexplicable.
I have not asked you, Maharet, I have not asked you and your twin what it is to pierce a mind as old as mine, as old and eager.
But Marius, are you not arrogant, now? Do you not covet? Do you not think you have partaken of such a splendid gift, to have known the Ancients? For certainly, you have touched theirs, you have known thoughts shielded by all that fire hair, you have heard their story. Above all, you have heard their story. But Maharet, you are strange, and you have always been strange, and this Otherness has taken both you and the sister. Where is your sister, Maharet? Where is your sister?
And so you do not have a mind or thoughts, but concern, and the unease of the concerned.
Mekare, Mekare, but where is Mekare? Is she well? Does she walk well? And my children, Queen, what would you have of my children? What would you do?
This is your mind, Maharet, such are its wants. It is not the read intelligence of a creature that has known sport and smiles, it is the mind of a guardian and a lost soul and a mother.
I am not a parent. I do not understand you. I could never understand you.
And Queen, but know this, that history is a cycle, that it is a circle also and it undoes itself, like the great Ouroboros that adorned your caves. That there will be those of us who are parents, then, and there will be students also. You were such, Great Mother, for you were my Mother, and their Mother also. And you were the student of witches and witchcraft, and a student of the millennia. You were their union, the parent-student, one who would not wake for the choosing. But after you, we all knew our place, some with certainty and some without.
But Amadeo, I am a poor historian, forgive me. And I too have slept, for all that dreams were bitter, and I too have forgotten. I have lost the count, my boy, my precious boy, poor angel. If there were bells for the plague, then surely there must be bells for this, a toll for the Master who forgets his ways utterly.
Are you a parent, then? Will you weep and tear your hair? Will you bear it readily, when surely there is no greater icon than a new discovery? When you were made, forgive me, sir, to stand on your knees? To pray?
Your boy is lost, Amadeo, and I must beg forgiveness, Queen. There was much to write of Daniel, and so I must do it now. You will see, our Mother. You will know, and you will be told.
And he will be remembered.
- Marius de Romanus
"Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
'Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn."
My Lord Tennyson, I read, my Lord, I swear to you, I read. I read, and I do not understand. To have loved and lost, and it is the better, you say? But what is it that we love once we have lost?
The memory, certainly, the memory and the kind words and the ideal also. We must not forget that man is the creature of dreams, and those dreams pretty in the wake of pain are strange and many. It is a simple thing to love that which is lost, and we might think ourselves the better and forgiving for it; but then we are in love with our delusions, and they are suited only to our tastes. To think of the person is to deprive it of its substance, to think is to reason, to think is to excuse.
Love is such that no excuses are needed, love is of the moment, where reality exudes.
Live for the moment, then, and love for it also.
That is the lesson of history, and all history is dead. There is no greater loss than death.
Forgive me, I ramble. I am reminded that I am an old man indeed, and so I must ramble.