04-01-2023, 05:53 PM
KENSLEY
These are the things he has reckoned with: shame and forgiveness, grief and hope, fear and courage. Most of all he has interrogated the blame that has lived so long at the very root of him. The grudge he has held against his father, the blame he has shouldered for the way the dark son had plunged the world into darkness, chaos. (For shouldn’t he have known, shouldn’t he have done more to stop it? But the child had been so strange, made of shadows as he was. And now he, Kensley, is similarly made of nothing at all. Perhaps this is what has prompted the forgiveness, the understanding that nothing he could have done could have stopped what had been set in motion.)
He wanders now as he has always done, unwilling to confront the memories in the Chamber, grossly unwilling to venture back there only to find that she was not there. (When had he lost her again?)
He exhales now, the force of his breath bending the flowers at his feet.
A familiar voice stays him in his tracks and he swings his head around to search for her. (He is not convinced that he has not imagined it, that he has not wished his sister back into existence, too.) But she is there, she is there, smiling at him in that way that lends new light to the whole meadow and he laughs in disbelief. One long, low sound and the spring showers that had gathered low above the meadow dissolve with his relief.
He goes to her. There is no rush because he trusts that she will not disappear before he reaches her.
“Kennice,” he exhales, smiling placidly still.
The last time he’d seen her, he’d been shattered. He’d been reduced to something he’d thought broken beyond repair. And yet he has persisted. He is here, still.
“Sister,” he murmurs, reaching out to touch her shoulder and then to drape his head over her spine. “You’re alive,” he says, as if this is the most surprising thing of all, that they have both survived, somehow.
He wanders now as he has always done, unwilling to confront the memories in the Chamber, grossly unwilling to venture back there only to find that she was not there. (When had he lost her again?)
He exhales now, the force of his breath bending the flowers at his feet.
A familiar voice stays him in his tracks and he swings his head around to search for her. (He is not convinced that he has not imagined it, that he has not wished his sister back into existence, too.) But she is there, she is there, smiling at him in that way that lends new light to the whole meadow and he laughs in disbelief. One long, low sound and the spring showers that had gathered low above the meadow dissolve with his relief.
He goes to her. There is no rush because he trusts that she will not disappear before he reaches her.
“Kennice,” he exhales, smiling placidly still.
The last time he’d seen her, he’d been shattered. He’d been reduced to something he’d thought broken beyond repair. And yet he has persisted. He is here, still.
“Sister,” he murmurs, reaching out to touch her shoulder and then to drape his head over her spine. “You’re alive,” he says, as if this is the most surprising thing of all, that they have both survived, somehow.
I WORSHIPPED AT THE ALTAR OF LOSING EVERYTHING )