PATIENCE

The audience is hungry,
they will not wait for long
to see their table set with food
is why we sing this song

waste no time, fare no reason,
it shouldn't now be too long –
all my favourite actors present,
shows must now go on

make me see myself anew
show me fiery truths
tell me not I'm bid to die
or I'll throw rotten fruit.

* * *

Needless to say, it was easier by far to stay in school with my grandfather (while he was alive), and stay hidden from everyone else. I wasn't the type to lavish in darkness, but I did appreciate walls. I could run on flat floors much easier than rolling hills, anyway. The former kept me active and excited, but the latter took wind from my chest like a punch to the stomach. I'd strengthened and trained enough to be useful at work before my teens, but this problem remained – it's the reason I couldn't run from The Manager's thugs. I took a beating then, but it was pittance to what I normally got from within. I could scarcely be in the kitchen for too long, before my ankles got sore again – I had to use my wits, and the most graceful maneuvers of hand and foot that I could, for practically every purpose... or I'd suffer severe pains. That made me lighter on my feet than you'd expect, and after a while, I was practically a dancer by the time I'd mastered french onions. Not that you should handle both at the same time! That gets you burnt with oil. When I caught myself spinning in the kitchen and almost twirled onto my pot handle, which would have flung the whole dish my way, I knew I'd gone too far with my fun. I could've disfigured myself for life... and wasted a meal, too. I kept my grace to the living room, but made sure to step as silently and softly as I could in the kitchen. I found I could be like a kitten wearing an apron, if I wanted; which was better than being a burn-ward ballerina. Though still I felt like I'd been clamped at the lower legs with spikes of steel. Like iron maidens for tall boots.
'Oh, tell us of your aches,' I hear you mock, for you must have equal or worse. 'Cry us a river, then, and we'll dip in it!'
Well, I don't have to. The sky's already done that for me, hasn't it? Ya thirsty bastard. My tears are my own, thanks. But I will tell ye – it aches me fiercely, every day, and makes my sleep a little shorter than all the rest who slumber. It also puts me sat back down on the hour, when others at blade are still attent for thresh. The Manager hated me for it – he lost productivity on me, and it wasn't my fault. Which meant he couldn't berate me without looking unfair. He seemed to care less, when I last saw him, about whose fault anything was – but I supposed losing a wife and child will do that to a man. Them, and some teeth, I think. He wasn't looking too well, now that I think back.
I've never dared to put my own pain above another's because I don't believe in it. Pain only tells us we're alive, doesn't it? So it's a good thing, in small doses. Tells me where's next to heal, so I can press and stretch my agonies away. Then sometimes, I simply ignore them. I've been caught, when something interested me, to stand so long I couldn't get up the next day. A particularly fine-printed series of parchments, posted in The Potionist's study, had done that for me – shown me I could withstand the pain, if I looked away from it. The Potionist was a friend of my father's, and those parchments were useful pieces of advice as to what made a story good. An Eastern Asian himself, with a handsome face, blueish eyes, and soft brown hair, I was never quite certain what he'd been mixed with. Only that he fascinated me. He took the craft of stories VERY seriously, and as he was only seven years older than I was, provided someone much more exciting to learn from than (no offense) my drier-than-sand Mentor. He suffered a condition that made him unable to read as fast as I could, for the words would jumble about in his eyes. So I read them aloud, which helped me practice my vocals, to both our benefit. I learned more than I knew was possible to be said on the matter of a good, long story: it had to be general to its audiences, and yet meaningful enough to wake them; it must cycle through light and dark, with periods of rest and danger, adventure and sentiment, advancement in between; it must feature a friend, a lover, a guide, and a villain to propel them all into conflict; and it must restore our faith that when all has sunned and set, we are all, in fact, the same. Different by our walks of life, but mirrored kindly by how we slept at night. And by the blood that flowed on through all of us, which was royally blue on the inside, but somehow red no matter where it was bled from. He called it The Rule of Gold, and told me it was written by a bright young upstart called The Freeman, who lived a few towns over. A moorish teen who'd been born a slave, but challenged his slaver to a deathmatch... and won. A warrior, and a poet. He was, apparently, not much older than I was, and seemed to have been blessed with heavenly vision; whatever strung gold was his business to know, yet he was proud to share that weave with any who would listen. It seemed, actually, that it was the weave as well as the string that made it worth something. Another piece The Potionist had shown me was written by someone called The Chancellor, about a boy who searches for riches in the desert, and then finds it back home. It was... a bit self-fulfilling and navel-sniffing for my taste, and perhaps even dangerously naïve. But what did I know? I'd never been to the desert, anyway. The Potionist had stories of his own in the works, but that was not his job at the castle, and I'm afraid each chapter only has so much room to speak – I'll have to tell about it another time. The Potionist's actual reason for seeing me was to try and sedate my legs, with herbal juices he'd spent all day extracting. It turned them green for a bit, but then it faded away. I felt no different. What he did accomplish, however, was teaching me what a 'vegetarian' was, and told me I'd fit in very well as one. He'd grown beans called 'soy' in his backyard, and used them to somehow make milk – which he told me was healthier than that of a cow, and produced far less stomach irritation. It was exactly what I needed to pad out my diet and not feel starving, and it somehow kept a calm over me. It's hard to explain, but it felt like all my angst for lack of romance was being patted back down to sleep, and I felt more comfortable for it. Those were, before I knew they were gone, the good days.

Then, came the bad ones. I fear there's much more, now, to discuss, about the time between my schooling and my work as a Reaper. It's the sorriest bunch of stories I'll ever have to tell, as far as I know – unless something worse is to happen, when this carriage road trip is over. So please, do be warned: from this point on, things are NOT going to be comfy or cozy to an average person's gentle sensibilities. The Eastern World may be in a Medical New Dawn, but Western Europe is very much a cesspool at the moment. At this epoch of history, the crusades have just ended, Israel fully sacked, and the Templars have finally run short of their spoils and Jewish gold. It was a reward they'd earned for trading goods with the Africans, which they knew to keep as finely as possible – not a speck to fall from their scales. The Templars are beginning to realize who was minting it for them, and that most of them are now dead, or emigrated. Y'know, the Jews. There's no more 'holy war' for them, to justify their taking by their own dogmatic code. Many of them have become pirates, because as it turns out, that was the part of the job that really appealed to them. My own father was a Templar doctor, once, but even he shook his head at their buffoonery.
"They've lept backwards," he'd cry at his letters for the month. "The whole lot of them-! From steel to saltwater, and one day, to mud."
The Teacher was... less opinionated on the matter, simply grateful for a seal with which to scare off would-be purse-snatchers at the market.
"I never believed they were all that civilized to begin with," she'd told me with a laugh. It was actually the last thing she'd ever said to me, before The Plague took her down below.

Back to the topic at hand: though no doubt some great adventure (or at least a boring vacation) awaits me abroad, we must first discuss our most important values: respect, security, guardianship, and faith. I was taught that faith was an exercise in boundaries – those who crossed without reason or consent believed themselves the only child of God. Or, if you prefer like I do, The Gods. That their entitlement to the respect, security, and protection of others was proof they had no faith that God had made anyone else by his own two hands. (Or, uh, their hands. Plurally.) That no one but them, varnished toddler's ego, was capable of understanding their needs, and sharing with them fairly. That was why, when those fences were destroyed or left to planked ruin, so too was faith. Yet, none should command such a fence as to never be hopped, in case of an emergency – not without inviting others to hide behind them, as well. That doesn't mean you can harm someone if it's an emergency, by the way. Oh, twisters of phrase... how thy heads spin for your own arrogance. It means you should offer the same security you'd expect for yourself, assuming you have standards of any kind (and you should). Such were the walls of a fort, meant for all civil to take refuge within. The walls of a home would do well enough to separate them, thereafter. It was not a wall to separate 'the wheat from the chaff', as the bourgeoisie so ineloquently put it when they segregated the poor from their salvation. That they, the rich, were too pure to be sullied... by the unwashed hands of those whom they forced to farm in their name, dusk until dawn eternal.
What it meant to be sacred and pure was this: to be left untouched. Uninterfered with, undisturbed, and unforced to cooperate. Yet no human was so sacred as to deserve this idolic treatment, to remain still and be polished by servants day after day. A baby is not impure for wanting a hug, nor a child impure for wanting a kiss, nor a teen for what comes next. When the timing is right. It's not sex that makes one feel impure, but violence. Rape is just violence, using sex as a disguise. And if a faithless bastard is found too dangerous for 'is own good, destructive to the world under his feet and those around 'im... then let him be cut down by another's sword for good, with all the grace the Gods can give to killing another human being. To do no harm was noble, but to prevent it was all-too necessary; to allow it was letting evil claim the land. That evil stained the hands of its doers, and cursed their enablers as well... with the haunting of karmic reproach. Agony was mine every day, a haunting on my bones; so I knew well that pains threatened not them wretched – but perdition, imprisonment in their own mistakes... that did the trick. To sear their consequences back into their loathesome eyes with naught but the light of truth – that was worth more than the oil it took to spark aflame your sword.
Yet there is even worse than wretched, which hides by being less than violent: a kind of evil that creeps too quietly to make a sound, too softly to upset toes. And it stains every one of us that it can touch. As you read on, dear keeper of my words, know that it was this very creeping force that I hated the most: the battle that swords can't win.