Childhood

She used to love sunrises.

She used to love running fast - faster than any other kids at school. She loved to bake and make a mess of it and laugh about it afterward. She loved cartoons on TV and to poke at things with a stick, especially if they were critters.

She loved to do all these things with her father.

But he died and so did a little part of her with him and for a while, she hated all those things. She hated daylight, hated chocolate cake, detested mindless games. She loathed them but above all things, she hated him.

He had abandoned her. He had left his little girl to the great big world.

Before he left, never to return, she never understood why he helped those who fought. Those that created violence and death and pain. He would tell her he was actually trying to save lives - a doctor. One man against a multitude. She did not understand it but she cared for him in the unconditional way children love their parents and so, she came to care for his work as well.

But he died and she hated him.

She hated them.

She hated the system that put him there, hated the systems that forced good, nice people to fight for a scrap of honor, a name, a keepsake - trinkets.

She hated the world - for a time.

She was 7 years old. Young, too young - but they always are...

Her mother, timeless being that she was, had witnessed too much death, had lived too much loss not to see the signs. But she was old, her mother. And with great age came great wisdom and sometimes, too great a caution. She sent her away, thinking to focus her mind to other tasks so as to blur the rest. In that, she succeeded but only in part.

She learned and learned and learned. Her mind was a bottomless well of questions, inquiries and curiosity. She turned her mind to all manner of subjects so as to fill the hole he had punched in her heart by leaving her alone.

Knowledge became her crutches and then a walking stick and after a while, she walked on her own and used that knowledge as a diving board. She jumped hard and deep into science, seeking answers to questions her mind - and heart - could barely form.

But still, she never forgot.

As her knowledge grew, her hatred turned to cold ash, dying embers left to smolder softly, pushed away slowly, piece by piece until the pain grew less and less and less.

And at last, she dismissed it and denied it ever passed.

Her father became a dim memory of a rare presence; misunderstood, fighting to help a cause that was pointless, hopeless and irrational. Honor, she came to believe, was only a death sentence.

She schooled her mind to forget and so it did, as well a the fined-tuned instrument she had made it to be.

As for her heart. Well...




Aaridys
Ad aeternum

Humeur: Solemn
Musique: Stravinsky's "Firebird"