Via Indemnis
"I had heard once, that he who is without sin could cast the first stone. I had heard once, that innocence, when lost, could not be regained.
If this be true, why then, does Hope live on?"
The Healer was thrown off.
It was the typical response of any patient that signaled a successful rendering. It was, however violent, the kind of separation that matched success.
Had the Healer not been thrown off so violently, he would have questioned it.
What he did question was where the impact had landed him.
It wasn't against some ward-room wall.
It wasn't inside that strange box that was bigger within.
He found himself back in Rhy'Din. He found himself at the very spot that his nightmare of the past year-and-more had begun. The earth beneath him wasn't frozen and covered in snow like it was on the last day a hero spoke to him -- it was warmer than frozen but still cold. The ground was softer and bore no traces of even being walked on in many months.
Memory flashed in his mind.
Home.
Renne crawled a circuit around the bare earth; earth that by memory alone, marked the perimeter of a once-there building. he crawled across the imaginary line where a door once stood.
he crawled "inside" that piece of ground, tracing back paths he'd known for years. he remembered each path, where it went, to whom any of the phantom spaces belonged to.
It all boils down to this, really...
He came away from the bare-earth place with whispers in his mind. He heard Mamela singing to him, Archie patiently, so patiently teaching. He heard Zonker and Melkor laughing and feasting to their hearts' content.
Rena whispered to him motherly faith and 'Nathan put a smile into sound, so beautiful.
Renne went to the seaside, to that mud-spot and sat for a while. he found he could remember his many letters without crying as much as he used to.
He still cried, knew he'd never stop crying entirely. But that was...It simply was.
He turned and went to the other Home.
It was real, it was solid and there and...not a dream.
All of those voices, he heard them and he felt the solid walls, the floor beneath him. He stayed there with them night after night. A golden age of time past relit itself within his mind and his walls began to crack.
Minute, infinitessimal cracks. But they were cracks in cold, jaded, misanthropic walls. When the Hunter's darkness emerged at the utterance of a loved/hated name, he did not find damnation.
It had, in all truth, shocked him.
He was reputed as the Dockside Killer, was he not?
Still, there was no damnation here and Renne found the strength to speak of things he'd kept within for many a moon.
The conversation was neither brief, nor long. It simply was -- insightful, and at its end, he had much to think upon.
The only one who must forgive you is yourself
Renne learned again, the power of the spoken word.
"I had heard once, that he who is without sin could cast the first stone. I had heard once, that innocence, when lost, could not be regained.
If this be true, why then, does Hope live on?"
The Healer was thrown off.
It was the typical response of any patient that signaled a successful rendering. It was, however violent, the kind of separation that matched success.
Had the Healer not been thrown off so violently, he would have questioned it.
What he did question was where the impact had landed him.
It wasn't against some ward-room wall.
It wasn't inside that strange box that was bigger within.
He found himself back in Rhy'Din. He found himself at the very spot that his nightmare of the past year-and-more had begun. The earth beneath him wasn't frozen and covered in snow like it was on the last day a hero spoke to him -- it was warmer than frozen but still cold. The ground was softer and bore no traces of even being walked on in many months.
Memory flashed in his mind.
Home.
Renne crawled a circuit around the bare earth; earth that by memory alone, marked the perimeter of a once-there building. he crawled across the imaginary line where a door once stood.
he crawled "inside" that piece of ground, tracing back paths he'd known for years. he remembered each path, where it went, to whom any of the phantom spaces belonged to.
It all boils down to this, really...
He came away from the bare-earth place with whispers in his mind. He heard Mamela singing to him, Archie patiently, so patiently teaching. He heard Zonker and Melkor laughing and feasting to their hearts' content.
Rena whispered to him motherly faith and 'Nathan put a smile into sound, so beautiful.
Renne went to the seaside, to that mud-spot and sat for a while. he found he could remember his many letters without crying as much as he used to.
He still cried, knew he'd never stop crying entirely. But that was...It simply was.
He turned and went to the other Home.
It was real, it was solid and there and...not a dream.
All of those voices, he heard them and he felt the solid walls, the floor beneath him. He stayed there with them night after night. A golden age of time past relit itself within his mind and his walls began to crack.
Minute, infinitessimal cracks. But they were cracks in cold, jaded, misanthropic walls. When the Hunter's darkness emerged at the utterance of a loved/hated name, he did not find damnation.
It had, in all truth, shocked him.
He was reputed as the Dockside Killer, was he not?
Still, there was no damnation here and Renne found the strength to speak of things he'd kept within for many a moon.
The conversation was neither brief, nor long. It simply was -- insightful, and at its end, he had much to think upon.
The only one who must forgive you is yourself
Renne learned again, the power of the spoken word.