Cydnar
12-27-09, 09:55 AM
Consequences are an oddity, a part of life seldom understood. We deal with the here and the now often enough, yet slimly we peel away the veil that hides the effects of today on the brightness of tomorrow; we are at a loss for blame, at a blank slate for culpability – we are blameless, innocent, angelic.
That is why I cannot ever remain still, silent, unenergetic. I am a flurry of activity forever preserving my grandchildren’s future, the future of my race and of every culture on this world and all those worlds beyond it. You will never see me sitting idly by, watching the waters slip through my fingers, or the sands from the clasp of the hourglass’s figure – I am timeless, I am eternal, I am forever indebted to creation. You will never hear me cry or falter in the moment, for I believe that the future of today is bound to the future of tomorrow – we will not, should not, and cannot enjoy the moments we experience. If we do not experience them in ardour, in humble waves, we are shallow indeed.
I am tiresome, it is true; a torrential rain in a deserted village, washing away the remnants of joy in a grey, grey world. But this is the nature of all the Hummel; we are the silent guardians, the monochrome invigilators, the crushing Templers. It is with our righteous dedication to the null, to the greyness between evil and good that keeps Althanas ablaze with war and love and hate and peace; we are its protectors. We are its knights, it is our table.
As I stand here, in the glory of the Citadel, I reel in the carnal and primal aura of the day – the sun’s zenith hangs overheard in this false paradise, and I realise at last that I am not alone. My request has gone noticed, and the wheels of fate turn in my favour as an endless summer meadow peals back the endless white arena into a sunny halcyon wave of green grass and delicate blossoms. This is the meadow of tomorrow, of nature’s bounty – these are the plains of Akashima swept aside to time, these are the glorious heights of the Alerar plateaus, a land lost to the inescapable difficulty in traversing the peaks that surround it.
The wind in my hair and the chill of midsummer in my lungs reminds me of the first time I set foot on the surface, of a time of personal discovery and mindless automation. I travelled the world in search of answers without ever finding reprieve. When in service of the World Snake there is no tiresome solution, there is only endless questioning of purpose. I can never find an answer, but I can escape the world bearing woe of my gaeas in this arena, in the clashing of steel and the bewildering menagerie of talent, of brutal artistry that these times produce.
I glance to my left, and smile as a rabbit pounces through the cotton tailed Jack Reeds and the yellow dandelions, escaping its dues in a windswept hegemony. Above me, the crows and magpies fly, calling their death knell to the world that is false yet true. Of all my encounters in the Citadel, of all the deception witnessed in these stone halls and circular domes, this arena, so simple and succinct, has to be my most treasured.
Not only do I experience the glory of battle without the crippling irony of death, I see places in the world even I cannot go, places untarnished by civilisation, magic, hatred or death in a thousand years. Some might think this soft, this adoration of the natural world; but it is in this truth, in this respect for the natural order, for the worship of Geomancy that I find my peace. It is through this, that I breathe and smile, and through this, peace comes to find me.
Only by this balance, can I draw my slender sword of crystalline hematite, dubbed Freya in a time long before I existed. Only in this balance can I step into the arena at the heart of one of Althanas’s greatest cities, expecting to die but relishing in the life such a loss will gift me.
It is only here, that I feel alive. And here in this meadow, I await the arrival of my opponent, of the angel of death and dance and retribution with whom I shall consummate my marriage to the simplest of forces.
Fate.
That is why I cannot ever remain still, silent, unenergetic. I am a flurry of activity forever preserving my grandchildren’s future, the future of my race and of every culture on this world and all those worlds beyond it. You will never see me sitting idly by, watching the waters slip through my fingers, or the sands from the clasp of the hourglass’s figure – I am timeless, I am eternal, I am forever indebted to creation. You will never hear me cry or falter in the moment, for I believe that the future of today is bound to the future of tomorrow – we will not, should not, and cannot enjoy the moments we experience. If we do not experience them in ardour, in humble waves, we are shallow indeed.
I am tiresome, it is true; a torrential rain in a deserted village, washing away the remnants of joy in a grey, grey world. But this is the nature of all the Hummel; we are the silent guardians, the monochrome invigilators, the crushing Templers. It is with our righteous dedication to the null, to the greyness between evil and good that keeps Althanas ablaze with war and love and hate and peace; we are its protectors. We are its knights, it is our table.
As I stand here, in the glory of the Citadel, I reel in the carnal and primal aura of the day – the sun’s zenith hangs overheard in this false paradise, and I realise at last that I am not alone. My request has gone noticed, and the wheels of fate turn in my favour as an endless summer meadow peals back the endless white arena into a sunny halcyon wave of green grass and delicate blossoms. This is the meadow of tomorrow, of nature’s bounty – these are the plains of Akashima swept aside to time, these are the glorious heights of the Alerar plateaus, a land lost to the inescapable difficulty in traversing the peaks that surround it.
The wind in my hair and the chill of midsummer in my lungs reminds me of the first time I set foot on the surface, of a time of personal discovery and mindless automation. I travelled the world in search of answers without ever finding reprieve. When in service of the World Snake there is no tiresome solution, there is only endless questioning of purpose. I can never find an answer, but I can escape the world bearing woe of my gaeas in this arena, in the clashing of steel and the bewildering menagerie of talent, of brutal artistry that these times produce.
I glance to my left, and smile as a rabbit pounces through the cotton tailed Jack Reeds and the yellow dandelions, escaping its dues in a windswept hegemony. Above me, the crows and magpies fly, calling their death knell to the world that is false yet true. Of all my encounters in the Citadel, of all the deception witnessed in these stone halls and circular domes, this arena, so simple and succinct, has to be my most treasured.
Not only do I experience the glory of battle without the crippling irony of death, I see places in the world even I cannot go, places untarnished by civilisation, magic, hatred or death in a thousand years. Some might think this soft, this adoration of the natural world; but it is in this truth, in this respect for the natural order, for the worship of Geomancy that I find my peace. It is through this, that I breathe and smile, and through this, peace comes to find me.
Only by this balance, can I draw my slender sword of crystalline hematite, dubbed Freya in a time long before I existed. Only in this balance can I step into the arena at the heart of one of Althanas’s greatest cities, expecting to die but relishing in the life such a loss will gift me.
It is only here, that I feel alive. And here in this meadow, I await the arrival of my opponent, of the angel of death and dance and retribution with whom I shall consummate my marriage to the simplest of forces.
Fate.