Post by tiraslin on Aug 28, 2011 21:23:22 GMT -5
I close my eyes and I see my children’s faces. Mikhal, with his blacksmith father’s nose and sandy brown hair always falling in his eyes and those charming dimples we had no idea where they came from. Always helpful and polite, my little philosopher. Sarai, two years junior, long blonde hair floating behind her blue pinafore as she comes running with a bloody elbow and a handful of flowers she’s found up on a ledge that took her half an hour to climb up and get. My eyes and her father’s irrepressible good nature. Connely, scooting about in rags, babbling in that special language babies have, fine blonde hair and long eyelashes surrounding the most startling blue-green eyes and, such a blessing, no colic this time around.
I close my eyes and I see my children’s faces, contorted with pain and fear. Those creatures are holding them, and I am on the table, on the table bound and helpless. Where is Jess? Have our men all fallen in battle, that it is come to this in our homes? I hear Sarai cry out as the long nails of her captor cut into her white skin. I see the baby, thrown on the floor, and I know I shall never hear his laugh again. How long has this been? Hours? Days? Acrid smoke hangs in the air, burned wood and cloth and the smell of death. I have cried until I have no more tears or voice, pleading for my children’s lives. Two live yet, there is hope. I can bear the pain of the knife against my skin, the degradation of my will, the destruction of my home. Please let my children live.
I close my eyes and I see my children’s faces, limp, lifeless. No promises are sufficient, no deeds enough. I feel the blood on my body, wet and crusted. My heart breaks, and my body fills with something I can’t describe. Anger, fear, pain, they all exist in my consciousness, but I am filled with my breaking heart and it is more than that. I see the mocking cruelty in the tormentor’s eyes, and I know they have consequences. My heartbreak is a blinding, warm, pulsing white light, and it fills my body and explodes around me like a wave. I drift off in the light, and I see no more.
I open my eyes. I am stiff, cold, and I hurt all over. The sky hangs dingy and grey with scarred fingers of a burned bush streaking across my view. I hear voices. “What is it?” “We have a live one.” I see the uniforms of a Lordaeron company. Gentle hands touch my face. “We have to pick you up, little one.” I feel myself wrapped in a woolen blanket, the scratchy surface burning my open skin. I want to ask where I am and why they didn’t come sooner, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out. The tears well up in my eyes, but I am too tired to even cry.
This dream haunts me every night. My family, my home, my very identity burned in the ashes of Darrowshire. I do not even know if my husband fell in battle, or became one of the corrupted. I sometimes wonder if he, like me, survived to be picked up by one of those who came after, but I know this to be a false hope.
I was sent down to recover in Theramore, and from there recommended to Stormwind for training. My experience with the light led those who sheltered me to send me to Northshire Abbey to explore this connection. I had been chosen, they said, for some greater purpose. The trials now are so different from my old life, yet much remains the same. Caring for a scrape or a burn, stopping bullying, these are part of the old Jenseny. Yet there is a rage inside, a white fury that comes out. And deeper, sometimes, there are shadows. I do not know if I should fight them or accept them.
I close my eyes and I see my children’s faces. Laughing, smiling, happy. I know there is something beyond this broken and destructive world, something far better, and I know my children are there. When I dream, theirs are the hands that dry my tears, and give me permission to mourn and remember. And they wave me off in the morning to go, and to live.
I close my eyes and I see my children’s faces, contorted with pain and fear. Those creatures are holding them, and I am on the table, on the table bound and helpless. Where is Jess? Have our men all fallen in battle, that it is come to this in our homes? I hear Sarai cry out as the long nails of her captor cut into her white skin. I see the baby, thrown on the floor, and I know I shall never hear his laugh again. How long has this been? Hours? Days? Acrid smoke hangs in the air, burned wood and cloth and the smell of death. I have cried until I have no more tears or voice, pleading for my children’s lives. Two live yet, there is hope. I can bear the pain of the knife against my skin, the degradation of my will, the destruction of my home. Please let my children live.
I close my eyes and I see my children’s faces, limp, lifeless. No promises are sufficient, no deeds enough. I feel the blood on my body, wet and crusted. My heart breaks, and my body fills with something I can’t describe. Anger, fear, pain, they all exist in my consciousness, but I am filled with my breaking heart and it is more than that. I see the mocking cruelty in the tormentor’s eyes, and I know they have consequences. My heartbreak is a blinding, warm, pulsing white light, and it fills my body and explodes around me like a wave. I drift off in the light, and I see no more.
I open my eyes. I am stiff, cold, and I hurt all over. The sky hangs dingy and grey with scarred fingers of a burned bush streaking across my view. I hear voices. “What is it?” “We have a live one.” I see the uniforms of a Lordaeron company. Gentle hands touch my face. “We have to pick you up, little one.” I feel myself wrapped in a woolen blanket, the scratchy surface burning my open skin. I want to ask where I am and why they didn’t come sooner, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out. The tears well up in my eyes, but I am too tired to even cry.
This dream haunts me every night. My family, my home, my very identity burned in the ashes of Darrowshire. I do not even know if my husband fell in battle, or became one of the corrupted. I sometimes wonder if he, like me, survived to be picked up by one of those who came after, but I know this to be a false hope.
I was sent down to recover in Theramore, and from there recommended to Stormwind for training. My experience with the light led those who sheltered me to send me to Northshire Abbey to explore this connection. I had been chosen, they said, for some greater purpose. The trials now are so different from my old life, yet much remains the same. Caring for a scrape or a burn, stopping bullying, these are part of the old Jenseny. Yet there is a rage inside, a white fury that comes out. And deeper, sometimes, there are shadows. I do not know if I should fight them or accept them.
I close my eyes and I see my children’s faces. Laughing, smiling, happy. I know there is something beyond this broken and destructive world, something far better, and I know my children are there. When I dream, theirs are the hands that dry my tears, and give me permission to mourn and remember. And they wave me off in the morning to go, and to live.