Fear in a handful of dust (moodpost)

Deep in my heart / I do believe
We shall overcome / Some day
-"We Shall Overcome", gospel song

*** *** ***

If on a winter's night a traveler ...
Looks down in the gathering shadow ...
On a carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon ...
What story down there awaits its end?

24 December 2010, SeaTac Airport, Washington

Holiday travel is ever the same.  Emily leans her head against the wall, listening to the lull of activity that marks the early morning of Christmas Eve in an international airport.  Those few weary souls working late into tonight will either be there for the overtime, or following under-represented religions -- or no religion at all, a thought that perplexes the Singer perhaps a little less than it should.  There is one last push before Christmas, a press of Humanity that will ramp up in the post-dawn hours and then taper off into the evening.  Right now, with the sun rising somewhere behind the cloud cover, there's an artificial peace. 

A quiet.

Emily fingers the edge of her maroon-covered passport in her pocket, thinks on the over full pages, wonders about the weather in France.  She does not think about a blue-eyed kitten, or her (lonely) empty flat, or the exclusive milieu of the Chantry.

Early dawn casts faint shadows on the tarmac.  The elongated shape of a wing, angular and crisp, slanting toward resolution, becoming clearer and clearer as the sun lofts into the sky.  The lumbering and awkward echoes of jet-ways and sky-bridges.  Mere smudges from raised lamp housings.  Stick-thin whisper-shades thrown by bracing and uprights.

These urban woods are lovely, in their own ways. Dark and deep with shadows.  But she has promises to keep, and miles to go before she sleeps.  Soon this will all be behind her; soon she will be chasing moonrise yet again.

*** *** ***

26 December 2010, Marseilles, France

Marcus Littleton was on holiday.  Not a working holiday, no, but rather a vacation with a clear schedule (now pronounced sheh-shu-elle, after long association with Europeans).  He aimed to spend some quality time with this oft-absent daughter, Emily, and equally oft-absent wife, the lovely and compassionate Ceci.  Ceci, though, had descended upon Provence with a flurry of calling cards and telephone calls, and disappeared into the Boxing Day morning without delay.  This left Marcus with Emily, and a growing chasm of silence between them.

He'd already asked her about school, and come to the quick realization that her field was beyond his fledgling interest in whizzbangs with LEDs and microchips.  She'd already fixed his iPhone after a firmware download gone awry, and aided him in getting his latest iTunes purchases from one computer to the next.  That paperclip thing no longer bothered him in Word, now, and Emily has pronounced his Anti-Virus as adequate -- which Marcus presumed was more than sufficient for anyone outside of the Company or Bureau.

"Have you given any more thought to joining the service when you graduate?" he'd asked her, mid-way through their second cups of coffee.

"You mean, do I want to be a spy when I grow up?" she'd asked, mouth pursed in a clever (wry) smirk, eyes dancing with merriment.

"I'm technically a Diplomat, not a spy, Emily."

"Oh, but I'd so much rather answer my father's a spy when someone asks what it is you do.  Diplomat sounds so... stuffy."

He shook his head and chuckled softly.

"Double-oh-dad.  Doesn't that have a nice ring to it?" she asked, painting the words in an arc with one hand, curling her coffee mug toward her chest with the other.

"So you've considered it, I take it," was his only answer to her trouble-making.

"Quite."

"And?"

"Well, I could tell you," she says, then drops her voice a little lower. "But then I'd have to kill you.  And Mum would get mad if I did that, so let's just go with No -- and before you ask why, I'll say because then I'd have to renounce -- and where did you get this coffee? It's delicious."

"Sulawesi.  And are you sure you won't reconsider?"

"Were you there, or just trading about the office? And yes, rather certain."

And so it goes, intermittent silence punctuated by bouts of serious(ly nothing) conversation between Littletons.  At least until Cecilia returns and they can settle in for a mid-day meal.

*** *** ***

I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
- T. S. Eliot

28 December 2010, Praha, Česká republika

Snow had built up, even along the banks of the river.  It was muddied and brown where the snow bank tapered down toward the water.  It was cold enough, even, that Emily's nose had begun to run and the dampness at the corners of her eyes stung from windchill.  If she didn't keep blinking back the wetness, it might freeze for a moment. Hold her eyes shut.  Leave her at the mercy of her memories.

And perhaps it was a mercy that she'd come back in winter, when the ground was too frozen to smell of river mud and the scent of everything was tamped down by the dry chill that pulled all moisture from the air.  There was no scent of river mud, and no heavy smell of humidity, no swell of ozone -- these senses were stripped from the dark eddies of the water below her.  The stone of the bridge held her up, held her safely away from the blank tableau below.

There is a dark bird in the air above, turning lazy circles in the crisp and sun-bright sky.  Its voice is clear, unabashedly loud, irreverently abrupt.  It casts faint shadows; its claws are sharp and honed.

She'd found the policejní stanice mid-morning, arriving with an Embassy interpretor to help explain who she was and why she was visiting.  In truth, arrangements for this visit had been coordinated weeks in advance, by her father's aide.  It had taken time to find an officer who'd been serving that summer, seven and a half years ago, somehow who remembered the Diplomat's Daughter.  Someone who would tell her about the dark places in her memory, and walk her through the streets she'd more often dreamt about than seen.

He was a polite man, about a decade her senior, with gentle brown eyes and a slow smile.  He hadn't been much older than she was now, not all that much more world-wearied.  Though they spoke through an interpretor, it was clear that the events of that June had changed both of their lives.

He told her it was good to see she had recovered, and done so well for herself.  He did not understand why she would travel all this way, in the middle of winter, to walk through old fears alone.  He has a daughter now, born that same fall so many years ago.

She told him it was good to finally be able to say thank you, to shake someone's hand and offer back something tangible.

Before they parted ways, he asked: "What was it that you feared most, in those three days?"

The corners of her mouth twitched faintly.  Her eyes softened a little before she replied: "That I had been forgotten.  That I would die and be little more than dust, not even a name."

"Of that, Emily, you should have no worry."  Her name was slanted toward his native pronunciation and, in truth, it felt most comfortable to her to hear it that way: translated or transliterated, shaded by happenstance of birth that separated her from the other people she'd met.  It spoke of Home, where Home was anything but a single, familiar surety.

"No, Jiri," she replied, still looking out across the water.  "I suppose I should not."

*** *** ***

31 December 2010, Manchester House

There is a fire in the hearth of the sitting room and it burns low, with glowing embers that give off steady heat.  They've pulled a pair of wing-back chairs over close, draped themselves across their seats with throw blankets and mugs of spiced (and spiked) cider.  The year dwindles away to nothing.  The old house settles and creaks.  In the rafters roosts a small pale bird, her beak tucked under one wing, her coo and sleep-sounds lost to the silent, cold world outside.

"Gregory?" she asks, waiting just long enough for him to make some sound, or stir, or otherwise give off a hint that he had not yet fallen to sleeping.  "Do you remember when we were young, and Cedric would tell us that the whole of the world sang one great song -- and we thought he was being figurative, or speaking of the Holy Ghost?"

The words ran together but remained clear.  Emily did not bother with over-enunciating or making herself clear.  She was dredging up memories of cold days in the decaying Abbey up north, or summer sunsets by standing stones, or the hush that preceded every Sunday's visit to the Cathedral grounds, or the purposeful activity within the oriental shrines.  She was pulling up thread of that Reverence, even now, that quiet grace, that thing of Becoming interwoven into all that she knew now.

"Mmm," he replied, digging one elbow in beneath him to prop himself up so that he could look over at her, the way the lowlight lifted warmer tones to her hair and bronzed the bridge of her nose.  The way it softened the hushed pink at her cheeks -- he could always tell how much she'd had to drink, even if Emily was wily and kept her secrets to herself.  Gregory could read her like an open book, but was wise enough to keep that wisdom for himself.  "I remember."

She didn't glance over.  Emily shifted in her chair, brought both hands together to cradle her brandied cup against her sternum.  She was thoughtful and with that thoughtfulness came a heaviness that settled about her shoulders.  Gregory recognized it for what it was: responsibility tinged through with regret.

"Is this about the last year, your new friends, all the things you can't tell me?  If it is -- and don't think I mind, because I've seen more of you than any year I can remember -- you can tell me, Emmy."

He cajoles.  One corner of her mouth twists ruefully, but it is only faintly, just a moment, then it fades.  Smooths.  She exhales slowly, until the whole of her breath in gone, until she can feel herself hang in the moment before her body might begin to panic.  Where she is empty, but not yet yearning to be filled up again.  Where she is just a vessel, nothing more and nothing less.  But then she breathes in again, and it cannot be without purpose; now that this has begun, she cannot even breathe without it carrying a sort of knowing weight, a promise, a spill of things unsaid just waiting to be given voice.

"It is," she says.  There's more, but she leaves that be for a moment.  "And I will," she continues, each of these small statements seem to preface a but or other unweildy conjunction.  Instead Emily spans them with silence, pointed and meaningful, the sort of quiet that could only speak so clearly between siblings of the heart and ... Here she faulters, looks down, rolls her thumbs out in a small but expansive gesture (does not lose control of her mug).

"It's the sort of thing that I can tell you, and I will tell you, but only if you wish it.  But it's not a safe thing, but it is a glorious thing, and -- it's the sort of thought that changes everything..." she says.  Emily is not prone to flights of fancy or exaggeration.  She does not follow fantastic whims; Gregory has never known her to so much as espouse belief in something unseen or unquantifiable since her late teens.

"You sound like you've suddenly found God, Emily," he teases her, gently.

"Sort of," she says, with a quixotic and confused smile.  Her eyes were just a bit too bright to be teasing him.  "Except that He's real. And so is the Song.  I can hear it again, now, like I could when your father was here, when we were young.  And it's beautiful, Greg.  It's gorgeous and resonant, like it could lift you up to heaven by your soul alone -- it's amazing and terrible.  It's all real.  All these years I had no idea, but it is.

"I've spent the last year learning about all of this," she says, shaking her head a little, as if it's still just a little out of reach for her to eloquently set it into words.

"All of ... this?"

"Yes," she nods, a little. Just once.  Only once.  "But that's the thought, Gregory. I can tell you about it, all of it--I can show you some of it--but you can't put it away and forget it when we're done.  You'll either think me mad, or your life will start to shift," and here is the regret.  "There's no middle path."

One of Gregory's eyebrows rests higher than the other.  He regards his sister with a calm, level stare.  For all the cider they've had tonight, he's remarkably sober just now.  He stands, and crosses the few feet to her chair, leans over and kisses her forehead gently.

"All right," he says, and there's acceptance in those simple words. It wraps up the whole of what she's told him and accepts, wholesale, the strangeness of it and the gravity it has for her.  He can accept without belittling; he can be warmer than she often is.  "But let me sleep on it.  We'll talk in the morning, but for now?  Tonight?  Just be Emily."

Just be Emily, he tells her, and she smiles. Beatific and warm. Almost laughingly bright, almost, but not just quite.  Just be Emily, he says, and in this one place, this house, this city, it is enough.  She is enough.

She is Home.