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Beyond that, we are often borne where the winds of our time carry us. We might sail where we like in a ship—until a storm overtakes us, or pirates, boarding at sunrise. Calm waters and easy winds allow an illusion of mastery, control. But it is only ever that. The devout say we must trust in Jad. I have come to believe life is easier for them. Reversals are more easily dealt with when there is faith.
It is an uneasy world one walks through when there is no firm belief in what will come after, or that what happens to us as we live through our days is affected by the correctness of our faith.
I think that when we’re young we often have the sense that what we do when faced with a choice will define our lives forever. This can be untrue, sometimes amusingly so, but not always. Events since then have proven my feeling that night to be true, I think, even if we concede that no man can know what would have happened had he turned north or east instead of south at some place where roads divide.
There are not always wise or meaningful words spoken at the end of a life. Nor does courage always find a reward, except in the memory of others, perhaps, and that is a tenuous thing.
There is no more pain, at least. She can hold to courage, to her own nature, the memory of it, and look to see what will come next. Then it does come to her, for her, and she is air, moonlight, lost, gone.
The sailors say the rain misses the cloud even as it falls through light or dark into the sea. I miss her like that as I fall through my life, through time, the chaos of our time. I dream she is alive even now, but there is nothing to give weight or value to that, it is only me, and what I want to be true. It is only longing. We can want things so much sometimes. It is the way we are.
And at the heart of all of this was the feeling I might never know a woman like her again. Which, as the years have passed—quietly at times, and at other times less so—has proven to be true. She did not live her life to be a memory for me, or anyone, but she is. Some people mark you as they go by.
He looked towards what seemed to be a light, and did not know if it would be his, if mercy existed for such as he had been. He yearned, as we all yearn, but he did not know, since none of us can know.
Shelter can be hard to find. A place can become our home for reasons we do not understand. We build the memories that turn into what we are, then what we were, as we look back. We live in the light that comes to us.
I played a part in a story in a fierce, wild, windblown time. I do have that. I always will. I am here and it is mine, for as near to always as we are allowed.
