Hypatia Kometou - Visions Profane and Sacred

[Astra]

[A journal bound with lambskin, which the seeress Hypatia carries on her person at all times. ]

Invocation

O gods of the Wheel, now grant me your graces
I beg for your boon, to make vision flow freely
Let my tongue and my hand spill truths that will please you
And bridge the sacred into our late days.

I sing to the Pentad, who guide the aspirant.
Grant me, o Izdu, the lantern in shadows.
Grant me, o Warad, the wisdom of travel.
Grant me, Gellema, the prism of clearsight.
Grant me, o Martyrs, your peace beyond death.

[Astra]

Ash

I think I am made out of the ash now. It has been in every thing that I touch, have touched and felt and been for a decade. For ten years of wandering, of breathing air, of drinking drink. All tinged with ash. Gritty. Coarse. My skin tends raw.

I remember only distantly the danger from a decade ago. I was a young girl when the Nothing clawed at the Walls. All I remember from those days is terror, terror and running. My mother's face is hazy. My father is a shade of memory.

Now I am still a girl, but I do no longer know the fear of sure death. Only the dread of these late days, the dread of hunger, of seeing ash storms blot out the stars at night. Always is the wind and the ash.

When I sleep, I don't dream about ash. I dream about a midnight coast, the cool night air on a cloudless night. A sky so bright with stars that they glimmer and glint off the waves. I am resting below a fig tree with my mother. The soft mist off the sea is invigorating and it is soothing.

I wake, and I hear the howling wind.

[Astra]

Mae

Let me share with you,
All that I was,
All that I couldn't be.

Let me share with you,
All that I lost,
All that I surrendered,
All that I've forgotten.

Let me share with you,
All that I wanted,
All that I denied.

All that I never knew I needed.

Let me breathe into you the life I lived.
Let me breathe into you the love I loved.
Let me do this for you, my heart, while we are here. While we are still here and ourselves.

[Astra]

I knew, in some intellectual sense, that this would happen. But the moment now demands an answer which I had put aside and buried in my heart.

To join the Sisters requires discipline and self-sacrifice. I knew that. Duty is one thing. But my heart aches now more than ever. I do not know what I'll do if I see her.

This is what it means to sacrifice myself. This is what it means to kill the demon in the water.

[Something stains this undated entry.]

[Astra]

We spoke.

She is gone, she is gone, she is gone.

A sacrifice, to light anew the fire of this world.

[Astra]

I've made a mistake. Somewhere, I don't know where. Maybe it was that my words were too harsh. Or maybe I shouldn't have given her that doll. Or maybe I should have said it was from me. But she knew it was from me, didn't she?

Maybe it was...

Pointless to dwell. I can leave, but I can't change the past. It wouldn't change the past if I was to throw off these robes. I'm not in her heart anymore.

This is my road. I have to keep walking or I'm going to die where I stand.

[Astra]

To look into the water is to recall the person I once was. So much weaker, so much more fragile. I am fragile still. I am shameful still. For these histories etched into my brain, woken again when I see my face in the water, when she calls me 'dear,' when a stranger mentions Shane Gallows, when I try to remember Pirouette's face amid smoke. Vanity to cling to these things, good and bad both, as though they have any use or meaning to me now.

But there is use for some still

Wouldn't it be best if these memories were drowned in a well, were held under until the thrashing stopped, were forgotten, and forgotten, and forgotten? That would be too easy. So easy.

They think it is so easy.

Unwritten. Not never written. Un-written. Scour the page. Rub away the markings. What is left? What is left of me?

[Astra]

I am not afraid, afraid, afraid, as I become myself, myself, myself.

This is the grace of graces. This is the peace of peaces.

All of me is given up. Now I am not afraid. Now I am only myself.

I have never been more free.

[Astra]

It's interesting to consider how I feel about this.

How 'should' I feel? The answer is not obvious. Perhaps I should be vindicated. She did not listen to the advice of her sisters, now here she is paying a price. And it is such a mild price, such a minor rebuke. And she will never make that mistake again.

Acolyte Hypatia, surely, would feel such a satisfaction, and perhaps even might gloat to the poor, whimpering thing.

I know now that would be cruel. She is my sister. She has made a mistake, but it is so that she corrected her error. To err is not a sin, but persisting in error is. What is more righteous than to welcome her now with grace and love?

This, it seems to me, is how I should behave, but I haven't arrived at the answer of how I 'actually feel,' whatever that means.

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the question is immaterial. What matters is how I act. 

Gloating isn't necessary, unless it has an effect. Welcoming her is necessary, for it has an effect. So how I feel is of no consequence at all if I do not let it affect my actions.

And isn't the answer obvious? When she smiled at me, when she shared how it felt...

Yes, that gave me permission to feel it with her.

[Astra]

20 Hziran, IY 7788

I haven't had coffee in a while. It's really nostalgic. But everything about her is nostalgic, isn't it? It's nice to get a second chance.

Today I talked to dear Aletta about fennec foxes. She was terribly enamored.

[Astra]

Best friend.

What does that mean, best friend? What is owed to a best friend? What does a best friend owe in turn? What are my responsibilities? Is this just a means to stay close to me? Is it another dance? Another game that you like to play (but I am a piece, not a player, so who is this for) and why the game? This is your understanding of what we are and so we must continue this little dance like this, because if there was no dance there would be nothing, as I am nothing and so there is nothing for you to hold onto, nothing at all to be kind to. Are you being kind? Is this kindness? Should I feel anything from this game you play?

You are going to change soon, and the contradictions are going to deepen. The farce is going to be plain, or plainer than it is, and I am just your doll which you are growing tired of, have grown tired of, have grown frightened of have lost interest in, and I can feel the world changing and yet you treat me the same, but it is not the same at all, and I can see it, and so can you, and so can you, and yet you both treat me like this and that is the dance, that is this little game you play and I do not know if I would have preferred the truth to the lie. Can we do this forever? We must be able to. I must be able to, or I would be insufficient.

But I know it is a lie. I am owed the truth and you tell me only lies, and I know they are lies, and you know that I know. Do you think me a hypocrite? Perhaps you do. You must think me so, but whose fault is that? You wanted so desperately to know. Now I am here. Have you ever given that a single thought? I am this because of you. Now I am here, and you are high, rising higher still, soon as high as you shall go - and it is all because of the moment where you decided how much you wanted to know, and what you would give for it.

You understand the meaning of sacrifice. I understand what it means to be sacrificed. That, then, is what 'best friend' means.

[Astra]

I should thank you. Really, I should. And I meant to, before the battle. I thought that at first that it was some cruelty you were performing. Some hidden slight, some little thing that you would laugh at while I made a fool of myself. But it wasn't, really. You thought you were helping, didn't you? You must have. And it worked out, ultimately. Not in the way that I might have thought, but better than I had hoped.

A drop of good, however, cannot wash away an ocean of rot. Think you that I am not aware of it? That you have concealed yourself from me? I see so much. I see the little twitches in your smile, the little tensing in your hands as you speak. I see where your eyes wander. I see it all.

But it's all right. It's nothing at all. I am used to worse from those who are more obvious about their hatred. Really, I think you do not hate me at all. You've always been kind to me, and I find that counts for more in my heart than any sensical considerations should.

I like you. That's why that I hope your death is painless. I hope that you don't even see it coming.

I hope that it is a stray blast of artillery. I hope that it is a spell which strikes you dead without your notice. I hope that it is a sudden gout of flame. I hope that you are torn limb from limb. I hope it is a burst of hyperphlogiston. Did you ask her about the thing she made? Do you even know how the mechanism works, how the pressurized fluid is contained, how electricity would make it ignite, did you listen did you care? Do you even care?

You must, I know you do. I know there is some strange mote of kindness that lingers in your heart. Why is it there? Have they not beaten it out of you? You are a flower in a desert. You are a better person than me, even after everything you have done. You are a liar, but you wear it on your face, and you are sincere. You are a better person than me and I should not hope for this. If Lynneth saw this she would realize what I am. If Mae saw this she would despise me. I should not selfishly reach for this dream I cannot hold. And yet, and yet, and yet and yet I fly towards the flame and I hope that you are killed by her flame, and I cry for thy death, thy death, thy death!

And I hope that when she hears of your burning, she weeps. When that happens, I will be there. She will know that everyone leaves, but that I remain, that I have always remained, that I will always remain. Can you say that? What you love is yourself. You don't know the meaning of sacrifice. You don't know the taste of it. You would not cut off your limb, your hand, even your little finger for the sake of a world which you might never live to see. You are marching to die for your personal glory. Die for it, then. It would be a mercy to me, in a way that you could never know.

And yet you will not die, will you? Fate is not kind to me. You will return, and I will see you again. And you will walk past me, and to Eagle's Mount, and you will sit there and look at the stars. And I will be happy for you, and kind to you, and allow it all to happen. I understand my role, don't you fret.

But is it so wrong, Mirielle, for the bound lamb to wish in her heart of hearts that someone might, just once, sacrifice herself for her?