Prompt: 005. Faceless and Nameless
Ratings: K+
Fandom: Literature in general
Characters: The Narrator
Word Count: 624
Warnings: Very, very, VERY mild metaphorical violence, and extreme opinions on literature.
Author's Notes: This is actually the first case I can remember when a character of mine just took on a life of his own and did something I NEVER planned for him to do. I started off trying to explore how the Narrator is under-acknowledged and unloved in literature, but then…well, it turned into this. I'd like to say that I most patently do NOT agree with his opinions here, but…that's what he decided to go on a tangent about, so who am I to stop him?
I have no name, nor shape nor form, but only words, which fall upon deaf ears.
I am forever the silent observer, doomed for eternity to witness, to feel, but never to help. And millennia later, to recount those events to people of another generation and another world, to people who couldn't possibly understand or empathise. To twist the brutal truth I had seen with my own eyes into quaint stories, to entertain briefly, perhaps to teach a lesson that won't be followed, and then to be doomed back into obscurity.
Because I was there, at the centre of every conflict, seeing with my own eyes and feeling with my own heart. And the people there were human, too, with their own aspirations and goals and fatal flaws. And the events, the tangled mess of occurrences that caught everyone involved in a messy maze of conflicting interests and sentimental wants, they happened and they left behind yet another cluster of bloody splatters on the pages of history.
And I was there. And I saw and felt and remembered.
I always remember, every detail, every fleeting moment. And I alone remember, when all others have been grounded to dust by the passing of time.
And I stand here, poised on the edge of forever, seeing all that passes with the clarity of an outsider and yet feeling every pang of longing, every lust for blood, every crushing sorrow, as though they were my own. And I turn to the audience and tell them, in paltry words and shallow summaries, the stories of those people who had lived and fought and dreamed and loved and died. And they nod and listen and maybe shed a few tears, and then turn away and move on.
But I am still stuck, still caught up in the same net of events and emotions and people that go unnoticed because the world is blind.
They talk and talk to their friends, twisting the truth and dulling the impact with even flatter words. And they take up a sword against the tangled mess of people and cut it into manageable chunks of whatever shape they please.
And hand those chunks to me so that I can tell the story that they wished.
And I do so, because that is what I was born for, that is the only thing I can do. And I tell that story, to thousands upon thousands of people, knowing all the while how the real events had transpired, how the real people had acted, how the original had broken my heart and let loose my tears. And how these people, gawking at the bloody, mutilated remains of the original tale, would never know.
But it wasn't my place to tell them so.
My place was to weave tales, to recount, to say the words that had been put into my mouth.
And to sit silently, unheard and unseen, as the people take up swords and cut the festering chunks into even finer mince and mould and manipulate them into more comfortable shapes.
And I'd think back, to the people in the nets and their births and lives and deaths…
But when I open my mouth, I describe not the complex chain of relationships and grievances, but the mangled mince, grotesque and crude, so far removed from the original that it was beyond recognition.
But I still keep telling the tales, because…if I stopped doing the only thing that defined me, the reason for which I lived…then what will I become?
So I keep talking, but no one hears my words.
Can you feel what I feel? Do you see what I see? Can you comprehend? Do you understand?
I am the Narrator. Can you hear me?