It was Ash Wednesday, and Feliks couldn't breath. All around was consuming, blackness, but the lights were all on in his room. No, it was still dark. Feliks realized that he'd had his eyes closed.
He breathed in. It didn't do any good.
"Really, Feliks? It's only been an hour since dinner. You're being dramatic." Toris said, suddenly standing in the doorway.
"I. Am. Starving." Feliks moaned.
"Oh, the sun hasn't even gone down yet. Fasting ends at sundown." Toris scoffed.
Of course he'd be used to hunger; so much more than this. Really, I should be too.
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Except that it wasn't true. As much as Feliks wished it to be so; he would never stop existing. And it was both a blessing and a curse. Before, he considered it a benefit, if only as a blatant stab at Russia; Ha, you can never beat me. I will always come back to spit in your face. Now he was so tired, and could never sleep.
He was ashes. He had burned so many times, only to come back. Like a phoenix, but Feliks honestly felt more like a corpse.
His stomach growled.
"Are you okay? You're spacing out."
"Yeah, sorry." Feliks said.
Toris nods. Memories lingered beneath the green fields of his eyes.
"Repent, repent, sinner! Convert!" yells the Teutonic Knight.
And all those crosses on the hill. It hurts too much to think about how many times they were ripped out of the ground.
"What is this Litva? You are praying? We don't do that any more, remember?"
Crosses being torn from the ground, and yet appearing again. Toris wonders if the people know they are hurting him, incurring Russia's wrath, but doesn't care. He's put his own cross on the hill too, and now it's probably gone.
The worst is when: Pluck, a simple movement that breaks the brown thread of his scapular. The woven scraps at the end are tossed into the fire. Toris watches Mary's gentle face scorch away atop the burning wood. The small crucifix is special; silver, and he's had the scapular for a long time but not as long as that cross. He's even taken that cross off his old scapular to attach it to the new (and old wine into new wineskins), and before that a leather necklace, and worn it always. It strengthened him in battle.
Ivan toys with it, between his fingers a moment, all the while his eyes distrustful, as if it will cast some magic spell on his, and awaken his Orthodox roots. The tall, colorful and twisting spires of saint basil, and those dolorous eyed icons, painted so beautifully. He pockets it, and thinks of how to destroy metal, but sells it instead.
Later, Toris watches the door to his bedroom nervously, and hopes to God that Russia won't hear the whispering of his rosary beads, or catch him kneeling beside the bed, on which his brothers lie sleeping.
Feliks swiped at his head again, his eyes meeting with Toris's. Flakes of ash crumbled, and sprinkled on his golden hair came off on his finger.
Lent was a desert. A dark desert, that somehow made you stronger. Toris didn't know what give up, when he'd already lost everything.
I'm sorry; this is sad, and I spent a total of 15 minutes writing it, and 5 minutes editing it, so not a very good piece, but oh well. I should be working on my History Project. Or Studying for Biology. Instead I wrote something awful, and ignored about twenty run-on sentences while editing.
This was a spontaneous writing thing, which is a poor apology for all the terribleness that is this. I'm sorry. It makes no sense to me either.
Poland and Lithuania were (and in some parts still remain) heavily Catholic. So there's a lot of reference to that in this piece.