I am not making any money with this. I do not own Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
etc.
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
===================================== Tomb Raider: The Sadhana by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =====================================
Chapter Two
After the Gilliams had hastily finished their late-night dinners, we walked to their house some four blocks away. They lived in a typical, ramshackled- looking high house with window covers to prevent rain coming in. It seldom rained in Nepal - the phenomena had something to do with the altitude of the area, I can't say better. Angela and John had decorated their ascetic condo very Western-style, with couches, a television with a big satellite antenna, a double bed and a quite modern kitchen. We settled into the living room, and Anegla went to make some tea.
"So, why did you decide to find us?"
I have never been very straightforward about my personal things - I need to be tired and a bit careless to openly talk about myself and my personal history. The situation was just right that time.
"How much do you know about me, John? Have the tabloids reached the last remote corners of the world?" I asked, sounding a little cynical.
"All we know is that you're famous. And skilled. You were a university prodigy - writing your senior thesis a year earlier than everyone else, or something like that. You are the daughter of a Lord, from a powerful and wealthy family. Angela's always been wondering how your parents reacted to you becoming an archaeologist."
"Oh." I cut my reaction short. I was going to have to explain to them quite a lot. Angela returned from the kitchen with three mugs of gunpowder tea, and asked what we were discussing.
"Lara was telling me about her work, weren't you?"
I nodded. I didn't have a clue how to start. The Gilliams were obviously waiting for some kind of a life story. "True, John, I was born to a powerful family that kept to tradition. My mother was only married to aristocracy, not born, so she understood my decision quite a bit better than my father. I was supposed to be schooled, and then get married. That plan never became reality."
"What happened?" Angela asked, sipping her tea.
"The plane crash that left me on my own somewhere in the mountains. I've come here to learn the truth about what happened." They seemed to ignore my last phrase and tackled onto the plane crash.
"How did it affect your life, then, otherwise than just as a tragedy?"
I put away my teacup. "I can't speak for the other passengers who died, but to me, it eventually came out as anything but a tragedy. It set me free in a way." I startled myself by saying such things. I never speak so... Quite so... emotionally. I'm a practical person. I don't contribute in spiritual flim-flam.
The Gilliams just looked at me, puzzled. Probably asking themselves how I could not consider the death of four hundred passengers a tragedy. I was forced to continue.
"I realized there was life outside the walls of mansions, outside of charity banquets, and beyond social life in London area. Naturally, my father disagreed. Four months after my return I was disowned and cut off the family will." When someone hears this, they usually get shocked and feel sorry for me. I don't feel sorry. I don't want much to do with people like my father. My mother's relatives are the only piece of family I have.
The Gilliams looked shocked enough.
"You were disowned? I never believed that could happen anymore?" John asked.
"Generally, it doesn't. My father's almost a historical case."
"So, how did you... manage?" Asked Angela carefully.
"At the time, I inherited an aunt in my mother's family. I inherited a mansion in Surrey, away from Wimbledon where my parents lived. I also inherited enough money to get me through university. I had to change universities a few minutes - I've studied in the States besides Britain. When I had written my senior thesis a collector heard of me, hired me, and helped me on my feet financially. Since that I've worked as an archaeologist, a museum curator, and written books."
The couple kept looking at me, amused. Then John asked;
"So, what brings you here, then? A treasure hunt?"
"This time, no. I spent Christmas and New Year in Egypt, and a lot of things - I won't get into details - happened. This is a sort of a holiday. I decided to find you because I want to know what happened when that plane crashed. Most of it I do remember, I remember being out there, but after being found after the first blizzards, all is blank. I only have my parents' story to lean on. They didn't want to upset me with details."
"We understand," Angela interrupted her husband who was about to say something, "I've always been wondering why you didn't come back earlier. I somehow knew you'd come and ask the questions. That crash must have meant so much to you," she was leading me to ask something.
"John - when I walked to your table you called me by a strange name. It sounded like Tibetan, very much so."
"Dvesagniprashamani's Lara?" John asked.
I nodded enthusiastically. "That's it. I don't recognize the word."
"That's the first name I heard you being called by."
My turn to look puzzled. I anticipated I was going to hear something of importance.
"We were covering up the dig that day, for the first snowstorms of the winter had just swept over. we were soon going to return to China for the midwinter. One day a middle-aged monk walked to the village from a monastery about five miles from Tokakeriby. He was tired from the walk - it was long and the weather was cold. I was probably the only person in the whole of Eastern Tibet who spoke the dialect of Tibetan spoken in the Darchen area along with English and French, of course. The monk walked up to be, greeted quickly, and then told me to follow. I told him I couldn't just leave my work, it was getting dark, but he was persistent. Told me I had to come." "She öeft me to take care of the rest of the work and followed the monk. It was really strange for that monk to come all the way to the village to talk to us," Angela told, pulling her feet up to the couch.
I took a better position in my chair. John continued.
"True, I left Anegla in the village and followed the monk. It was getting dark and the whole thing seemed like a prank played by the monks on us. But when I looked at the monk, I knew something was up. He was quite aged, leaning on a stick as he and I made the painful and freezing journey to the monastery. Five miles doesn't sound much, but you know how the air is so high up."
"Would you like some more tea, Lara?" Angela interrupted. I shook my head. It had started to rain outside. The roof rattled in the wind. I concentrated on John.
"When we arrived in the monastery, it was dark. The monk lead me in. The first hall was empty, noone was praying in front of the buddha statue I knew normally was surrounded by monks. I had visited the monastery once with Angela. The monk kept hurrying me up. We walked up the stairs, to the living quarters of the monks. A light was shining from the room of an elderly monk I had met on my previous visit. The one who told me to wipe my feet, wasn't he, Angie?"
Angela nodded, though I wasn't sure if she nodded just to make John continue. She seemed to be as intrigued by the story as I was. It is seldom that one gets to hear stories about oneself.
"Anyway, I followed my guide to the room. It was filled with monks in those orange or red robes you see everywhere. They were crowded around the only piece of furniture in the room - a bed. The monk who had quided me to the monastery lead me to the bed. The other monks gave us way. My guide must've been a senior monk. On the bed, there were you. I couldn't see you, just a lump under the grey, woolly blanket. A monk was standing on the head side of the bed. He spoke to me. He told they had heard a faint knock on the monastery door the previous night. It had been you, exhausted, thin as a stick, without food or water, and in a torn jacket, or piece of cloth, as he said. They had brought you in, fed and clothed you and put you to bed. Before you fell asleep my guide has asked where you came from. You had mentioned something about seeing a lake the shape of an eye from far up in the mountains. Then you had fallen asleep."
I remember seeing the monastery from far away. It stood there, a block of houses on a hill in a plateau area. I was too tired, too hungry and thirsty to question what I was seeing. Without stopping to wonder whether it was a hallucination or a real, existing thing, I continued my slow walk towards it. I reached the door and knocked. Then I remember feeling light-headed, falling down to the snow that felt incredibly warm. After that - nothing.
"You were in a terrible condition. You weighed the same as a prayer wheel, said one of the monks with a serious face. That morning they couldn't awaken you. They decided you needed to go home. They knew they needed help in getting you safely back to where you came from. So they came to us, the excavation team, the only group of foreigners in the area."
I know the name of the monk who opened the door to me and who guided John in. It was told to me by a pilot aboard the flight to Kathmandu from Darchen. He was Lama Dorje, the high priest of the monastery. A famous man in the mountains.
"As you probably are aware of, Tibetan monks of the remote villages aren't usually concerned with the outer world, so they made quite an exception with you."
"Why?" I swallowed and asked. "You still didn't tell me about the name."
"I was just getting to it." John finished his tea and asked for Angela for another one. "The monks led me closer to the bed and raised the mattress. I saw a young, European-looking woman with long, wet hair, burning with fever. You were very thin, as the monks had said. I'm no doctor, but I somehow guessed that your situation wasn't very good. You were asleep - you wouldn't wake up, said the monks. Lama Dorje, who turned out to be my guide, led me aside from the others, and spoke to me. He told me you had been sent to them."
"Sent to them?" I asked, completely confused.
"The lake you had seen, the one the shape of an eye, was eight hundred miles away. They believed noone could've made that journey without being led by Buddha and protected by spirits. The lake you had mentioned is Lake Manasarovar, next to Mount Kailash."
"Mount Kailash?" I wasn't aware of the mountain's significance - I had never even heard of it.
"It's one of the most sacred peaks of the Himalayas - the home of certain gods. It is protected by Taras, female, protective deities. They think you had been sent to them by Buddha."
I couldn't hide my amusement. John wasn't sharing the emotion.
"I wouldn't laugh if I were you. Strange things happen in the mountain - the laws of nature do not abide here, it seems. You, alone, survived eight hundred miles of alien terrain to arrive to a monastery. Near an excavation where someone speaking the local language was present. I think someone saving the world would fall to the category of coincidence, this feels like too much. You are a miracle."
"Heroic tales aside, where did the name come from?" I couldn't treat myself as a godsend. It felt ridiculous, even after what happened in Cairo. True- saving the world might be a coincidence, but two big coincidences - what an understatement - in one lifetime? The British Statistical Office probably wouldn't let me in even if I tried. I'd be too much to swallow.
"I asked if they knew your name. They called you Dvesagniprashamani's Lara; a Tara who protects from the fear of hatred and fire. Do you know about the Buddhist Taras?"
"Not much."
"There are eight Taras who protect from fear. They thought one of them was protecting you on your journey. Dvesagniprashamani. The one who protects you from the fear of hatred and fire."
The thought was lovely - but of course I couldn't believe it. I'm not Buddhist, nor am I religious. But I do believe that there are things that are beyond the human mind. I've seen them - some call them Gods, some spirits. I think calling them Gods is a bit short-sighted, they probably make mistakes just like us. Shouldn't gods be perfect? The Europeans were gods to animistic people when they first arrived in South and Central America. They considered gods whatever they couldn't understand.
I've seen spirits, and it hasn't succeeded in making me religious, so I doubt I will ever become suchlike.
John, I and Angela sat silently. I wasn't interested in hearing what kind of things they had done to arrange me to kathmandu - I had heard what I had wanted. A faint voice was born in my head. A yearning. A longing to see once more the place I had begun my journey from. But before running anywhere, I decided to seek the monk we had been discussing. Lama Dorje. I suddenly realized there wasn't any point in finding him, it just felt important. I wanted to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. My career wasn't going to get any better, my romantic life was as dead as it ever was, and I was supposedly dead. What could be more logical than to refind the place and surroundings where the real me was born?
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
===================================== Tomb Raider: The Sadhana by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =====================================
Chapter Two
After the Gilliams had hastily finished their late-night dinners, we walked to their house some four blocks away. They lived in a typical, ramshackled- looking high house with window covers to prevent rain coming in. It seldom rained in Nepal - the phenomena had something to do with the altitude of the area, I can't say better. Angela and John had decorated their ascetic condo very Western-style, with couches, a television with a big satellite antenna, a double bed and a quite modern kitchen. We settled into the living room, and Anegla went to make some tea.
"So, why did you decide to find us?"
I have never been very straightforward about my personal things - I need to be tired and a bit careless to openly talk about myself and my personal history. The situation was just right that time.
"How much do you know about me, John? Have the tabloids reached the last remote corners of the world?" I asked, sounding a little cynical.
"All we know is that you're famous. And skilled. You were a university prodigy - writing your senior thesis a year earlier than everyone else, or something like that. You are the daughter of a Lord, from a powerful and wealthy family. Angela's always been wondering how your parents reacted to you becoming an archaeologist."
"Oh." I cut my reaction short. I was going to have to explain to them quite a lot. Angela returned from the kitchen with three mugs of gunpowder tea, and asked what we were discussing.
"Lara was telling me about her work, weren't you?"
I nodded. I didn't have a clue how to start. The Gilliams were obviously waiting for some kind of a life story. "True, John, I was born to a powerful family that kept to tradition. My mother was only married to aristocracy, not born, so she understood my decision quite a bit better than my father. I was supposed to be schooled, and then get married. That plan never became reality."
"What happened?" Angela asked, sipping her tea.
"The plane crash that left me on my own somewhere in the mountains. I've come here to learn the truth about what happened." They seemed to ignore my last phrase and tackled onto the plane crash.
"How did it affect your life, then, otherwise than just as a tragedy?"
I put away my teacup. "I can't speak for the other passengers who died, but to me, it eventually came out as anything but a tragedy. It set me free in a way." I startled myself by saying such things. I never speak so... Quite so... emotionally. I'm a practical person. I don't contribute in spiritual flim-flam.
The Gilliams just looked at me, puzzled. Probably asking themselves how I could not consider the death of four hundred passengers a tragedy. I was forced to continue.
"I realized there was life outside the walls of mansions, outside of charity banquets, and beyond social life in London area. Naturally, my father disagreed. Four months after my return I was disowned and cut off the family will." When someone hears this, they usually get shocked and feel sorry for me. I don't feel sorry. I don't want much to do with people like my father. My mother's relatives are the only piece of family I have.
The Gilliams looked shocked enough.
"You were disowned? I never believed that could happen anymore?" John asked.
"Generally, it doesn't. My father's almost a historical case."
"So, how did you... manage?" Asked Angela carefully.
"At the time, I inherited an aunt in my mother's family. I inherited a mansion in Surrey, away from Wimbledon where my parents lived. I also inherited enough money to get me through university. I had to change universities a few minutes - I've studied in the States besides Britain. When I had written my senior thesis a collector heard of me, hired me, and helped me on my feet financially. Since that I've worked as an archaeologist, a museum curator, and written books."
The couple kept looking at me, amused. Then John asked;
"So, what brings you here, then? A treasure hunt?"
"This time, no. I spent Christmas and New Year in Egypt, and a lot of things - I won't get into details - happened. This is a sort of a holiday. I decided to find you because I want to know what happened when that plane crashed. Most of it I do remember, I remember being out there, but after being found after the first blizzards, all is blank. I only have my parents' story to lean on. They didn't want to upset me with details."
"We understand," Angela interrupted her husband who was about to say something, "I've always been wondering why you didn't come back earlier. I somehow knew you'd come and ask the questions. That crash must have meant so much to you," she was leading me to ask something.
"John - when I walked to your table you called me by a strange name. It sounded like Tibetan, very much so."
"Dvesagniprashamani's Lara?" John asked.
I nodded enthusiastically. "That's it. I don't recognize the word."
"That's the first name I heard you being called by."
My turn to look puzzled. I anticipated I was going to hear something of importance.
"We were covering up the dig that day, for the first snowstorms of the winter had just swept over. we were soon going to return to China for the midwinter. One day a middle-aged monk walked to the village from a monastery about five miles from Tokakeriby. He was tired from the walk - it was long and the weather was cold. I was probably the only person in the whole of Eastern Tibet who spoke the dialect of Tibetan spoken in the Darchen area along with English and French, of course. The monk walked up to be, greeted quickly, and then told me to follow. I told him I couldn't just leave my work, it was getting dark, but he was persistent. Told me I had to come." "She öeft me to take care of the rest of the work and followed the monk. It was really strange for that monk to come all the way to the village to talk to us," Angela told, pulling her feet up to the couch.
I took a better position in my chair. John continued.
"True, I left Anegla in the village and followed the monk. It was getting dark and the whole thing seemed like a prank played by the monks on us. But when I looked at the monk, I knew something was up. He was quite aged, leaning on a stick as he and I made the painful and freezing journey to the monastery. Five miles doesn't sound much, but you know how the air is so high up."
"Would you like some more tea, Lara?" Angela interrupted. I shook my head. It had started to rain outside. The roof rattled in the wind. I concentrated on John.
"When we arrived in the monastery, it was dark. The monk lead me in. The first hall was empty, noone was praying in front of the buddha statue I knew normally was surrounded by monks. I had visited the monastery once with Angela. The monk kept hurrying me up. We walked up the stairs, to the living quarters of the monks. A light was shining from the room of an elderly monk I had met on my previous visit. The one who told me to wipe my feet, wasn't he, Angie?"
Angela nodded, though I wasn't sure if she nodded just to make John continue. She seemed to be as intrigued by the story as I was. It is seldom that one gets to hear stories about oneself.
"Anyway, I followed my guide to the room. It was filled with monks in those orange or red robes you see everywhere. They were crowded around the only piece of furniture in the room - a bed. The monk who had quided me to the monastery lead me to the bed. The other monks gave us way. My guide must've been a senior monk. On the bed, there were you. I couldn't see you, just a lump under the grey, woolly blanket. A monk was standing on the head side of the bed. He spoke to me. He told they had heard a faint knock on the monastery door the previous night. It had been you, exhausted, thin as a stick, without food or water, and in a torn jacket, or piece of cloth, as he said. They had brought you in, fed and clothed you and put you to bed. Before you fell asleep my guide has asked where you came from. You had mentioned something about seeing a lake the shape of an eye from far up in the mountains. Then you had fallen asleep."
I remember seeing the monastery from far away. It stood there, a block of houses on a hill in a plateau area. I was too tired, too hungry and thirsty to question what I was seeing. Without stopping to wonder whether it was a hallucination or a real, existing thing, I continued my slow walk towards it. I reached the door and knocked. Then I remember feeling light-headed, falling down to the snow that felt incredibly warm. After that - nothing.
"You were in a terrible condition. You weighed the same as a prayer wheel, said one of the monks with a serious face. That morning they couldn't awaken you. They decided you needed to go home. They knew they needed help in getting you safely back to where you came from. So they came to us, the excavation team, the only group of foreigners in the area."
I know the name of the monk who opened the door to me and who guided John in. It was told to me by a pilot aboard the flight to Kathmandu from Darchen. He was Lama Dorje, the high priest of the monastery. A famous man in the mountains.
"As you probably are aware of, Tibetan monks of the remote villages aren't usually concerned with the outer world, so they made quite an exception with you."
"Why?" I swallowed and asked. "You still didn't tell me about the name."
"I was just getting to it." John finished his tea and asked for Angela for another one. "The monks led me closer to the bed and raised the mattress. I saw a young, European-looking woman with long, wet hair, burning with fever. You were very thin, as the monks had said. I'm no doctor, but I somehow guessed that your situation wasn't very good. You were asleep - you wouldn't wake up, said the monks. Lama Dorje, who turned out to be my guide, led me aside from the others, and spoke to me. He told me you had been sent to them."
"Sent to them?" I asked, completely confused.
"The lake you had seen, the one the shape of an eye, was eight hundred miles away. They believed noone could've made that journey without being led by Buddha and protected by spirits. The lake you had mentioned is Lake Manasarovar, next to Mount Kailash."
"Mount Kailash?" I wasn't aware of the mountain's significance - I had never even heard of it.
"It's one of the most sacred peaks of the Himalayas - the home of certain gods. It is protected by Taras, female, protective deities. They think you had been sent to them by Buddha."
I couldn't hide my amusement. John wasn't sharing the emotion.
"I wouldn't laugh if I were you. Strange things happen in the mountain - the laws of nature do not abide here, it seems. You, alone, survived eight hundred miles of alien terrain to arrive to a monastery. Near an excavation where someone speaking the local language was present. I think someone saving the world would fall to the category of coincidence, this feels like too much. You are a miracle."
"Heroic tales aside, where did the name come from?" I couldn't treat myself as a godsend. It felt ridiculous, even after what happened in Cairo. True- saving the world might be a coincidence, but two big coincidences - what an understatement - in one lifetime? The British Statistical Office probably wouldn't let me in even if I tried. I'd be too much to swallow.
"I asked if they knew your name. They called you Dvesagniprashamani's Lara; a Tara who protects from the fear of hatred and fire. Do you know about the Buddhist Taras?"
"Not much."
"There are eight Taras who protect from fear. They thought one of them was protecting you on your journey. Dvesagniprashamani. The one who protects you from the fear of hatred and fire."
The thought was lovely - but of course I couldn't believe it. I'm not Buddhist, nor am I religious. But I do believe that there are things that are beyond the human mind. I've seen them - some call them Gods, some spirits. I think calling them Gods is a bit short-sighted, they probably make mistakes just like us. Shouldn't gods be perfect? The Europeans were gods to animistic people when they first arrived in South and Central America. They considered gods whatever they couldn't understand.
I've seen spirits, and it hasn't succeeded in making me religious, so I doubt I will ever become suchlike.
John, I and Angela sat silently. I wasn't interested in hearing what kind of things they had done to arrange me to kathmandu - I had heard what I had wanted. A faint voice was born in my head. A yearning. A longing to see once more the place I had begun my journey from. But before running anywhere, I decided to seek the monk we had been discussing. Lama Dorje. I suddenly realized there wasn't any point in finding him, it just felt important. I wanted to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. My career wasn't going to get any better, my romantic life was as dead as it ever was, and I was supposedly dead. What could be more logical than to refind the place and surroundings where the real me was born?
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi