...Only the god of lightning to burn the trees, the goddess of love to make mortals amend... So many gods, and they lived on this same Gaia, their home. There came a time when the old gods died, and only Bahamut remained as one, so did I. Yet, nothing can take me away from this sensible world. Not even death...
…I don't fear it, but instead I take control of it. Control over my shape. My direction. My own history. Along the way, came the sins. Monarchy may share other virtues, but it failed to protect the people from people. And the beasts from the beasts. Only the faith to sustain their lifes a bit longer. For many, god became a mortal, and died a long time ago.
…Only the hopes are meant to die. Only the flowers are meant to wither. Only half of the offspring of rats survive the harsh winter. Only the humans treat each other with weapons further away from their jaws, but both sides get bitten anyway. Poisoned. Injured. Harmed. Killed...
...Today is a big day. You shall find the world, said a father to his son, beneath the doors secluding the Jugend from the outside world. Courage for the upcoming fights. And then, he left…
… I only felt the truth of such words later on. No matter the way I found to be back at home, instead of living inside this academy, I wasn't the same anymore. I was eleven years old, but my interest for this job grew on me since I learned, not only with my family, but with this world I began to hate, and in change, same began to threw everything over me like a stream pushing the water together with the pieces of a mountain down ever since I learned about it, but only now that I do care…
…I live for it, same I do for the people who either believe that we are the solution, or part of the problem. It's so easy to blame those who are like gods walking over the earth, and so easy it is to create a power like the one belonging to the gods with our own hands…
Cocteau Twins - Lazy Calm
July 17, 1778
...
Today is the big day... That's what you wrote in your diary as well, mom.
All days are big, though they all seem to last for a while. It depends on the way they are spent. For my mother, a day may have lasted only an hour due to her duty, but for me, it lasted for an eternity, but nothing lasts forever. Including my patience... On winters like these, any season that comes and goes, I have spent a time looking through this window, belonging to my bedroom.
I would be here to contemplate the morning and most of the time, I would find myself outside, to feel it further than the touch of my fingers over the glass surface. So bored that I was to lick this same glass as well, and never that my tongue got stuck. Only my feet upon the chair I pulled to be near this window, unlike this bed, whom I used to jump above, but now that I grew up, I might hit my head on the ceiling above, or maybe I'll feel dizzy and I don't want to cause a bad impression, even if they only last for a while, like my childhood.
It's the first impression that gets stuck on their heads, but within time, it'll soon be gone, but I don't know how much time I'll have to spend, or how much time I'll feel passing through. The clock only tells me which hours are, but people share their own time. Like father, mother, Jack, Dan... Me. The youngest of them all. Some are far younger than me, like many of my cousins.
So young that they don't care. So quiet they are, though many of them keep running, because they are bored as well. I was so bored that I began to listen to father's stories. Some of them were real, others weren't, but only me to tell if they were, or deduce. No such thing as a truth exists, and I agree with you, father.
He said Truth as a person's name, not truth as an object. A name is given to objects as well, but names are written with capital words, because they refer to proper names.
Capital words had been used in the beginning of sentences, and giant spears were given to the lords of war... In short, nothing happened because of only one person, although people on their own think for themselves. Instead of speaking out of their mouths, we keep many things meant to not be said on our heads, where we may hear them, and decide if we can, or can't speak them. I never learned any slang with my father, but I knew he despised other people.
I loved him, for a change. I listened to his words, even when I was unable to see him, and he looked through me, carefully he holded me, like those who took care of me later on... I know he did, because I am still alive.
Freya Crescent; that's my name. Did I ever ask to be given this same name? How many of the children born had been given the name 'Freya'? How many born before me share my same name? How many are still alive to live with the name they had been given?
It's part of all family traditions that a child grows up with a grandfather's surname. Some sound silly, while others are what kids struggle for, without their fists.
Crescent... Like the moon, but nobody here in Burmecia ever saw the moon. Only those who went outside, and were able to come back. All that we know to this day is that the moon shines like the sun, but you are able to look at. And it may be gray, like these clouds some watch moving in the sky above.
I am a Crescent, a Brandford, a Van Houten, an Ironheart, a Miyajima... The families that have dominance, who subdued others through ages, and things far more valuable than names chosen by the words of another. Mom chose my name instead of father, as much as she had chosen to live days unlike any others. Hours... I mean. This won't take an entire day. As soon as I got it all, a thing I never did. I was only interested in the fights, I want to engage in some, yet you can't solve this with your fist. Or with a bite.
You were able to wake up from your bed, to prepare yourself a breakfast, and then you find yourself again, sitting on this bed. You are asking for a sleep, yet I am not tired. Maybe I am tired of living like this. I didn't expect that mom would get ill weeks before my birthday. I thought she would get any better, and then... Then she would come back to her duty. She will, like always. You insisted for her to be with you, and once again you realize that a Crescent is always with you, not only in blood, or at the tip of your tail.
How many times shall I carry on with the same thoughts, instead of creating new ones? Before, I had an only thought, that became a wish and disappeared like one. I wanted mom to get better, and seeing how she kept smiling at me in the end, I can say she was far better than those who refuse to die. She accepted it, when already down on this same bed.
From the window, only white can be seen; into the streets, on the clouds, and my hair. It wasn't painful for her, nor for me, who had already been waiting for such to happen, because I couldn't do anything to prevent it. What really was painful back then is that I awaited enough for a realization, instead of overcoming it myself. What else could be done when on a bed, besides speaking to each other? Well, I could listen to her coughing the entire day. All it took for a monster to be born was a terrible day spent by what once was his, or her.
I only seemed to have been sharing my own worries, legs trembling for each tea prepared, a water which shared the warmth mother had been losing each day, but the flavour was the same, for someone who had been experiencing it for fifteen years. Someone who went inside these blankets only to feel the knees instead of the pillows on the head... You aren't only here, in this room, to be sobbing at someone who isn't there, right?
The sky does so, however nobody pays attention to its sounds. Who else, other than you, to be paying something and waiting for such to be paid? You do not share an only voice in your head. You do not call yourself by Freya in the same way you used to, a name that inspired many things gone like your childhood, and the way you felt the same.
Today is 'the big day', isn't it? Only if you wake up, once again.
You didn't only come here by opening this wooden door, did you? Anyone can open these doors, as much as we are to close some of them forever, but even walls are breakable, gaps can be found on these same doors, glass can be scratched like our backs, and mother had no reason to lock her wardrobe with any locks. If there is a thing I do need to become a Dragoon Knight in the first place is that I need to look like them.
I had been trained to become one, but the difference between the garden and the training grounds is that the first was fun, both for me, Jack and mom. I learned a few things, of a bunch I had forgotten. You will have to learn these again, and you won't forget this time. Instead of the stick, you will be given an entire spear. A javelin, to be fair.
A Dragoon knight ain't defined by its weapon, though one of mom's spears was a father's gift. I don't know if she only took it as a gift and only, but as far as I knew mom, I guess such a gift wasn't only meant to be called special.
I wonder where that spear is, but maybe it was buried together with her. That's one of the things she would want to do. I wasn't there to see it, because I already saw enough of my mom, far more than her own body, and those expressions she used to make with that face.
Anyway, with her scars exposed or not, nothing could prevent us from knowing that she didn't feel any good, but that she chose to live this way, I agree.
Knock Knock... I heard them so many times. coming down that same door. Dan said that he would be there to lead me to where they train the new Dragoons. I could already be there on my own, if I felt any better than this. I don't want to go there on my own, even with these clothes, wearing orange trousers that only I do pay attention to, fortunately. And my tail began to shake, but it already does. I only took notice of how it moves, from left to right, and then right to left.
It's a waste of time. And to go there only in thoughts, to believe that you will fail with them, fail with the unknown... What about those heroes who had fought many battles, destroyed empires in the past in order to show something far more than sheer strength committed by their hands? I'll make it known, then I'll be able to endure it. It may be boring, but it ain't a frightening process.
Only their looks, and why would I feel any threat, if all you had to do was to hold one of their hands? Her left hand, the one who also held any spear, javelin, but unlike these weapons, I never brought my hands to any harm.
...
...Only the claws, but I felt ashamed to use them. Anger is the most primitive of the sensations. Besides fear. The audition is the first of the senses that alert any kind of danger, and the first of the feelings we all feel is fear…
…The adrenaline runs through the body, the mind tells you to escape, and the experience may prevent you from stepping above a nail or hitting the wooden counter when in the dark. Some creatures live in the dark, while others evolved to step into sunlight, and only a few to look at the sun. They have no time, they have no need to look at the stars.
It burns... It hurts. The human is the only animal who ever deemed an existence over his own needs, an immortal being unlike his. The Burmecian is just another human, and only humans feel any love. I didn't have the need to spend my time reading these books to learn about that. It comes from experience...
...
Tsk, tsk...
That was a nice breakfast I had as soon as I woke up. You did it before me and your mom, even before your own brother.
Tsk... But a leaf got stuck between my teeth. The front teeth. That wouldn't happen back when I began to lose them like the leaves falling out of a tree. You will lose them too, but I hope not in the same ways I did lose them. For each time your father got in trouble, all I could do was to fight back, instead of fledgling like a cockroach. Only my teeth got broken instead of my jaw, and any bones, if I recall. This if I had not lost my memory yet, or if I replaced such with a good moment instead.
Like your birth... No, that was an awful moment, to be fair. Not that I had been waiting or I didn't care for you in the same way your mom still does, but... Well, there are moments that are meant to be carried on, although for each coin comes two sides.
Don't try to eat any coins anymore. But then, you are barely able to stare at me, anything with these little blue dots, and then I feel something in my chest. You are above my chest as well, the same who is covered by this leather plate. It took some time to wear these, and how easy it was to wrap up you in these clothes.
Now, why is Freya taking so long? Has she woke up yet?
Freya... She had been living in Niflheim these past few days. I know how she feels, but not in the same way she does. Your grandpa passed away a long time ago. I won't say that he was that good of a person, nobody is. But there are those people whom I care about, no matter how they are treated or treated by others.
So, I became a Royal Guard, because it's nice to show some respect to the people, yet some don't show the same kind of respect I brought to them, besides order.
That's how things are. You can't force other people to make you like something. You, for example, prefer to be toying with the food instead of eating it, but you do have a reason for that. It's because you are growing up, knowing what should or shouldn't be done, in order to let people see you with a sight other than the first one they had of you. So little you two were, still are...
A boy once came near me once, to ask me something. He seemed lost, but given how he looked at me with those eyes, I thought for myself he could just look around, that the view he shared was enough to find people a mile away, while I would only see silhouettes. It was just a silly guess, I know it, as much as I knew I had to help that kiddo. And what did I do next? Well, I kneeled over the kid, who spat on my face. A spit, and then he just fled with those short legs.
He reminded me of Jack, who also dared to punch me as well, on this same face. Both sides. Jack... That's your name, isn't it? At least, Jack didn't laugh back that day, because I knew how silly of a laugh he had, despite that infant voice. I'm kind of eager to hear your voice too, no matter how it may sound. I do share a voice worse than Jack's own, and only now I am able to realise it, without feeling sad, or being mocked by that. As if the gaps I had between the front teeth weren't enough...
Why would I feel down with these things with Learie Profumo on my side? Your mom had a sweet voice, although she wasn't allowed to eat any of them, and after hearing that, Jack made a joke about her teeth being yellow. So did the apples she began to eat. But I didn't care about it. A girl isn't only defined by her teeth, though Jack's sister used to bite him.
I feel a scent coming from the barely open window that leads to the kitchen. I guess you did feel the same as well. Maybe Freya is taking a bath. It works each time I feel my head is about to open, or when my skin begins to feel itchy, and my mouth becomes dry of any words, unlike Learie' own... I know Jack felt a bit of envy in regards to me because he felt something for Learie, but then it was him who said that she had rotten teeth. At least, he only offended her with words alone.
Only a coward punches girls, and only a girl to punch cowards, I hope you learn that. Of course you will. Learie never did such a thing, and she hated how I fought against Jack, or any boy. What a waste of time, she said, and how long it took for me to agree they were right. It took a week so I was able to talk to her. To talk with Learie was an easy task, but to kiss her... I never did it so.
Was it because I believed in what Jack said to me? Was it because only I wanted to feel that kiss? How could a child kiss another, if I didn't even know how relationships worked? Of course I knew how, but only with my brothers. Father was gone even when he just didn't become ashes unseen in thin air, and mom created Aoife instead of my two brothers, who created themselves, so did I as soon as I got someone like Jack to be called by friend.
We are cousins, but seeing how far we were from each other, I don't think that we saw ourselves as cousins. Yet, we used to fight each other like boys, suffering from boredom and whatever it was that used to make us amused as always. Then his sister was born, and with my father gone, I went to visit his house more often than before. Like now, but Jack doesn't live here anymore, nor does Lenneth.
Only Freya Crescent, another cousin of mine.
Here she is.
Wearing that red trench, a white and clean cravat along the neck, covered by those same garments, same shoulder pads, the belt tightened above the chest, where the same coat of arms, a bit rusty and sharing of a few cracks, is still able to shine alike the edge of a spear, if there was one for Freya to hold. She is already bearing enough weight, far more than I could in the first days. She doesn't wear any leather, that's why. Her days of harsh training didn't even begin, while the child's play of before ceased to be brought.
— It takes courage to go in there dressed like that. – I said, as soon as I looked at her, with the door opened at once. I could say for sure that Lenneth came back. She did, fifteen years ago...
— It ain't courage, Dan. Just a guarantee.
— Aren't you going to wear the helmet as well?
— I don't think so.
Does it fit your head? I brought a brief smirk, and I know Freya noticed it.
Back on a certain day, she once tried to wear her mother's helmet, and it was so heavy that not only did her head fit it, but then she got stuck inside this same helmet. Jack and I laughed first, but Freya laughed last. Jack knew that having a little brother would be fun, and painful as well. The way she kept staring at me, then and now.
— …Nevermind. Do you feel any better?
— Just a bit nervous, Dan, although I do share the basic requirements. Since father went to the field and was able to come back, the State brought insurance to him, so they did with the other soldier's families. Yet, father worked hard like mother throughout the short life he had, with half of his lost before I even was born.
— At least, to have a half is better than nothing at all, Freya.
— I know. Alright, let's go…
