Make hay while the sun shines
Mar. 17th, 2012 12:58 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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estdeus_innobisMid-afternoon of Tuesday, 29th June
The Abbey
It's a bright warm day, and the church, my church, rings with the sound of a community in song. Every pew is filled, and there are even people standing at the back of the church and spilling onto the porch, leaning into the doorway to hear Ash's words, and singing out familiar hymns of summer and farmwork through the stone of the church and out into the bright air. Some of our farmers - I know them all by name, John Hale, Jasper Thornton, Lucille Cliff, Alex Brown, their dreams familiar to me as neighbours - bring a bale of new hay to the altar in offering, and my throat is tight.
Please, I pray. Please let their prayers be granted. May I still be able to do some good.
It's strange, to be able to feel such joy and such grief at once. I have such pride in my people, and such helpless frustration at what I have become.
The service ends, and everyone goes into the fresh air. Tonight they will dance together at the new hall, kick up tired heels and shake out aching muscles into new, pleasanter aches of dancing and socialising and celebrating after hard labour. For now, our community here has moved tables out from the dining hall into the yard, and the congregation has brought pies and cider to share. Children run giggling between the tables, hay in their hair, and I laugh looking at them, and feel a terrible tender pain in my heart, wanting them to be as safe as this always.
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The Abbey
It's a bright warm day, and the church, my church, rings with the sound of a community in song. Every pew is filled, and there are even people standing at the back of the church and spilling onto the porch, leaning into the doorway to hear Ash's words, and singing out familiar hymns of summer and farmwork through the stone of the church and out into the bright air. Some of our farmers - I know them all by name, John Hale, Jasper Thornton, Lucille Cliff, Alex Brown, their dreams familiar to me as neighbours - bring a bale of new hay to the altar in offering, and my throat is tight.
Please, I pray. Please let their prayers be granted. May I still be able to do some good.
It's strange, to be able to feel such joy and such grief at once. I have such pride in my people, and such helpless frustration at what I have become.
The service ends, and everyone goes into the fresh air. Tonight they will dance together at the new hall, kick up tired heels and shake out aching muscles into new, pleasanter aches of dancing and socialising and celebrating after hard labour. For now, our community here has moved tables out from the dining hall into the yard, and the congregation has brought pies and cider to share. Children run giggling between the tables, hay in their hair, and I laugh looking at them, and feel a terrible tender pain in my heart, wanting them to be as safe as this always.
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Date: 2012-03-28 01:58 am (UTC)She smiles and shakes her head, and while I don't know quite what she means in terms of specifics, I understand that this is one of those things that falls in that broad category of 'it's complicated.' Hell, half the people in this town seem to have A Story, and that's well above the average in my experience. Most of what's left in the world just tries to keep its head down enough to not attract a lightning strike.
...Come to think of it, have any more than one or two of the people I've met since I got here actually been from here? It's one more interesting wrinkle to this strange place.
"I work out at the Carnaval Diabolique; lovely place, grandest show just outside of town, although I have to tell you, we don't get a lot of competition these days."
I can feel my face light up with interest. "You're with the show?" Yet another place I'd yet to explore. "Fascinating. What do you do? I've heard about the Diabolique from some of the townsfolk," I add, thinking of the bookstore's proprietor, "but haven't visited it yet. Haven't had the time." I think about that, and bark a laugh. "Scratch that. Had the time, just not the motivation. Things here got...complicated, fast."
That's an understatement. Strange visions, explosions in the woods, talk of the death and return of gods in the taste of blood...
"I've run into several shows elsewhere in my travels, over the years. Maybe even yours, come to think of it," I bite my lower lip as I think, but try as I might I cannot summon a name, not even of the place where Mr. Sagert and I first encountered one another. "I remember them as thoroughly intriguing studies in collective seduction and consensual illusion. And funnel cakes," I add, after a moment's wistful reflection. "Great big ones. Like beignets got loose from some mad scientist's kitchen, met in the wild, and raised their young on a diet of fry oil and powdered sugar."