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"Anyone not dead can be healed, and anything broken can be mended, and it is the duty of the living to those they have lost to carry on living, and never give up." - Canashir
The rings slipped through Sigmund's fingers like droplets of rain, hundreds of them pouring into the bucket to join their kin. The first time he had done this, they had sounded like massed musket fire, booming and rattling into the bottom of an empty pail: now, it was just a soft rushing jingle, ring landing upon ring upon ring, the fullness of the bucket muffling the sound. There were another three coils on the bench, waiting to be cut and formed, then it would be time to start weaving rings into chain and chain into armour. A 'smiths's work is never done, after all. But not tonight. The others had left the building already, off to do whatever it was they did of an evening: sing, drink, play... another night he might join them, but tonight was special. Sigmund picked up his pack and his cloak, locked the door of the unfamiliar smithy, and headed out into the forests that surrounded the village.
This is another view of this fic.
Very mild FOIP for relationships within the Scholars, nothing serious.
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I will not die for her. She has not that power over me. But I have always said that I would die before her.
Sigmund awoke in blood-wetted sheets, as he had every day this past week. The fur of his cheek and forehead was stuck to the pillow: he peeled himself free with effort and washed the worst of it from his face and paws, studied his reflection in the water. He barely recognised the gaunt, hollow-eyed face of the bear staring back at him.
I'm not certain many people quite understand our relationship. We're not quite guard and charge, milady and I - I seem to have become more of a manservant over the years, if anything. More so now, as Remy and Gilno and the rest sicken and die...
The wardrobe was more or less empty now. It had been a while since anyone's clothes had been washed, but as more and more gave in to death, stale sweat and unwashed flesh was far from the worst smell in the air these days. Sigmund sniffed around for the least unpleasant clothes he could find, then took up the stack of bandages he had made from the worst of last week's sheets.
Chains bind the body, laws bind the mind... These days I bind myself by choice: to hold my body together, hold my swollen stomach in, build up my shoulders and arms so the wasting doesn't show. It's a foolish solution, perhaps, but it's better than the alternative. If the others see that even I am suffering, I fear they would lose what little hope they have left. I think the Lady would approve.
The hauberk pulled down and in as it went on, and the tight-cinched belt held it in shape. No-one had commented when he first started wearing his armour all the time: its weight and structure obscured the effect the contagion was having as it tore at his body, within and without. He had been the first to do it, but nowadays, was far from the only one.
In my time here, I have been many things. An armourer, a printer, a climbing-frame for little Emile. A messenger, a confidante, an advisor. A listener, a speaker, and a teacher. None of these paths are open to me now. They are all gone: without merit, without purpose, or without point. Dust in the wind.
Sigmund poured a little of the water from the washbowl on to his desk, bent over and sniffed deeply, drawing the water into his nose and throat, trying to ignore the blood that followed it. The fluid did nothing to heal the damage, or to ease the pain, but it soothed his insides, and stopped the worst of the coughing. He crossed to the door, ready to face another day, but stopped with his paw on the door handle.
I said I would die before she came to harm. I lied, it seems, even though I did not mean to. She was so peaceful when she died: serene, paler even than usual, her lungs filled with blood and thick with dust. I could not protect her from that. Her, or any of the others. No matter what I do, now, that fate awaits us all.
At first, he thought it was the water he had inhaled coming back, but there was more than he remembered, much more. His vision began to blur and swim, and his throat to catch, despite his best efforts. The tears flowed freely as he began to cough, then to choke and wheeze. As his legs faltered and buckled, he tried to throw himself against the door, to keep the dust of his death from leaking into the rest of the house.
Even in death, I still serve. Goodbye, my friends. I fear I will see most of you again, soon.
So, it's been a few weeks since the last Maelstrom of the year, and I can feel the urge to be someone else for an afternoon starting to gnaw at the edges of my consciousness. A few of my friends are working on maybe putting together a linear system for use in Brighton, and there's Brighton Below in November, and of course I should try to get along to the semi-official Fools and Heroes game that runs monthly here. I've heard mixed reviews of the Fools and Heroes rules and setting, but don't knock it till you've tried it, right?
Maelstrom was good, though. A festival hosted by the faithful was always going to be quite religion-biased, and the laws were quite restrictive (less so for males than females, lol Islamic-template-religion), but on the whole, I think it went well. We went there with a small set of goals, and came away having completed most of a larger, completely different set, so ... success, sort of.
Enough froth. The fencing club will start meeting again soon, so since I'm the armourer I need to see what state the kit's in and repair any damage, restock worn parts and flat batteries, and get ready for the start of the year. The club meets at the same time as the Portslade gaming group, and since I'm an officer at the club, I kinda have to be there, which doesn't help my desire to play RPGs any. So it goes. It just means that this Tuesday is the last time I'll be able to see that group of friends until December. Hmm. Have to fix that, somehow.
The Freshers are on campus now, and the old place is starting back up. I have to admit, I am looking forward to another year's worth of young people to meet, and to train. I wonder who we'll see this year? I'm always surprised by the sheer variety of people we get, and how the best fencers are absolutely not the people you expect.
The title of this entry refers to something that makes me slightly sad, but also happy. As you may be aware, I cycle most places and take trains the rest, owing to not having a car (and also as part of the ongoing, and currently stalled, Operation Not Being A Fat Bastard). However, my bicycle needed a new rear hub a while back, which meant a wheel rebuild, which apparently I didn't do very well. Constant tuning and three snapped spokes later, I'm biting the bullet and paying BikeHut to rebuild the wheel for me. Since the price is fairly reasonable, and includes gear and brake retunes and cheap new cables for both of the above, I'm not overly complaining. Still, I'm an engineering student, and I feel like I should be able to do these things myself. I suppose I can claim that my time is more valuable than theirs, but ... eh, justifications. Whether I can actually afford it, until my new funding arrangement starts working properly, is a question I can't actually answer till I see my payslip for this month (there's about a 33% chance I won't be paid the right amount this month due to admin failures) I've enough in savings to get by, it's just a pain.
Onward, ever onward. I've just found what could be a fairly significant timing problem in the work we're doing right now, so I should probably stop blogging and start working again.
No, I'm not going to games night tonight. Most people to whom this is relevant will have already noticed, because I'm not there: this is written retrospectively, mainly because I keep losing track and hadn't noticed the time.
The title, of course, is only partially accurate. I'd love to go, but didn't for two ... two and a half reasons. The half-reason is, that I'll see pretty much everyone there at the Maelstrom event on Thursday or Friday, so I can go without seeing them now, and get things that need doing done instead.
The other two are both work-related. I'm under an insane deadline pressure at work, on a group project. My components of the system have been ready and running for the best part of a week now, but the kit they're interfacing with is still failing intermittently. Knowing that I'm leaving for a week's holiday on Thursday, I think most people would prioritise the bits I can help with, so I can get my results and go away on the holiday that everyone else has already had this year, and they can fill in the gaps in their own results while I'm not there and they don't need me. No, it's every man for himself, so I'm currently stuck writing and rewriting pieces of the accompanying report while I wait for results to analyse. There are five tests in which I need to participate, and in the week so far we've managed to get results for two of them. To say I am a touch frustrated would be a masterpiece of understatement.
With the system in that state, and given that the other guys keep clearing off home whenever 5PM rolls around, I'm figuring we're gonna have a late night tomorrow getting everything done. Consequently, I'm packing as much as I can tonight, and trying to get some last-minute making done (like, for example, the new blackboard for the Scholars). That, and a housemate persuading me to watch a very, very pretty movie on the new HD system upstairs (FFVII: Advent Children Complete, almost painfully beautiful if you've played the game, nearly meaningless otherwise) have kept me busy pretty much all evening.
The other reason I'm not attending is related to the frustration, rather than the workload: right now I'm wound so tightly I don't really want to be near friends in case I do or say something regrettable. I should be able to burn it off over wednesday night, ASSUMING we get all the results sorted out tomorrow. Either way, I feel a little sorry for my co-driver on Thursday morning. The come-down from this, plus the caffeine I'll need to get up in time to pick up the rental car, will probably cause ... nonlinear results.
...sorry's the wrong word. Is there a word for "pre-emptively guilty"?
Right. Getting ready for the last Maelstrom event of the year. After this weekend, ~200 days till I get to run around in a field again... *sad*
Live preparation list follows:
(the list is a lie: I still have work to do, but it's been shunted back because the other guys still aren't ready. I have to pop in on Monday afternoon to finish data analysis, but I'm free free free to go to the festival. Woo.)
It occurs to me that I haven't written anything about "Prestige!", the third festival of the year. Oops. It was very cool: a proper festival, with a marching band and silly competitions and so on. Given that the first festival of the year felt a bit like a military camp and the second a bit like ... well, wet, it was nice to have a festival that felt like a celebration. Given that the coming festival is being run by an Islamic-analogue culture, I think it'll be ... interesting, but we'll see.