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Hopes and Dreams for a Better Place


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Where to begin?

 

I have always told myself that I don't have a gift with words. I've been accused of being philosophical, that's true. It's possible that I am. These pages might well prove that out. And in the absence of any stacks of paperwork to occupy my mind with, they're what little is left to me in the cold air of this silent room. Not totally silent. I hear the crackle of wood in the fireplace, the rain on the eaves, and this charcoal pen as it scratches over paper. I hear my own breaths, and footsteps scraping the path outside. These ears are a boon and a curse, but hearing well doesn't make it easier to speak your mind, even to yourself.

 

My name, if I believe the legacy of my departed parents, is Charlotte Schweizer. I am a miqo'te, a Keeper and a Seeker, a Garlean, and a Highlander. I am the product of free minds and freer bodies, of distrust in a system and a faith in love that crosses boundaries. I am a scholar, an artist, a craftswoman, a merchant, a sailor, a pilot, a warrior, and a woman of means. I am a body with scars, a sharp-bladed mind with a dull finish, a beautiful voice in a quiet soul. I am a heretic, a believer in fate but not Fate, and a traitor to those who believe in tradition.

 

I am the walking dead.

 

My story began in a time I cannot remember. The wound stole from me all memories of my childhood, and of the parents whose lives I absorbed through the letters in the bag I arrived with when the healers and chirurgeons took me into their care. I awoke, birthed into this world with the vision of a daytime star visible through my window. Its strength grew beside my own, and when it was well and heavy in the sky, I took to the fields of Carteneau to tend to the wounded with my saviors. Their bodies were heavy in the rain of ash that followed the battle.

 

The story that follows is but tragedy heaped on tragedy. So it is strange that I feel nothing, even as I scrawl these words. My saviors dead, my parents' graves resting as a testament to those lost. People I never knew, but who birthed me into this world. People whose hearts were with me until those hearts stopped. People I didn't, at the time, know existed. How strange to mourn, and yet be unable to mourn.

 

My own history, committed to my own pages. This is the life that matters, history or none. I once was asked if I missed who I was. I told them that I could not remember, and if I couldn't remember, what benefit would there be in yearning for the passing of a life that wasn't mine? I am her ancestor. I am not her.

 

 

 

This has become more like flowery prose than I had intended. Another habit of mine. Perhaps this is enough for now. I'll have to thank Alicia for her advice. Committing this to paper helped immensely. I might also ask her opinion of being so wordy.

 

-x

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  • 2 months later...

In my new home, in my new place, I feel a certain sense of safety. There is silence here, as I noted previously, but there is also warmth. All of these items I have collected, I realize, are a part of the identity I made for myself. While I don't feel a sense of attachment to each of them individually, as a whole they are something like a touchstone. I have no memories of childhood to fall back on, so this collection of things serves as some reminder to myself that, yes, in fact, I do tread here. My footsteps do lead from somewhere.

 

When left on my own to think on things like this, I know that I have a certain tendency toward grand vocabulary. Unnecessarily so. I wonder if part of this is something I've retained from the time before, those times I cannot recall. After all, I remembered how to wield a blade, how to hold and fire a rifle, how to sew--so many things, do I remember, that I wonder sometimes if these pushed those other memories out. Of course not, I'm sure--that sort of thing doesn't happen. But how can I be sure? I have so much less memory to work with than most people do. Perhaps there is some enlightened nuance evading me here. Until such a time as I discover that, though, I can only help but live in now. I decided long ago that those memories from before would have to go unfound; that the parts of me that were broken would have to mend on their own. The chirurgeons told me so, the experts in Gridania told me so.

 

Yet, why do I feel as though something is missing, each and every day?

 

-x

Edited by Charlotte
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