Four Hands

March 18, 1986

There were four of us in that boat of a station wagon, screaming away from the light into the suburban black. The car could have held double that amount, but strangely, nobody else wanted to come. Driving was Niall (pronounced Neil) Farrelly, an upperclassman who was stuck rooming on a floor full of obnoxious college freshmen because he transferred to our school in the middle of the term.

Niall was one of the last people I thought would be interested in driving 100 miles out of town on a whim.  But hey, he was an engineering major, and he had been inundated with the same media hype we'd all been hearing for the past year.  Carl Sagan couldn't shut up about it, and there was that ominous looking book nearly everywhere you turned.

This was supposed to be one of the last weeks that you'd be able to see Halley's Comet, in the southeastern sky, as it screamed away from the light and back into its own corner of the suburban black.  From our campus, east was the shining Philly skyline, and south was puffing oil refineries.  It only seemed logical to do the road trip thing, and the Jersey shore seemed perfect.  We pointed to a little dot on the map called Cape May, right at the southern tip, knowing it to be far from the sparkly rides and well-lit boardwalks.

We left around 8:00 pm, with that utter disregard for a good night's sleep that can only be understood prior to the age of 25.  Poor Niall was stuck in a car with three of those obnoxious freshmen.

To his right was Fozz, a wide-grinning frat pledge and fellow engineering major, who just spent the last few hours arguing with his girlfriend about this spur of the moment trip.  In the back seat, passenger side, was Beave, Fozz's roommate, and the amateur astronomy buff of the group.  I was next to Beave, right behind Niall.  (I won't be telling you my college nickname, but thank you for asking.)

We stopped at our campus 7-11 to get cigars to smoke on the beach, then we zoomed off to Cape May.  After almost 30 years, I can't recall much about the drive down, but I remember that little town.  We circled and recircled the half-dozen streets, looking for the best place to park and comet-gaze.  There was rampant paranoia about the town cops that we glimpsed from time to time.

Then the beach.  We finally parked and walked out onto the sand, the waves crashing higher and closer to us than really seemed proper for that time of night.  The stars were crisp and the sky was black.  Beave kind of sheepishly told us that, despite being from Baltimore, he had never stood on a beach before.  We broke out the cigars, mainly for warmth.  I didn't mind the stomach ache it gave me.

It probably took a half hour to really get our bearings -- and to remember that we had a friend's binoculars in the car -- before we found that sad little comet near the horizon.  Just barely a smudge with the naked eye, the coma and tail were nicely visible with the binocs.  We felt mildly betrayed by the talking heads on TV -- not to mention Professor Billyuns and Billyuns -- who all promised a major spectacle.  It didn't matter.  This was something special.

Being so excited, we didn't notice the elderly couple walking along the beach.  (I won't examine my memory in too much detail, for fear that these old people weren't so much older than I am right now.)  They saw what we were doing, and asked us to point out the comet for them.  Despite our gesturing, neither of them could make it out.  I think it was me who suggested propping the binoculars on a nearby stone wall, and have Fozz go stand about 10 feet in front.  I'd look through and get it centered, then tell him how to adjust his stance and his upraised arm, so he would be pointing right at the target.

It took a few minutes to get right, but it worked.  The lady and the gentleman took turns looking through the steadied device, and their eyes followed Fozz's magnified finger right to it.

"Hey Beave," Fozz called over, a while later.

"What?"

"I touched a comet."

We hung around a bit after they left, collecting shells and daring each other to go further towards the water.  Before getting back in the car, we did probably the cheesiest thing any of us had ever done, or done since.  We put our four hands together and vowed that, if any of us are still alive when the comet comes back again, in 2061, we'll make our way down to this very same beach and say hello again.

We got back in the car and headed to the highway that would take us back to the city, to the light.  Almost at the on-ramp, red and blue light filled the night.

Panic, of course.  It was something like 3:00 am, and we were 100 miles away from where we should have been.  (Though we were breaking no laws here, I still have no idea if we were violating university policy by being out of the dorm like that.)

"You know your left tail light is out, son?"

Again, almost 30 years of time has fogged the details, but I'm pretty sure a verbal warning was all that Cape May's finest had for us that night.

I knew I should've been sleepy on the drive back.  We all should've been.  We were also not quite 20 years old and knee-deep in high adventure.  Classic rock anthems blared from the radio, and we sang along loudly.  But then another song started up, one we all knew by heart.  Its first bars were just lone piano, cycling through a subtle harmony that penetrates one's chest because the pianist's left hand is all the way down at the bass end.  We didn't sing to the first few verses, because this is one that builds.  The words that make up the name of the song don't even appear until it's nearly over.  It's the one moment of this whole trip that will be burned into my memory until the year 2061.

"Hey Beave," Fozz turned around and called.

"What?"

"Don't stop believin."

False Start Valentine: Bad Poetry, Oh Noetry

We're back with more literary false starts, this time on le day le amour.  Please visit the others to maximize the love!  I've promised to break open my cursed necronomicon of verses.  Let the snickers commence.

In the earliest ones, from roughly 1985 to 1987, I stuck with common meter (fun fact: you can sing any Emily Dickinson poem to the tune of the Yellow Rose of Texas).  Topics ranged from the D&D-ish...

The magic that has gone away

Persuades us all to yearn

For that fine ecstatic day

The dragons will return.

to the self-help-ish...

Just leave me with my books and friends

And happy I will be.

For why live life as someone else,

When I can just be me?

The romantic stuff?  Gotta wait for it.  You first have to suffer through my discovery of T. S. Eliot and the modernists, when I started to incorporate automatic writing and hypnagogic words.  Here's "Sothis" in its entirety from 1991...

Fine fires of the nightly brigade,

Your eternal afterness rhythm circuits the sky.

Envision an ancient fear, human nation;

The rupture of seasonal scales, a ruddy

morning opal.

Drench to the western; rage to the decans!

Our guest, oblivionbound, evaporates

the hollow hypothesis.

Free as heartburn under an aesthetic sun.

What, you can't tell it's about a big controversy in the field of archaeo-astronomy?  :-)

My "masterpiece" from that time was a seven-part epic called Grand Unification.  It followed the form of the 7 chakras and tried to be an emanationist creation myth.  It was also quite terrible.

No, really.  Cringe-inducingly bad.  Trust me.  I don't think my problem was a lack of good ideas, but more an invincible unwillingness to edit my first drafts.  Once it was down on paper, it was sacred.  Add to that a surplus of name-drops from every bit of literature and mythology I had ever soaked up, and you get a very hot mess.  In looking it over again after many years, I see that, for some reason, the cringes come least when I'm asking questions... from this paean to a vacant creator god...

Our ignorance still plays on open ground

When we gaze into your infinitude.

Were you a nothingness bereft of soul?

Or was there magic in your solitude?

to this bit of musing on the third eye and exile...

Who fights for the night in spite of first light?

And blinded by brightness sets out to unite?

Who fashions with passion and full of grim ration

The thirtytwo musical names of compassion?

Who looks out on a cosmos distressed to destroy?

Driven mad by diversity only sees joy?

Who prays to a misanthrope harlequin ghost

In twilight agape before all nature's host?

Certainly not as terrible as the other parts -- at least here weren't any ham-fisted allusions to James Joyce, Joseph Campbell, and Conan the Barbarian -- but still in need of a lot of work if I were to ever want to do anything with it.

I was so this guy.

Thereabouts 1990 or so came the Serious Relationship that launched a thousand doggerel-filled ships.  It took me a while to figure out which piece of lovey dovey-ness to post.  I boiled it down to a choice between two extremes: one optimistic (all beginnings and rainbows) and one pessimistic (all moody and obsessive).  The choice fell on the fact that all of my forays into sunshine and lollipops were just plain trite and BAD. Oh, the darker one is also bad, too, but maybe the depth of genuine, albeit raw, feeling pulls it through.

Don't worry, though.  There is happiness at the end of this post.

Let me also preface it by making it clear that names have been changed to protect the not so innocent.  Okay, now I'll give you what you came here for.  This is "Liebestod."

I still don't sleep Justine.

I thought it was over Justine.

But in a dream Justine.

Your face was before me Justine.

I walk through the crowds Justine.

I listen to the people who know the answers Justine.

I drink and I joke Justine.

I read my books Justine.

And your face is before me Justine.

I want to remember Justine.

I want to forget Justine.

I look at my pictures of you Justine.

I remember the feel and taste of you Justine.

I laugh for your energy Justine.

I cry for your pain Justine.

You fade away Justine.

And all that I am Justine,

Although I know better Justine,

Still needs you

Justine.

Yee-ikes.  In a recent TV show, the characters were musing about obsession in love, and how there's just a thin, thin line between a "Dobler" and a "Dahmer."  I think that just writing the above was enough to get the obsession out of my system... And also, just a month or two after all that unpleasantness, I met the woman to whom I've now been happily married for 21 years.  There's been lots of poetry there, too, but I'm not posting that.  :-)

False Start Friday the Last

Submitted for your approval.  Snippets of discarded prose, growing in yellowness of age, in drawers both wooden and virtual.  Do their authors dare to unearth these moldy words, and risk infecting their present-day lives with the thoughts of their former, sloughed-off, selves?  Even if it's not technically Friday yet?  This is the dimension of clumsy constructions and sublime reminiscences that we call... the False Start Zone.

I was preparing to just make a list of all my other unfinished writing projects, some of which rivaled the Theothany in unnecessary complexity and unrealistic ambition.  But then I dug out "December," an unfinished short story only about three and a half pages in length.  I'm nowhere close to being happy with it, but it's got a unity of purpose not unlike a fifties doo-wop song.  I'm curious what alchemical reactions will occur upon exposing it to the light of 2012.

(I can only bear to type out the beginning and a bit of the end... the middle is just too awkwardly terrifying to behold.)
 

- - - - - - -

March 16, 1990; Philadelphia

If he hadn't tripped, he wouldn't have seen her.

His pleasant downward movement was caused by a jutting piece of sidewalk at 17th and Chestnut Streets.  His shoelace decided to remain behind for a while.  A common enough occurrence, pratfalls being the rightful realm of the clown's face he often found himself wearing these days.  During the first few moments he took to re-tie that stubborn lace, his gaze was interrupted by a woman's spiked heel, attached to a vaguely familiar ankle about to step on one of his dropped bags.  He looked up at her face, the face that echoed in his dreams and waking life for the three months they were together and the three months they had been apart.  He saw her.

"What are you doing down there, Steven?"

Steven.  He almost forgot.  Never could get rid of that final N, could she?

"Oh, just decided to take a little trip."

Being down there on the ground, still looking up at her, struck him as strangely symbolic.  Composition of opposing foreground figures:  up/down, male/female, passive/aggressive.  With blurred city streets in the background.  He remained on the sidewalk, sat cross-legged, and slowly gathered his parcels as she stood, nervously looking at her watch.  Glint of gold.

"So, you're working around here, right?" he inquired up to the sky, though he thought he already knew.  She was going on interviews when they broke up, and in one of those final frigid phone calls she brushed off his inquiries with a wonderfully offhand never mind about that.  Subtlety her specialty.

"Mm hmm," she bit her lip and looked around.  "Steven, you really ought to get up. You look like a homeless person.  People are watching."

- - - - - - -

In between:  A knife-edge smirk.  The groundhog seeing his Jungian shadow.  Blood-red eyes.  A bit of light stalking.  Lastly, a flashback:

- - - - - - -

You stand trembling in the winter chill, your arms locked around his waist.  He speaks to you about when he can come back for you.  Hopefully by Christmas at least.  You kiss him as the snowflakes begin to fall.  You are getting too attached, you think.

He tells you that he loves you.

You reply that you love him back.  You have a reason for not using "too."  Undaunted by your shade of meaning, he happily gets in his car and starts the long journey home.  Second in his mind only to the love he now knows is mutual are the shapes of the tiny snowflakes in your hair, reflected in the blinding porch light in the starry December night.

- - - - - - -

False Start Friday 2: Electric Boogaloo

Last week I took the plunge and discussed (for the first time ever, I think) some old and ambitious plans for a world-spanning novel.  At the heart of that novel was going to be a rediscovered ancient manuscript called the Theothany that described the death of the Greek gods.

FYI, I honestly don't know how I would have inserted these ancient words into the "present-day" action of the novel.  It probably would have been too ham-fisted just to include the whole thing, in feaux epic-poem translation, but I would have hated to give only small pieces.  Like I said last week, a huge majority of my research time was devoted to the ancient manuscript instead of to the story of my idealized alter-ego.

Anyway, after digging through my Theothany notes, I found my detailed (and dot-matrix printed!) outline of the ancient manuscript, dated September 24, 1989. I didn't read it last week, but I did now.

Urgh... I think I just rolled my eyes almost as much as I did in my last post.  Bloated and disjointed to say the least.  But I'll press on!  ;-)  Hopefully my fortysomething brain will mold my twentysomething thoughts into something that makes a little more sense as I summarize...

Live from New York, it's the fire bearer!

It starts with Prometheus.  You know his deal: bound to a rock and tortured for crimes against the gods.  Not only for giving fire and forethought to mankind, but also for refusing to tell Zeus the name of the woman he will impregnate with the son that is fated to dethrone him, as Zeus overthrew his own father.

I have in my notes that Prometheus said he wished to become mortal at the end of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, to end the pain of the torture. So, in my alternate take on the story, I had Zeus grow exasperated enough to eventually grant that request: "Sure, BE mortal. Try to lead men as I lead the gods and see what I have to put up with!"

Prometheus is released, now mortal.  He still has his memory and knowledge, so he doesn't wander far before people realize he's special.  I noted in my outline that this occurred in 1464 BC (der... why so exact?) so it turns out he gets crowned king of Minoan Crete.  His people appreciate his limited future-sight, but they remain distant from him because of his sullen and solemn nature.

A wandering dude soon appears at Prometheus' court.  He is Senenmut, recently exiled from Egypt because of some intrigue with the queen.  He's traveled far, and he's learned many things.  He knows that many past generations of gods have come and gone throughout human history. He teaches Prometheus about their eternal cycles.  They become friends and initiate a cultural renaissance (giving rise to the Atlantis legends, to boot).

Prometheus eventually finds a wife and has a son.  The son, Glaucos ("bright one"), dies from some malady, and Senenmut uses his Egyptian healing arts to bring him back.  But one of Hades' minions sees that the butterfly-like soul of Glaucos started to enter the underworld, but then flitted back up to the world of the living.  Hades reports this anomaly to Zeus, and Zeus thunderbolts Senenmut for messing with things he shouldn't.  This brings back all of Prometheus' prior rebellious rage, and he swears a very loud and vocal oath that all of the immortals will DIE on this very spot within the next 1000 years.

Zeus no like that, so to punish this whole Minoan renaissance, he thunderbolts the island of Thera, whose volcano is known to have destroyed said civilization.  My notes have some suggestions for Prometheus to survive this devastation, make it to the island of Samothrace, start up their mystery cult, and live out the rest of his days in exile.  Kind of anticlimactic, though.  But Prometheus and Senenmut (the latter becoming the model for legends of the healer Asklepios) live on as shades in the underworld, and hold their grudges.

Anyway, flash forward to 456 BC.  Two men have re-sparked Zeus' fear of being overthrown.  One is the playwright Aeschylus (whose entire Prometheia trilogy is conveniently lost to us), who was accused of revealing the secrets of mystery religions on the stage.  The other was a brash Olympic athlete named Brisos -- my notes mention similarities to this guy, who I recall being very full of himself.  Brisos was a distant descendant of Achilles, and thus a carrier of the blood of Thetis, one of the possible fated mothers of Zeus' dethroner.

Long story short: Zeus thunderbolts these guys, too.  Sigh. I said it was disjointed.  Now there are FOUR ghosts in the underworld who are carrying a torch (pun unintended) for the death of the gods.  Their hopes are to be fulfilled by young Socrates.

Bogus.

The infamously disagreeable philosopher is contacted by the ghosts, who can't accomplish much in the living world in their ethereal state.  Socrates has some ideas of his own, too.  He proposes they find a temporary ally among the gods who would be a natural supporter of mankind's bid for "independence."  That ally ends up being Pallas Athena.  She has a soft spot for Prometheus (who helped her be born from Zeus' skull), and is well balanced in her wisdom.

Socrates travels around and uses that persuasive rhetorical power of his to convince Greeks to elevate Athena to a more prominent position in their worship.  Over years, they do, and she absorbs this new power and sets herself up on another mountain as a rival to Zeus.  Guess who begins to become increasingly jealous?

Zeus eventually destroys Athena (gah, I repeated that trope a lot).  This causes Metis -- the mother of Athena, still tucked away inside Zeus' head -- to freak out.  "That's enough!"  Zeus' head throbs and throbs, and eventually explodes him with a golden light.

What emerges is a golden, youthful god, the second child of Metis, whom Socrates (seeing this in a vision, I think) recognizes as Phanes of the Orphic mysteries. Phanes had some primordial "Logos" action going on, since he actually existed before any of the other gods, but was also ever-new.  Phanes extracts the immortal "ichor" from all of the gods (including himself) and disperses it, much diluted, to all of humanity, present and future. This is a kind of "grounding" of the heavenly energy back down to the earth.

Socrates wakes up from his vision, and the world looks fresh and new.  No more gods -- we must be our own inspiration from now on.  His final line is "I have so much to learn...."

--------------------------

Like I said, not too polished!  I probably tightened up the plot in a bunch of small ways in the act of typing out the above, and I can think of many more things that could be done to improve it.  But do I want to?!?  I should make it clear that I was hugely inspired by Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.  At the time, I even memorized the final few stanzas that began,

This is the day, which down the void abysm

At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism...

Yes, yes, Romantic angst mixed with Nietzsche's "Gott ist tot."  Fun for 1989-me; much less my bag in 2012.

False Start Friday: The Theothany

A certain desert lily has thrown down the gauntlet and issued a challenge for people to post bits of their shelved and dusty writing projects on Fridays in November.  Although I'm not a fiction writer in any sense of the word, in my college days I spent a number of years fervently taking notes and building the superstructure of a "great American novel" of sorts.  These notes just celebrated a birthday that would make them of legal drinking age in most US states, so maybe it's time to air them out and see what they contain.

I should warn the reader that I only wrote a teeny, tiny bit of actual prose for this book -- and this post won't present any of that!  The inch-thick folder that I've been looking through contains outlines, bits of plot and character, and even some poetry.

So... gulp... here it is:

Alma-Tadema FTW

The Theothany.

That title is meant to be an ancient Greek neologism, the flip side of Hesiod's Theogony, which dealt with the birth of the gods.  My term deals with their demise (theos + thanatos), and thus is a closer cousin to the Norse Gotterdämmerung.

There was a Greek myth component to this novel, but that was just one part of it.  The main action was supposed to take place in the present day, with a protagonist who was a thinly veiled surrogate for myself.  (I was entranced by Joyce's fiercely independent alter ego at the time...)  But the "twist" is that the action takes place in a slightly alternate world than our own.  In the late 1970s, archaeologists in that world discovered the manuscript of an ancient Greek epic poem -- also called the Theothany and reported to be a lost work of Aeschylus -- in which the death of the gods is starkly portrayed as something that happened literally.

The discovery of these ancient words changes history, but only subtly.  The first chapter of the book was going to be a "show don't tell" example of that divergence:  After reading a published translation of the ancient Theothany, an infamous individual goes further off the beam and kills himself before, in our world, he would have killed John Lennon in 1980.  I researched Chapman's mental illness quite a bit and attempted to weave some of it into this chapter, with his own final thoughts interleaved with the lyrics of Lennon's Starting Over.

(I think Zack Snyder did something eerily similar in his 2009 movie of Alan Moore's Watchmen.  The introductory montage showed the introduction of "real" superheroes into that alternate world with Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A Changin playing in the background...)

But most of my book was going to be about the protagonist, who in my Joycean fog I gave the provisional name "Finn."  We see a bit of his time in college in Philadelphia, but then something happens in his life that makes him reevaluate his path.  Inspired by Lennon's further alt-history activism in the 1980s, Finn joins the Peace Corps and begins an international journey that forms the backbone of the novel.

There's love, there's loss, and there's an ending in which, naturally, our hero finds himself among the ruins of Greece.  Through it all, there are parallels between Finn's present-day travails and the events of that ancient manuscript.  (If I ever would have started writing this thing, I feel I would've gone overkill on those parallels!  Learning the finesse of "less is more" is something it took me much longer to do... in many aspects of life.)

I think I'll save the scary/fairy-tale details of the ancient manuscript for next week's False Start Friday.  Despite my desire for parallels, it really is a Different Thing than Finn's journey.  For now, I'll just reminisce about some of the other characters that continue to call to me for attention...

• In Philadelphia, Finn is dragged to see an avant-garde play at a dingy little theater. On stage, he first spies Tamara Albayeff, free-spirited girl of Kalmyk Mongolian descent, who is to be the love of his life.  Yes, I think she was a "manic pixie dream girl" long before they were a thing.  "Tara" initiates Finn into the wonders of life, shares her quirky spirituality with him, and dies an untimely death later on in the novel, after Finn meets up with her again in a foreign land.
• Finn is initially good friends with his slightly older cousin, Shandon Corrigan.  (Actually, neither of those Irish names are Joyce-inspired... so there!)  Shandon starts out as somewhat puckish comic relief.  He's the one who introduced Finn to things like Monty Python, SNL in its early days, and prog rock.  But, much like Loki in the Norse myths, his trickster side gradually grows darker.  When Finn runs into trouble and turns to his cousin, he is disappointed at the nihilistic way Shandon retreats from challenges.  (Shandon is partly inspired by Svidrigailov, the disturbing "shadow" of the protagonist in Crime and Punishment.)
• I'm not sure at what point Finn meets South African Betty Botha, but it's lust at first sight. Outwardly she's blonde and bubbly, with many other personality traits that make her endearing.  However, eventually conversations turn to certain topics, and the bigoted opinions she shares with a fraction of her 1980s countrypeople make themselves known.  Actually, Betty is the result of my trying to understand the lyrics of a song by the Housemartins called Johannesburg.
• I was toying with the idea of Finn's uncle (his father's brother) being an Apollo astronaut.  The old family story was that the uncle hated the idea that the only non-astronaut's name to be left on the Moon for posterity was that of the despised Tricky One.  So he smuggled up something else -- maybe some immortal words of Hunter Thompson or Ken Kesey?  I never decided.  However, Finn's experience of the uncle was always filtered through the bitter lens of his father, who was the brother who always worked harder and never got the rewards.

Upon looking at the sheer number of cliches in the above list, I realize that a builder of realistic characters I'm not.  :-)  My high-minded goal with this book was to reconstruct and present a new mythology for a new, god-free world.  Yes, I was full of Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell, and Neil Peart's early lyrics, and was convinced that the only good god was a dead one.  I'm certainly not that twentysomething any more, but I still do think a healthy D.I.Y. approach to spirituality is what's called for.  I'm still hard at work reconstructing, is what I'm saying.

I admit that I never worked out Finn's final scenes in Greece.  After all the adventures and heartbreak, I imagined a "rock bottom" which at some point would drift into the surreal and hallucinogenic.  A temptation in the desert, complete with a dragon or lion (like St. Jerome -- or Eustace Scrubb)?  Maybe the astronaut makes an appearance?  Some unfinished part of Tara's philosophy gets cleared up, surely.  There's definitely a deep connection to the distant past, via the ancient Greek text that I probably spent 80% of my time thinking about, despite it being a small part of this whole story.

Which probably sets things up for the next False Start Friday.  In a week, I hope to talk about this putative lost work of Aeschylus, and just maybe post the epic-poem verse that I toyed with that started it off...  :-)

My Theothany notes are dated between 1987 and 1991.  In 1992, I started graduate school in earnest and also realized that if I ever wanted to really write a novel, I'd have to put in thousands of more hours honing that very specific craft.  Many other aspects of life got in the way of that, but I'm happy to have spent the time thinking and dreaming about this particular little world and its denizens.

Sister Rebecca's Confession

Found on a yellowed piece of parchment in an old bottle...

Dear Father Confessor,

I pen these words to you with little hope you will ever read them. I fear I have sinned most grievously against our most Holy Creeds.  When you gave me your benediction to leave the cloister in the company of such gallant and jovial adventurers as Ironwolf and Dougal, I fear you did not see into their hearts as I now have.

Our first weeks in the wilderness were full of merriment and song.  Even the taunts of the crude soldiers at the Keep were of no worry.  A swing or two of the blessed "thurible," in which you had made sure I was so adept, silenced several a stray cat call, let me tell you!

But as we approached those horrible caves, truly a home of chaos as they are named, the true natures of my companions seemed to rise to the fore.  The talk of gold and gems -- and how they would be spent in the looser quarters of the Town -- became more prevalent.  Less so the cause of our quest:  the stopping of the raids by those horrible creatures on the innocent farmers of the valley.

Our first sight of one of those creatures, a shriveled one called kobold  by Silverleaf, sent them into a frenzy.  I am ashamed to admit to being whipped up by some of that aggressive talk, because I was with them, arm to arm, when we attacked.  We hacked, we pounded, we stomped.  As we chased some of them into the mouth of the cave, Dougal went off into a side cavern where I heard what sounded like the wailing of babes.

When Dougal emerged, smoke billowed behind him.

I kept telling myself that these foul creatures were the Spawn of the Adversary, impossibly corrupted and wholly exempt from mercy.  When Dougal died, I earnestly gave him the Rites and commended his soul to the High One because of his brave actions.

Later, much later, at the campfire, as Frederick and Ironwolf argued over the disposition of some bauble, the talk turned back to the Keep.  Over and over again, they talked of the weaknesses in the soldiers' defense, the sheen of the new weapons they carried, and the unfairly gathered tax money stored in their coffers.  I held my tongue and offered Hands and Balms to their wounds.

My sleep that night was fitful.  After my turn at the watch, I settled into a deeper slumber.  My dreams began in the caves -- as they have every night since -- but on that night there were no beasts.  Only one fiery form, tall and thin, with the brightest flames covering the face.  From time to time I thought I could see a piece of armor or clothing that resembled that of one or other of my companions.  It walked towards me and drew a bright sword.

I swung at this demonic visage with my mace, but it passed through as if my opponent was made of the wind.  Panicked, I dropped the mace and, as you know is my habit in times of trouble, clutched at the Holy Symbol of the High One around my neck.  The cross came off its chain and was tightly gripped by my right hand.  I was astounded to see that the cross became a hilt, and a long blade of light, even brighter than my opponent's, grew out out of it.  I did not even need to swing or thrust, since its shining light made the fiery person (man? woman? I still know not) recoil and speed away in terror.

I awoke, knowing exactly what I needed to do.  I still do not know whether it was a dream or a true encounter with one from the realms of the inner world.  May it have been a test of the High One... or possibly a temptation from the Adversary?  No matter.  I am strengthened.  I am resolved.  I am... experienced.

I now must stop my careful scratching, as this, my last piece of parchment, is full, and my hastily gathered quill (apologies, good goose!) is wearing thin.  Be not alarmed by these scarlet words, since I had no other ink than mine own.  The bloodletting has not weakened me, since I am uplifted by the High One and by the hope that my path away from those mercenaries has been well hidden.  I took no treasure but this bottle in which you find this confession of a sinner, now hopefully redeemed by fire.  I pray to arrive back at the cloister by the next full moon.

Yours,

Sister Rebecca

(Inspired by this, and by some recent thoughts on ways to make the CLERIC class more interesting... specifics to come eventually.  Suffice to say, Rebecca didn't need formal training to level up, did she?)  :-)