Armies of Ash

Jolyn and I were arguing again about having live tv here in the cave. She is still adamant that allowing me to watch current events simply can't end well. What she fails to understand is that current events aren't likely very different from the same shit I saw out there 500 or a thousand years ago.

People don't really change. Oh sure some of the veneer is different and technology evolves fast enough, but deep in the heart of people, the human race is always going to be at odds with something.

She thinks that simple truth will upset me. She's wrong. The human call to battle isn't necessarily a state of evil. It is what drives humans to grow and develop even if that core remains the same for all eternity. To be honest that drive to improve the world by force is one I respect. And to that aspect I've created a poem to honor the eternal battle cry which drives the human species onward even in the darkest hour.


ARMIES OF ASH

Sun rising from the dark
Setting the world alight
People born, taking breath
Living, dying, full of strife

For love, for life,
For freedom and pain
Everything lost,
Everything to gain

Over and over
Repeated mistakes
Time and again
The same damn heartaches

Someday, sometime
We’ll face the truth
We are all soldiers
Born of the ash
Forever doomed
To repeat the past.

Armies of ash,
Nothing that lasts
People of ash,
Reborn of the past


J.

Sunbathing

Jolyn is pissed at me.

Yeah, nothing new there. She came looking for me earlier and found me. Found me laying naked in the sunlight. According to her the sight of my nudity has seared the corneas from her eyeballs. She's being silly. Yes, I am her father, but it's not as if we're humans, reared on those restrictive customs and taboos.

Empathy isn't really my strongest skill but I am trying to understand. Raised in hell, surrounded by demons, I suppose my experiences would have differed from hers. The demons often went bare or nearly bare and had little regard for modesty of any kind.

Then again, Jo did spend more than a few years living with some kind of religious order, monks or something. Regardless, she's pissed.

So I'm looking at some way to make it up to her. Maybe I'll just have to limit the nude sunbathing to during her class times.

J.

Fresh air...

This winter passed as quickly as any other. For me, a single season is little more than a blink. Still with the loss of Sam and with all the time that Jo has spent among humans or with her mother, somehow it was a colder darker season than usual.

But spring has come and mostly gone and above my cave the world is warming to what I hear is expected to be a hot summer. Down here of course there is little change. The same cool stone. The same still air. The same everything.

Until yesterday when a gust of sweet fresh air rushed through the caves. So sudden and new it was a shock and a welcome one. I followed the breeze back to find the source -- a cave in. Sunlight, the first I've seen in several hundred years streamed through the cracked rocks and spotted the drab stone like a splash of golden paint. For a moment, I believed my prison door had finally been opened.

Freedom.

But it wasn't to be. Despite the warm touch from the sun, the path was not open for me. I tried to push through but was stopped at once.

So why am I not pissed off? Because for once, I was treated better than an animal. Rather than lock me away or knock my ass out cold, C talked to me. Shit we probably talked for an hour or more. Honestly he talked while I just soaked up the sunshine. But during his sharing something changed.

Hell, everything changed.

I asked him about Vinola. I always do. He is the god of reincarnation. When I lost Vinola all those years ago he promised to find her for me. So I always ask. But this was the first time he had any news. She has not been recovered. She has not been reincarnated. When she is, I'll finally be freed. According to C that time hasn't come yet. But it will be soon. He said soon.

Soon I will have her in my arms.

And until then, the cave in will be left as it is, so that the sunshine might break through into my darkness one small crack at a time.

J