CoJ: Chapters 33 & 34

[JasonPratt]

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[size=150]Chapter 33: Matters Of The Heart[/size]

___Dark clouds billow over Dichosa, my beloved; although some gleams of gold shoot through to touch the city on occasion.
___In her upper room, the Empress thinks back seven years and more—back, to her first night in Qarfax Tower.
___Yesterday she glided through the glassless window of her fana…and then stared, blankly, for an hour at the clay.
___She had done the same the day before.
___Two days now, without a single new word engraved in the clay.
___Nevertheless: she remains determined to compose her testimony. So she reaches out once more—to write of a betrayal.

❖ ❖ ❖

___On that night, I paced a dead man’s room, thinking on a man who wasn’t dead but lay asleep instead, below me on a bed of quitch.
___How should it be, that he could sleep in satisfaction on some dirt that any vagrant might acquire—for I was sure his sleep was sound and full—while I, who claimed a bed of kings, could only circle restlessly?!
___Bah—I would plunge into my own bed I had won with sovereign effort, and be comfort to myself…!
___But, although I paused to do just that, the bed lay cold and empty still. The sheets and downy pillows and the firm supporting mattress—weren’t alive.
___I saw and felt instead, the mossy living grass.
___I’d slept on quitch before, resenting it as being beneath ambition.
___And yet, I’d always slept upon it well.
___The simple grass had given comfort, despite how I despised it. Yes…comfort and enjoyment in its gift of sleep, two living things together in a harmony…
___Instead I’d gained my dead ambition: I would be the only thing that mattered in my bed.
___And with that thought, another thorn was sticking in my mind. I had discovered, earlier that evening: if I mattered only to myself, then nothing mattered, even my own self. The fear of life and death provided by that revelation still was curdling on my tongue. Now I sought to overcome this fear.
___When had I become aware of that despairing knowledge?
___The first time I had thought that Jian was dead.
___Why had that affected me in such a way?!
___Because…to Jian, I mattered.

___He gladly risked his life for me—with no regrets, with no coercion, no compulsion, nothing to gain for himself by doing so…
___not even expecting thanks.
___I had never mattered to a man like that, before.
___To overcome my fear of life and death, I had been driven to convince myself I mattered: that my wishes were sufficient to establish such a truth.
___But, I had failed. If I hadn’t mattered to someone else, then I would have lost, and would have been lost, whether I had lived or died.
___Jian had shown that I, I myself, truly mattered.
___and…Jian mattered to me.

___This was deeply bitter.
___I preferred to be a fortress to myself. To be, instead, invested in another’s value, left me open to attack!
___And yet I still could taste the fear I’d felt: when I had seen a point, itself, has no true strength. A single point can’t even claim existence!—except by postulation, by the grace, of something other than that point.
___So: it was weakness, or else…what? More weakness, in dependence…?
___No! I was strong! I had defeated Qarfax’s traps, through my strength of mind and body! That was something to be proud of, something to set against my prior despair…!
___But then, why hadn’t I been strong, earlier, in those forests? Yes, I had succeeded in slaying some avians. But my attitude, and the meaning of my accomplishments, had been completely different—for my victories against them would have been completely worthless, even if I had defeated them all.
___Yet my victory over the generators mattered; and would have mattered even in my death. So, where was the difference?
___Jian had shown I mattered, but in both the cases—so that was not the crucial factor.
___But now I remembered: after Jian’s apparent second death, I had admitted to myself, however vaguely:
___Jian mattered to me.

___So. There was strength in this, after all.

___I wasn’t satisfied. Strength there might be, but also terrible danger to myself. I would be vulnerable.
___Most of all, to Jian himself.
___What if he betrayed me?
___How could I ensure that Jian would love me?
___And here was the nub, at last! I wanted to be loved—worse, I had discovered that I needed to be loved.

___As a pretense of something to do, rather than think about that, I stripped from out of my unclean clothes—sodden still with blood and sweat as well as water—and flung a wardrobe open.
___A royal robe commended itself. I tried it on. Very satisfactory: its quilted fabric and fur would soon be warmed; and in the nearby mirror I could see a queen—a furious queen!

___A queen within a dead man’s robe, too many sizes large for her, like playing dress-up…

___Never mind. It was mine. I didn’t need a mirror.
___I wrapped the robe around myself, and cinched it up, and then resumed my march around the empty bed, dragging the tail of the robe behind me like an outraged bride.
___How could I ensure that Jian would love the way I wanted to be loved? That way lay more safety; a measure more of control. I would minimize my vulnerability.
___The simplest answer was: make him addicted to me. Then I would be indispensable.
___I knew how to do that.
___And after all, wasn’t this what I had wanted down in my heart for weeks?
___Good! I thought. Everything has led to this. Now I could satisfy my wishes in such a way that wouldn’t make me seem a fool, and which would serve me properly!

___But, I was still a fool.

[JasonPratt]

[size=150]Chapter 34: Opportunity[/size]

___Now I had made my decision; and I would act.
___I plotted my assignation, as if an assassination.
___Part of me recognized that I was about to attempt a treacherous thing. Furthermore, Jian himself would probably try to reason me out of it. After all, he wasn’t Dagon.
___Who raised another consideration: I wanted to get this done with minimal interference from anyone who might be feeling possessive, resenting the new competition.
___And I didn’t want to wait any longer.
___Sneak in tonight, accomplish the deed without detection—except by Jian, of course—and then…
___Well, I wasn’t thinking of that far ahead. I wanted it done. I wanted what I thought was safety, only on my terms.
___And, I wanted the satisfaction.

___I jotted an Airebelle onto myself, leaving the usual puncture behind me; then I left the room of Qarfax, ghosting silently down the narrow stairs, excitement bringing alive each nerve, matching my wits against my men.
___I passed the next landing down; the laboratory’s two gaping maws held no more attractions for me that night.
___Here was the garrison landing. I stopped, several steps above it. He lay just beyond the inner wall. If only I could tesser…! But I couldn’t, yet. I would have to improvise.
___And I could do that very well.
___My only real concern was if a man came up the basement stairs, while I was making preparations. That would wreck my plan—until another night—but otherwise would not be problematic. I would simply drop my Airebelle, in case they somehow sensed a special silence, and then inform whoever came upstairs, or round the corner, I meant to use the well-room for a privy. The robe would be embarrassing, but it could be easily justified for what it was: a substitute for filthy clothing.
___Doing what I wanted without the others knowing I had gone down to him, would be harder.
___I jotted a sliver of Silveraire, silently within my belle, edging it round the corner, angling it like a mirror.

___Dagon stared, ready to kill.
___I jumped, too shocked to even defend—!

___…then I realized: he wasn’t moving. Except for his eyes.
___A moment later, I figured it out: in my nervousness, I had smeared the normal alignment of Aire and basic materia, so that now it magnified what I was seeing. The mirror was showing me Dagon, as he sat beyond the firepit, keeping our first watch.
___I tested my discovery, over long minutes. I had little else to do—with Dagon so alert, I couldn’t slide into the garrison room where Jian was sleeping, or even try another tactic to disguise my entrance.
___So I watched, at first impatient—and then with curiosity.
___Dagon only moved his eyes, from one target to another: dark, murderous eyes. All his face seethed with hate; aimed at every door behind which other men were sleeping.
___He also looked across the pit sometimes, where Seifas lay asleep; his back was set to the fire, resting his head on something not a pillow.
___Did Dagon look at me like that, when I could not see him…?
___I shivered; and resolved to never fall asleep again with Dagon in a room…
___Surely Seifas couldn’t know about this concentrated hate, and also sleep so soundly. Or, did Seifas even care? I myself would not be fool enough to stab a sleeping juacuar; but what stayed Dagon’s hand? Fear of being discovered?
___Probably fear of Seifas, I decided. Such a murder would be, paradoxically, easier to get away with while in camp.
___But, Dagon sent his gaze most often, and most harshly, toward the door of Jian. Not surprising, given their relationship since Jian’s arrival; also only likely to increase with Jian’s infatuation with me—which is how I saw the matter, and how I wanted to have it seen. When that happened, I expected to need to murder Dagon, or arrange to have it done, lest he should cause me problems. The other men I could trust to keep their place.
___However, this begged a question: why had Dagon not decisively struck already against the man whom he already had hated the most?! The fair man posed a far less physical threat than one of the Guacu-ara!

___…was Dagon simply scared of everyone?

___I pondered this; and waited for his watch to end.
___I came to no conclusions on that night—or none that I admitted to myself.
___But now I can see; and now I admit, what I could have seen, but didn’t want to see:
___when one’s self has become an inflammation, then every other self can only be feared—and hated as an enemy.

___how well I know this, from experience…

Next chapter

[JasonPratt]

Notes from the real author…

Ah, yep, Portunista is about to try what you probably think she’s about to try. (Also, whatever you were thinking about when she said that she had intended to comfort herself alone in bed… that, too. )

This is absolutely not supposed to be romantic, by the way.

What it is, from a more literary standpoint, is one of the reasons I designed the story (or this part of the whole overarching story) in the first place.

There’s a story archetype or trope dating back at least as far as Medieval times, that can be called the “Paladin and Enchantress Paradigm”. The noble religious knight goes out on a quest, and along the way he runs into an enchantress who tries to seduce him out of his path. Sometimes she partially succeeds, she may even completely succeed depending on the subtype of story being told about that character (as a way of explaining why he’s a failed knight for example), but in any case she’s a speedbump in the way of the knight. The story isn’t at all about her, it’s about him.

In modern times there have been some popular and successful attempts to invert that concept: the enchantress is the (more-or-less) noble heroine, probably of an explicitly different religion (and so more likely a priestess), and the knight (generally still religious if perhaps hypocritically so) is the speedbump in her path. Maybe depending on the story he’s still a basically good man although, in story terms, ignorant of the truths represented by the enchantress. But she’s clearly both the protagonist and the morally superior heroine.

I was thinking about that one day, while studying some other things, and realized that I couldn’t recall reading a story from the perspective of the enchantress as the clear protagonist yet still clearly the moral inferior. Why does the enchantress in the normal paradigm do what she does?–what is her side of the story?–not in the sense of explaining away what she does as not being that bad after all, but trying to explore the character of a person who would act in such a way while still emphasizing that she is in fact the protagonist whom the reader, ideally, ought to be rooting for.

That’s a challenging dynamic characterization to create and work out.

It also happens to match up well with a concept from my Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Israel, even in non-Christian Judaism, is clearly the protagonist of their story, for whom (in a literary design sense) we ought to be rooting, and who too easily gets waaaaay too caught up in the pride of being the protagonist of their story. The Jewish scriptures are among the most, maybe the most, self-critical religious foundational texts in world history: they themselves constantly represent themselves as ungrateful traitors who routinely abuse the grace of God.

The people who take that for purposes of religious anti-Judaism or racial anti-Semitism are hugely missing the point, though. Israel stands for all of us, because whenever we do something we ourselves recognize to be wrong, we’re also abusing the grace of God (or the grace of good people if you happen not to believe in God).

So this isn’t exactly a new thematic form I’m working with after all. How Portunista treats Jian represents how any and all of us, myself especially included, occasionally (or for some of us more than occasionally) reject that which we ourselves perceive as good and true in order to protect our own self-importance.

(I say “myself especially included” because whenever I’m writing Portunista’s ethical failures she tends to serve as a self-critical tool. Whereas, whenever she does something particularly awesome, I’m thinking of someone else. Or a daughter of someone else, rather.)