During the telling of that dark tale, the night had worn away and the stars had grown dim. The faintest shade of blue could be seen on the horizon that divided the portholes in cresent half. Yet this imminent state of day brought nothing about but chillness. In the noble and undaunted Valerian now lurked a seeming wicked cruelty. The woman relished my astonishment as though long it had been awaited. Yet I held my ground, suppressing the natural urge to shudder.
Words full of implications, visage a mocking mask, the Valerian I had known for the past month had withdrawn to a place unknown. Now stood only one distant and hostile. Still it seemed no more than a mask. I could not bring myself to fear her earnestly.
I shook my head. “You skylark, Valerian. But tell then, what exactly is it that you seek from me? What should I say? What may be said to abate your mood? I am weary of gasping in the dark. You know as well as I do, an azure does not think complicated thoughts, and so I am unable to follow your hints and games. But do not speak lightly of murder and murderers!”
“Skylark? Am I one to lie? I speak but precise facts. What I claim to know I do know. The other day I overheard your conversation with your girls – my ears are much keener than you think. It is fear of injustice that holds your report of the likelihood of a perpetrator. But how strange, do you have even the vaguest idea of what injustice is, if indeed you are as dumb as you claim?”
“You ask strangely, but I know only this: There are evil things in this world and things of goodness. Such things are not determined by facts and reasoning as you just did, but judged by the Gods in life and the Scale in death.”
“So you say it!” exclaimed Valerian in a sudden fit of excitement. I started. She advanced to my bed, and stood over me. Her hair was a tangled mess, and there were ravings in her eyes, though it had not taken completely over, and the spark of intelligence could still be found, if guided by part madness. “So there is justice! Judged by the Gods and the Supernaturals. And the answer is clear! I’ve long suspected it, which is now proved, even by a Godless azure! But, Aster, If you are in need of further proof for belief, I shall provide a bit of my pass of justice. For what is better than facts at hand?
“I relate now the just outcomes of my tale: Having been slaughtered and all quite dead, the refugees must obviously be met with their deities at the scale. They should be judged guilty, for they revolted against their lord and lot in life, but since their final suffering outweighed their sins the lot of them might yet be forgiven! Their souls condemned but not tormented. As for the town people, they avoided thinly the wrath of the duke, and would spend the remainder of their days peacefully, their past shrewdly hidden from the generation after, and so banished from memory! All the while, the duke returned to his domain, enjoying the perfect subordination of his subjects, having made good examples of the traitors, and even went on to expand his territory and sphere of influence. I would say it is a happy ending for everyone, is it not? The fitting conclusion for all the actors and actresses who had played their roles in the story!
“But what of that villainous Valerian who abandoned her people, who pursued an undeserved happiness out of selfishness? Why, she and her sweetheart fled to this airship upon which we now stand. They spent their undeserved days doing their mistress’s bidding. And, in their preposterous way, I tell you, they thought they earned it at last, for they have chosen to save themselves and be selfish. And that this happiness they then felt, which they thought would last for an eternity, was entirely warranted. Stupid, weren’t they? Perfect imbecile I say! How dared they, by the Under, how dared they be so foolish, so oblivious to the injustice of their beings?
“Alas, not long after, the wyverness Primula... died, as you well know. And when one died, it might as well be the death of both. Do you think? Do you think? Do you think the one left behind can live untroubled until the end of her days? Oh, I think not, I think not. The very one for which Valerian had given up and cast out everything she ever had. The very anchor she had latched onto as the sole remaining meaning of life. For which she has sinned. For which she has left for dead. For which she has been killed. For which she has lived. But only for a short and pathetic while did the life dearly purchased last. Is that not the funniest stroke of fate? Is that not a trick of the devil? It promised a world in return for a world, only to shortly after steal the prize away, in the dumb face of its gullible victim, who should never have hoped, or desired, or dared love!”
Valerian lowered her face. Darkened.
“Now tell me,” she said like an ultimatum, “is that not perfect justice for all involved?”
“No.” My teeth ground. How could it be? Of course it could not. But I have not a word, a reason, an argument to set her straight. Her speech confused me. It dropped me into a maze constructed of dark thoughts long restless nights had accumulated, of inner grievances underpinning all daily activities waiting to burst forth, of pains I could keenly see but not help alleviate. Other than with feelings. Things that I myself ill-understood. Immature feelings. Fragile and primitive in construct. Things that could only come out like a tantrum or a berserked rage. “What you told me sounds very much like the opposite, it really does! Where the wicked and the guilty went unpunished. Tell me not that you have gone so senseless you would call nights days, and wyverns but harpies.”
“Waste not your breath! Do I care for an azure to comfort me? I have now what I sought! So keep your silence!”
“Oh damn you to the Under!” I cried.
All these inexplicable things that boiled up from deep within, boiled and formed one sudden mood of indignation. By the Under, what fool! How is this the Valerian I know and respect? She was a creature without a living thing’s sanity, unsympathizable like the devil incarnation. No human was she at this moment, none this night.
This once, Valerian was started by my outburst, and I gained ground. Sitting straight up, I glared hard at her, challenging a rampaging griffin alone by a gaze and rage. I might not know what exactly it was she sought, nor what proper words I should say. But there are things that cannot be left unsaid, no matter at what cost. Rue me, curse me, hate me for my tactlessness, whatever tact it is that should be employed in such heat, but speak I must, and speak I shall, even if it would drive this miserable woman deeper into her misery.
“By the Under indeed! You self-pitying wreck! Do I care if this is how you cope! But I will not suffer your senselessness! Tell me not that murderers are guiltless only because they were born so! Do we not pluck a harpy off the sky on sight for their bloodthirst? Do we not check an assailant with a staff trained at our heart, though maddened they may be? Reason is no sole ground for righteousness, though it may forgiveness. Naïve and stupid that I may be of the ways of the world, and all the more, but even I know to loathe a bloody hand and a cruel act. I live in acceptance of terrible deeds, a slave as I am, and little choice I have in that matter, but I am yet free in my apprehension. Did you yourself not claim the like thing, shortly after the death of your sister of the pledge: that though contained by duty and the oath, resentment you would ever harbor? What happened to that will? Even as you hate Aurora, hate the murderous peasants, hate the murderous lord, hate fate, hate also the gods – useless as hate may be, it is still better than warping your mind to cope! So hate stupidity and hate cruelty, you of all should have the right to hatred!”
As though the words themselves were a spell that drained my lifeforce, I sunk to the bed, and let go of my intensity. I was still far too weak. Exhausted, both mind and body. And all this suffering, all this darkness, all this rage Valerian had inflicted in me had pushed me well over my pathetic limits. Then, I felt so, so utterly alone. I wanted if just a bit of light to illuminate my soul, to shelter me if just a few moments from this pervading darkness, this dizzying mist. And I longed for Thea to hold me as always, telling me it is and will be alright. And that all things shall pass. And that sorrow is not the sole meaning of life.
“I hate to see you like this,” I muttered. Presently, my hands completely obscured my vision, pressing as though to push deeper my eyes all the way to the back of my skull, and hide them from the mean look Valerian perhaps was now giving me. “Why must you do it?” my words poured out in feverish speech, “I get it, it’s sad. Everything about this is sad. And maybe you will never find happiness again. But why did you do it? That is what I don’t get. And perhaps I never will. Why attempt to rob what you can’t have from someone else? What if that squall had taken someone else and not me? What if it was Galanthus, or Acis, or Gladiola, or Hortensia? What if one died and left the other behind? Do you not understand that pain better than aught?” My voice choked. I could not bear imagining, not for one moment, much less to put into words, if it had been Litzia who lay dead and I yet lived. “Would it have lessened your pain in any way?”
There was a lull, a long, long silence. So long that I thought Valerian had gone back to her small nest at the corner of the sickbay, and left me with my thoughts. But then, her voice raised again from beyond the dark lids of mine.
“The other day, you asked me why I lived and slept in this place and not with my pair, Marigold,” she said quietly, gravely.
There was no more cruelty or even distant coldness in the blonde knight’s tone. I uncovered my eyes, and saw her there, weary and stricken. Mayhap I wounded her. Mayhap she wounded herself. The wound lay there, clearly, throbbingly on the surface. “You know why, Aster? Because Marigold alone understands me. After all, she was with her former pledge-sister for even longer than I with Primula, all the way since their childhood.” Then, as though all energy was also drained from her. She dropped to my bed, and sat there, by my side, in arm's reach, yet far away, in her own world. “Then suddenly,” she spoke with such quiet words, “without so much a warning, one morning she woke up and recalled, in pain, she recalled that just the day before, her other half had fallen from the sky. That girl she ever loved had gone, but gone forever, and without so much a trace but the deserted belongings that lay so lifelessly in their room. How do you think she copes?”
Suddenly, I understood all she had wished to say. Gradually, through Valerian’s words, the truth came to light.
“Well, she doesn’t. She doesn’t do anything about that fact. She just lives. She lives as though a large part of her being has never existed, she lives in a pretension. As though all were a dream. All before, and all hence. Because, you see, if it was a dream, she would not need to find a reason, or make sense of anything. She wouldn’t have to come to terms with what is justice, or what is right or wrong with the world. She does not need to find an explanation for why, though she had done nothing evil, her everything was taken. Or how something that has always been there – an existence as natural as the sun and the moon – could just one day be up and disappear. I get that. I really get that. If I could bend my own will and mind to that wistful reality as she does, I would too.”
The rest I understood without needing Valerian to spell it out. The reason why Valerian had been living in the sick bay. The reason why she had been evading her partner. Because there was only one thing that stood in Marigold’s escape from reality: her new pledge-sister. Whenever she saw Valerian’s face, she would be reminded of the existence of the one who was no more there. And during the night, if she chanced to turn her gaze across the room, to seek out of habit her dearest, but saw instead Valerian, reality would once more invade her shelter from it. Now an empty bed she could comprehend. An absence is easy to ignore. How then could Valerian bring herself to make that girl suffer all the more? So she had come here, and hid from her partner. Because all that she felt, Valerian sympathized, and in large parts, felt it herself too.
If Valerian had been coping by overturning the meaning of justice and injustice, then Marigold had overturned reality itself. There would never be reconciliation between them. The new partner would never be able to replace the old one. They were forever doomed and cursed.
And when one is in despair, yet has not even the support of the closest person by their side, but spurned and hated for merely existing, then destruction might well be the only option remained.
“Will you come with me?” now Valerian said softly, “I want to see Marigold one last time, and if she would accept it, I shall give her my last apology.”
During the telling of that dark tale, the night had worn away and the stars had grown dim. The faintest shade of blue could be seen on the horizon that divided the portholes in cresent half. Yet this imminent state of day brought nothing about but chillness. In the noble and undaunted Valerian now lurked a seeming wicked cruelty. The woman relished my astonishment as though long it had been awaited. Yet I held my ground, suppressing the natural urge to shudder.
Words full of implications, visage a mocking mask, the Valerian I had known for the past month had withdrawn to a place unknown. Now stood only one distant and hostile. Still it seemed no more than a mask. I could not bring myself to fear her earnestly.
I shook my head. “You skylark, Valerian. But tell then, what exactly is it that you seek from me? What should I say? What may be said to abate your mood? I am weary of gasping in the dark. You know as well as I do, an azure does not think complicated thoughts, and so I am unable to follow your hints and games. But do not speak lightly of murder and murderers!”
“Skylark? Am I one to lie? I speak but precise facts. What I claim to know I do know. The other day I overheard your conversation with your girls – my ears are much keener than you think. It is fear of injustice that holds your report of the likelihood of a perpetrator. But how strange, do you have even the vaguest idea of what injustice is, if indeed you are as dumb as you claim?”
“You ask strangely, but I know only this: There are evil things in this world and things of goodness. Such things are not determined by facts and reasoning as you just did, but judged by the Gods in life and the Scale in death.”
“So you say it!” exclaimed Valerian in a sudden fit of excitement. I started. She advanced to my bed, and stood over me. Her hair was a tangled mess, and there were ravings in her eyes, though it had not taken completely over, and the spark of intelligence could still be found, if guided by part madness. “So there is justice! Judged by the Gods and the Supernaturals. And the answer is clear! I’ve long suspected it, which is now proved, even by a Godless azure! But, Aster, If you are in need of further proof for belief, I shall provide a bit of my pass of justice. For what is better than facts at hand?
“I relate now the just outcomes of my tale: Having been slaughtered and all quite dead, the refugees must obviously be met with their deities at the scale. They should be judged guilty, for they revolted against their lord and lot in life, but since their final suffering outweighed their sins the lot of them might yet be forgiven! Their souls condemned but not tormented. As for the town people, they avoided thinly the wrath of the duke, and would spend the remainder of their days peacefully, their past shrewdly hidden from the generation after, and so banished from memory! All the while, the duke returned to his domain, enjoying the perfect subordination of his subjects, having made good examples of the traitors, and even went on to expand his territory and sphere of influence. I would say it is a happy ending for everyone, is it not? The fitting conclusion for all the actors and actresses who had played their roles in the story!
“But what of that villainous Valerian who abandoned her people, who pursued an undeserved happiness out of selfishness? Why, she and her sweetheart fled to this airship upon which we now stand. They spent their undeserved days doing their mistress’s bidding. And, in their preposterous way, I tell you, they thought they earned it at last, for they have chosen to save themselves and be selfish. And that this happiness they then felt, which they thought would last for an eternity, was entirely warranted. Stupid, weren’t they? Perfect imbecile I say! How dared they, by the Under, how dared they be so foolish, so oblivious to the injustice of their beings?
“Alas, not long after, the wyverness Primula... died, as you well know. And when one died, it might as well be the death of both. Do you think? Do you think? Do you think the one left behind can live untroubled until the end of her days? Oh, I think not, I think not. The very one for which Valerian had given up and cast out everything she ever had. The very anchor she had latched onto as the sole remaining meaning of life. For which she has sinned. For which she has left for dead. For which she has been killed. For which she has lived. But only for a short and pathetic while did the life dearly purchased last. Is that not the funniest stroke of fate? Is that not a trick of the devil? It promised a world in return for a world, only to shortly after steal the prize away, in the dumb face of its gullible victim, who should never have hoped, or desired, or dared love!”
Valerian lowered her face. Darkened.
“Now tell me,” she said like an ultimatum, “is that not perfect justice for all involved?”
“No.” My teeth ground. How could it be? Of course it could not. But I have not a word, a reason, an argument to set her straight. Her speech confused me. It dropped me into a maze constructed of dark thoughts long restless nights had accumulated, of inner grievances underpinning all daily activities waiting to burst forth, of pains I could keenly see but not help alleviate. Other than with feelings. Things that I myself ill-understood. Immature feelings. Fragile and primitive in construct. Things that could only come out like a tantrum or a berserked rage. “What you told me sounds very much like the opposite, it really does! Where the wicked and the guilty went unpunished. Tell me not that you have gone so senseless you would call nights days, and wyverns but harpies.”
“Waste not your breath! Do I care for an azure to comfort me? I have now what I sought! So keep your silence!”
“Oh damn you to the Under!” I cried.
All these inexplicable things that boiled up from deep within, boiled and formed one sudden mood of indignation. By the Under, what fool! How is this the Valerian I know and respect? She was a creature without a living thing’s sanity, unsympathizable like the devil incarnation. No human was she at this moment, none this night.
This once, Valerian was started by my outburst, and I gained ground. Sitting straight up, I glared hard at her, challenging a rampaging griffin alone by a gaze and rage. I might not know what exactly it was she sought, nor what proper words I should say. But there are things that cannot be left unsaid, no matter at what cost. Rue me, curse me, hate me for my tactlessness, whatever tact it is that should be employed in such heat, but speak I must, and speak I shall, even if it would drive this miserable woman deeper into her misery.
“By the Under indeed! You self-pitying wreck! Do I care if this is how you cope! But I will not suffer your senselessness! Tell me not that murderers are guiltless only because they were born so! Do we not pluck a harpy off the sky on sight for their bloodthirst? Do we not check an assailant with a staff trained at our heart, though maddened they may be? Reason is no sole ground for righteousness, though it may forgiveness. Naïve and stupid that I may be of the ways of the world, and all the more, but even I know to loathe a bloody hand and a cruel act. I live in acceptance of terrible deeds, a slave as I am, and little choice I have in that matter, but I am yet free in my apprehension. Did you yourself not claim the like thing, shortly after the death of your sister of the pledge: that though contained by duty and the oath, resentment you would ever harbor? What happened to that will? Even as you hate Aurora, hate the murderous peasants, hate the murderous lord, hate fate, hate also the gods – useless as hate may be, it is still better than warping your mind to cope! So hate stupidity and hate cruelty, you of all should have the right to hatred!”
As though the words themselves were a spell that drained my lifeforce, I sunk to the bed, and let go of my intensity. I was still far too weak. Exhausted, both mind and body. And all this suffering, all this darkness, all this rage Valerian had inflicted in me had pushed me well over my pathetic limits. Then, I felt so, so utterly alone. I wanted if just a bit of light to illuminate my soul, to shelter me if just a few moments from this pervading darkness, this dizzying mist. And I longed for Thea to hold me as always, telling me it is and will be alright. And that all things shall pass. And that sorrow is not the sole meaning of life.
“I hate to see you like this,” I muttered. Presently, my hands completely obscured my vision, pressing as though to push deeper my eyes all the way to the back of my skull, and hide them from the mean look Valerian perhaps was now giving me. “Why must you do it?” my words poured out in feverish speech, “I get it, it’s sad. Everything about this is sad. And maybe you will never find happiness again. But why did you do it? That is what I don’t get. And perhaps I never will. Why attempt to rob what you can’t have from someone else? What if that squall had taken someone else and not me? What if it was Galanthus, or Acis, or Gladiola, or Hortensia? What if one died and left the other behind? Do you not understand that pain better than aught?” My voice choked. I could not bear imagining, not for one moment, much less to put into words, if it had been Litzia who lay dead and I yet lived. “Would it have lessened your pain in any way?”
There was a lull, a long, long silence. So long that I thought Valerian had gone back to her small nest at the corner of the sickbay, and left me with my thoughts. But then, her voice raised again from beyond the dark lids of mine.
“The other day, you asked me why I lived and slept in this place and not with my pair, Marigold,” she said quietly, gravely.
There was no more cruelty or even distant coldness in the blonde knight’s tone. I uncovered my eyes, and saw her there, weary and stricken. Mayhap I wounded her. Mayhap she wounded herself. The wound lay there, clearly, throbbingly on the surface. “You know why, Aster? Because Marigold alone understands me. After all, she was with her former pledge-sister for even longer than I with Primula, all the way since their childhood.” Then, as though all energy was also drained from her. She dropped to my bed, and sat there, by my side, in arm's reach, yet far away, in her own world. “Then suddenly,” she spoke with such quiet words, “without so much a warning, one morning she woke up and recalled, in pain, she recalled that just the day before, her other half had fallen from the sky. That girl she ever loved had gone, but gone forever, and without so much a trace but the deserted belongings that lay so lifelessly in their room. How do you think she copes?”
Suddenly, I understood all she had wished to say. Gradually, through Valerian’s words, the truth came to light.
“Well, she doesn’t. She doesn’t do anything about that fact. She just lives. She lives as though a large part of her being has never existed, she lives in a pretension. As though all were a dream. All before, and all hence. Because, you see, if it was a dream, she would not need to find a reason, or make sense of anything. She wouldn’t have to come to terms with what is justice, or what is right or wrong with the world. She does not need to find an explanation for why, though she had done nothing evil, her everything was taken. Or how something that has always been there – an existence as natural as the sun and the moon – could just one day be up and disappear. I get that. I really get that. If I could bend my own will and mind to that wistful reality as she does, I would too.”
The rest I understood without needing Valerian to spell it out. The reason why Valerian had been living in the sick bay. The reason why she had been evading her partner. Because there was only one thing that stood in Marigold’s escape from reality: her new pledge-sister. Whenever she saw Valerian’s face, she would be reminded of the existence of the one who was no more there. And during the night, if she chanced to turn her gaze across the room, to seek out of habit her dearest, but saw instead Valerian, reality would once more invade her shelter from it. Now an empty bed she could comprehend. An absence is easy to ignore. How then could Valerian bring herself to make that girl suffer all the more? So she had come here, and hid from her partner. Because all that she felt, Valerian sympathized, and in large parts, felt it herself too.
If Valerian had been coping by overturning the meaning of justice and injustice, then Marigold had overturned reality itself. There would never be reconciliation between them. The new partner would never be able to replace the old one. They were forever doomed and cursed.
And when one is in despair, yet has not even the support of the closest person by their side, but spurned and hated for merely existing, then destruction might well be the only option remained.
“Will you come with me?” now Valerian said softly, “I want to see Marigold one last time, and if she would accept it, I shall give her my last apology.”
