You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



October 31, 2013 2:21 am  #1


The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

Hi folks.this is my first attempt at story writing since writing class in high school twelve years ago but I've had this idea brewing for a while and I decided what the neck since this is certainly the right audience and its anonymous.this part is the beginning of the setup. Not much waterworks yet but we will get there.I hope you enjoy.

It is time. That time of the evening that is dim but not yet dark.mysterious and blue with a chill in the air that makes you pull your coal tighter under your chin. You have c come alone,your skirts rustling the dead leaves underfoot on the forgotten path. And then you are here.the opening of a small cave, ivy hanging low over the entrance. You pull the vines aside and walk in.acool breeze is coming through the chamber.from somewhere there is the sound of rushing water. You pull back the hood of your cloak and lift an unlit torch off a ring on the wall. You raise a hand over the top and utter the spell for light, the first spell your grandmother taught you in your training when you were only 8. With your chant, the torch crackles to life with yellow flame. You cast its light around the chamber and see a corridor branching of ahead. You hear the sound of the water grow louder add you follow the tunnel into the main chamber. It is cool and damp. In the center of the room is a quartz fountain.it is ancient, built here by your matriarchs centuries ago for the holiest of the rites of your order. The Gifting. It is this ritual for which you have come now, paying that you have studied it correctly, for none still live who have performed it successfully. There are 2 who have tried but were drained before they could compete it,stumbling from the cavern entrance, shaking and empty of strength. But you know not what else to do. You hope the magic of the ritual will heal him. It is a rare ceremony forgotten by all but the most devout and requiring a giving of your whole self body and soul that few can sustain long enough. But for him you will try. For him you would suffer all of the be nethers, surrender your ancestral power itself if it could open the shell that has encased his heart and drawn him inward where he was being slowly devoured by pain that he is trying both to protect and ignore.
  He is a warrior. The strongest and bravest in the King 's guard. His long dark hair pulled behind him, his father's sword on his hip,a loud laugh,a twinkling eye and a strength without and within. You picture him as you first met him five years before, armor flinging in the sun at the spring festival where you were selling herbs and potions. Never had a soldier needed so much spice. It was at the third visit that you realized it was you he wanted, not sage.  In the time since then you became his wife and he became your rock.he was invincible in your eyes.he faced all trials with a calm and sure step and the gleam in his eye that made you feel safe even as the border skirmishes threatened to erupt into all out war. And beside him in your memory, his three brothers.regulars at your table, filling your hearth with raucous laughter and exaggerated tales of valor. Good natured teasing, and practical joking of men who together would always still be boys. And love. The trust and bond exchanges between these four men, the instant understanding, the laugh shared without words, warms your soul.coming from a family of women you have never seen the intense joy and deep connection that are brothers. So different from the girlish chatter of your own youth. You would been down at the boisterous bunch of warriors who would eat your pantry to the bare walls while  ribbing their biggest brother for settling down with you, he who was always so independent and restless of spirit. The memory warms you from within against the school of the cave.until your memory shifts to that day six months ago...
    That day a haggard bedraggled troop of kings men staggered into town after being the months gone. The border raids had been escalating and finally the army had been sent to put a stop to it once and for all. He went,true to his duty as always, his brothers with him, each bearing skins of your best cheeses and hard breads and salted meats, as well as charm you'd made for all of them for courage.not that they needed it but you give it anyway. As they made for the door he grabbed you, kissed you passionately as his brothers whistled and snickered and gave you one of those smiles, the confidant calm and assured smile of a leader and your heart swelled with pride. He would be alright.nothing could hurt him.
   And now the men were back.you heard the shots on the street, the cries of "they're home".  You ran to your door squinting, trying to pick him out among the travel weary and battle wounded men spent coming up the road. And then you saw him and your heart leaps. you ran to him and threw your arms around his neck laughing. But something was wrong. He hugged you back limply. You pulled back and looked at him, mud and died blood caked in his beard, dark blue under his eyes and his eyes themselves.......hollow.he looked deeply into your eyes as if searching for something, something to vast to be found, answers to questions one cannot find words to ask and then it hit you with a force like a javelin. He's alone. Why was he alone? He hasn't been without his brothers since the day you were wed. They were attached like limbs.so why was he alone??? The question buzzed in your head like a swarm of hornets as you frantically looked behind him, all around him, your heart pounding, waiting for the gaggling bunch to run up and  tell at him for walking ahead while they washed up at your well, splashing each other. But they weren't coming, somehow you already knew that. You let go of him and step back fiercely looking him full in the face, your eyes full of the question and also of the dead of knowing the answer. He suddenly looked old.among his brothers he was always a bit somehow even as a captain but now he face is weathered, aged, his eyes dimmed and haunted as he gazed into your face.
  He took a deep ragged breath and opened his mouth as if to say something, and something agonizing flashed across his eyes for a moment but then it was gone, replaced by the empty dimness of a moment ago. He closed his mouth and exhaled, shaking his head.
"All of them?" You whispered between the fingers pressed to your lips. He just gazes at you. "How?", You mouthed, not enough air in your lungs to form the sound.
"Ambush," he said heavily, as though the single word to ask of his strength to say. With that he walked slowly past you into the cabin, throwing his sword down outside the door without a glance, leaving you frozen in place, eyes wide in horror, still staring pointlessly down the now empty street wet heat streaking uselessly,soundlessly down your cheeks, falling with a pat into your chest, like rain on a shroud.

   In the months since then you have suffocated in the silence of your now cold home. The silence at the table where four brothers once made more noise than a whole battalion. The silence at night where you and he used to whisper together lasted into the night of dreams and hopes. Of the battles in his family lore and the sorcery of yours, joking about the wizard warriors you would raise together. And the silence of greiving. The sadness is pressing on your heart like the weight of an age but you dared not weep aloud and break the quiet cocoon he has shelled himself in. You leaked  your tears quietly, discreetly, where he does not see, feeling guilty all along for wanting to their yourself to the ground and howl. What right have you to vent your anguish to him, whose pain is beyond imagining and who had found no release for his sorrow? It felt disrespectful, selfish, lonely. The weeks passed in this way, the once proud captain, leader and defender, now withered in a chair for hours, staring silently into the fire, haunted. At times he would stand up furiously throwing the chair back as he rose and March to the window.He would lean heavily on the sill on both arms and sink back into silence starting out the window.
  Oh you had tried, his you tried, to break his reverie, to take something of his burden into yourself. You would gently try to ask questions. How had they died? Where Did he bury them? Was it close enough for him to visit? Had he seen it happen? We're they together at least? When but he would speak no more than two words at a time. He wept not at all. He ate little. You would sometimes be struck by a poignant memory, some joke one brother had said, the blessing another had given you wholeheartedly at your wedding, and you would remind him."Remember that time......" but he would just nod or grunt.
  Only in sleep, that revealer of all secrets that you catch a peek into his private hell. He would thrash about screaming his brothers' names, swinging his imaginary sword at the enemy of his dreams  "BROTHER! BROTHER!" In these terror filed nights you would sit backed up to the head board hugging your knees wrapped in your quilt, sobbing quietly, shivering, utterly helpless. At first you grieved for the loss of brothers in law who you had come to love like family, who had filed your small home with love whenever they came, but now your heart ached for his heart ache. His anguish was so vast, his well of sorrow so deep , the would to his soul so gutting that you could not begin to approach it with any comfort. He had in a way never come home. He was still so far away, still on that battlefield, seeing whichever horror it was that he saw watching his heart die before his eyes three times, you not knowing what that scene was that was playing out in his mind day after day. He does not return your embraces, his kisses have been distracted, his heart is so full of darkness and kids that there is none left for you, or for life.....your consolation, your love cannot reach him where he is and your heart contracts in desperation, to see one you love so afflicted.
  Eventually you turn to magic in desperation. You cast spells for peace, give him charms for dreamless sleep, you perform the ritual of remembrance hoping to bring his memories out into the open. The projection spell, which was to envelope him in your strength. But the sorrow was too deep.it created a shell almost a forcefeild around him through which neither love, nor magic could penetrate.
   You went into your loft late one night, as he dozed fitfully, sweating and groaning ,muttering something about the reaping of youth, . A wave of your hand and a whisper and the candles flared to life. Here in this study space were the magical texts you inherited from your grandmother, which she inherited from her mother and do on for generations before.your family's legacy of ancient wisdom, the carefully guarded secrets of easily abused power of which you are among the few chosen secret guardians. Magic above the most benign forms was to be used sparingly and discreetly. In your longing to reach your love in the black hole he was fallen into you had been doing far more than you should have. Now you were desperate.surely in the Times of the ancient wars the witches of these ancient tomes had encountered such a thing before. Surely someone had fallen into such a out of dispute after multiple violent losses and had to be reached before the blackness swallowed them forever. But where to begin.
   You prayed to G-is for wisdom, then said the incantation of balance and humility always used before serving into volumes of great power like these. As you poured through the books on the magic of warfare, th accounts and the memories of the magic healers on the old feilds in the aftermath of battle, your stomach clenched in horror. You press your hand into the cool parchment, and close your eyes and suddenly you are there. Inside the 700 year old memories of the wizard who preserved them here.you see young boys nineteen or twenty mortally wounded, whimpering for their mothers. injured grizzled veterans dying but awake, asking their comrades to run them through, make it over, and their friends, having lived the same horrors would oblige, unflinching, knowing they would want the same. But one image seared like a brand. After the battle of Yultain a young soldier under the banner of King Hauldar, filthy, caked in blood, walked into the healers tent, the dirt on his face streaked with tears, but his face steady. You follow him in. In his arms, carried like a babe was the limp mangled body of a comrade with a face so like his bearer that they could only have been identical twins, a rare a blessed thing to the ancients. The soldier brought the blood asked body the healer. "Can you fix him, Lord Healer? Can you give my brother back to me?" The boy, for that's what he was,a boy, was clearly beyond saving.any layman could have told him that. But the living brother just stood there, carrying his own image in death, his eyes pleading for a miracle even a wizard couldn't give him.
  pat pat plop the sound of liquid hitting parchment startles you back to the present. Your eyes are running heavily, dripping poignantly onto the tragic account. The sight of it seems appropriate, poetic even. You are about to chide yourself for being so girlishly fanciful when the sight of the pooling tears triggers something, a memory, a ritual grandmother spoke about one when you were six during the festival of mourning. THE GIFTING! Of course!

Last edited by inmyarms (November 2, 2013 10:51 pm)


Tears are the last gift of true love.
 

October 31, 2013 2:28 am  #2


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

The rest coming soon


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

October 31, 2013 6:31 pm  #3


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

You scramble up and rummage through the oldest volumes. Finally you find it in the back of a heavy bookwith illuminated text.The Gifting is called such because it is the purest form of giving. It is a profoundly sacred ritual meant to unlock the heart of the one for whom it is performed. It is a ritual of weeping. Tears, said the writing, are the key to the heart. When we open our hearts to pain, to love, to anger, to anything which the heart needs to take in and then let go, it is released from the eyes as tears and from the throat as sobbing or wailing. But in some cases of extreme feeling the heart locks down.it takes in more than it can hold but the tears within do not unlock the gate inside and are imprisoned by fear. Here The Gifting can be attempted when all else fails. By giving of your own cries too the one who has none you can sometimes unlock their heart from the outside, showing all that the heart contained to be set free. But the gifting of tears is no simple matter. According to your grandmother's volume, the tears for the gifting must be not only many, at least a thousand according to this tome, but entirely pure. In order to open the heart of another with your tears, those years would have to be shed entirely for the pain of that person. A single selfish tear, one drop wept for your own greif or loneliness, or longing, and the key would no longer fit the lock. To sustain that level of crying for another, enough to produce the volume required without a single thought of your own suppressed anguish would be nearly impossible enough. But there was more. The Gifting could only be performed in the cave of sorrows. It was called such because all of the greiving and crying of all the gifting done there for the centuries were absorbed into the waters of the fount of tears. When one would go in and begin the ritual, the spirits of those earlier tears would be called to the spirits of your own, rising from the water into your own heart. Few, very few, have the strength to withstand the gifting. Few hearts could absorb the sorrow of so many and she's a thousand years without their own heart's demanding their due. But you would try. A thousand times if you had to. You would try.

       So that is how you came to be here standing before the candlelit fountain, the white translucent quartz seeming to glow. You softly approach the rising water. There is tension and anticipation but this cannot be rushed.you would do this right. Our of your cloak you pull the token. A piece of the one for whom you have come to connect the ritual to his spirit.you raise his courage amulet high above the water and speak the ancient words to begin the process. A soft blue glow comes from within and then surrounds the charm as you lower it to the water and let it go. In the water you see ancient times of those who have come before. A necklace, a sword, a lock of hair, among others, all seeming untouched by time in the magical salt fountain. As the charm his the water a burst of energy hits you from the fountain.the waters have suddenly turned warm and the holy had filled you with a an urgency that is nearly nausea. The lump in your throat must wait, you steady your ragged breath. It is not yet time.  You prepare the lachrymatory beside you. It is a large but narrow crystal jug,
almost s vase.but at the top one lip curves outwards with two indentations impressed into to smooth glass.between them an inward curve would just got the bridge of the nose. The vessel is blessed.you cup your hands and do them into the now warm water of the fount of tears.you bring t then to your lips and sip, bringing the cave of sorrows within yourself. The taste is familiar, salty and warm . But beneath it a hint of sweetness.these tears were pure love, untainted by selfishness or bitter complaint and they tasted of wonder. As you feel the warm liquid in your belly, you know.it is time.
      You lower yourself to sit on your knees. You lift the lachrymatory and position the channels beneath your already brimming eyes.you turn your thoughts to the man you have loved and to his unthinkable loss. You begin.

Last edited by inmyarms (October 31, 2013 6:37 pm)


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

October 31, 2013 7:43 pm  #4


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

Your mouth forms an involuntary grimace and your eyes squeeze for a moment m you open them to see the first of your tears gliding down the channel, the pattering sound as they hit the bottom, already being followed by the next. Your breathe in a faltering breath, releasing it in short bursts as the quiet sobs catch and release in your throat. Drip drip drip. The tears slid out of your eyes, one then another gliding down the edge of the vial like rain on a stained glass window.your face contorts again. You feel your cheeks get hot against the cool glass. You yearn to cast aside the lachrymatory and feel the tears scald your skin and drip off your face. You have waited so long to let them free.but no.the tears cried here are not your own.they are a gifting to he who needs them more than air to breathe and you will give them. In your mind eye you see him there on the road all alone, looking back at you helpless and empty and you feel your eyes brim again. You gasp for air and then your voice takes over. You hear your small sad sobs, Ah Ah AHaaa, plaintive and choking echoing o ff the chambers walls.more tears steal out of your eyes, love and anguish and compassion flare in your belly, threatening to burst out of you and you double over in weeping struggling to hold the vessel to your face, your shoulders and ribs convulsing with the rhythmic hacking of you cries, growing louder and more heartbreaking even to your own ears. You hear soft splash as your streaming eyes drop yet another gift of liquid love into the already covered bottom of the vessel.it suddenly seems impossible.how can droplets so small be made to contain the ocean of love and heartache filling your every single for him? You don't want to shed tears for him right now, you want to gush them. You want to flood the whole cave.it seems so unfair that you can only give him one little drop at a time.the thought tears at you and a fresh rush of water fills your vision.you blink and they are gone. Down the glass.

   The magic of the place fills you.the tears of the fountain seem come to life somehow.you get the feeling they can hear you and all is lost. The sound of moaning fills your ears. It is your own heartbroken voice. The sobs, full and wet, contracting your while body in its pleading cries. Time means nothing now. There is no world outside this cave.there is no past and no future. Joy does not exist, nor hope. There has never been laughter. Or food. No day or night In this moment in this place there is only him, the yawning wound of three brothers gone and the slowly slowly gathering tears your heart gives forth as your mind begs him to break at last do he can begin to mend. The only taste is that of tears, the only sound is the deepest cries, the only feeling is the swirling sea of greif and love. In this place crying is all there is and it feels so correct. And so it goes on.for how long you don't know. Hours? Days? The tears pour out in little streams, nary a pause between one and the next. Your voice wails out the injustice of his loss, the immense goliath of his sadness the shadow that has withered from the hulking, beaming warrior he once was. Until there comes a point where you feel yourself nearly spent.your exhausted from crying, your eyes are wrung out but the lachrymatory is not yet full.the gate cannot be open.you will yourself to go on but the tears became farther between, your voice is to weak to cry out further. "I failed you, my love" you whisper.
    But in that moment something begins to happen. You hear sobbing.but it isn't you.it is a man.and then another.now a woman.the entire cavern is soon filled with voices of weeping, the deepest most heartbreaking sobs of longing you have ever heard.there must have been a dozen voices. The fountain has begun to simmer and bubble.the spirits of the tears shed here before have been awakened by your own.the cries of old have heard your cries. They are coming. The sound of the wailing grows so loud you can almost see the devastated souls who made them.wait.you can.kneeling at the fountain ask around you are the ghostly spectors of weeping men and women.misty visions of anguish. The tears they have shed froth in the fountain now and suddenly you can feel them.all of them.the anguish and longing, the greiving and desperation so like your own as they cried to open the heart of someone. The sensation is overwhelming, the emotion so great you stagger against it, the air knocked from you. It takes all your strength not to flee. You have never felt anything like this. Your heart feels like it will physically break,like you will die from the emotion gathered here.you nearly drop the sacred vase in your hands as you face is seared anew with a fresh flow.the sensation brings you back and you quickly raise the container to your face, not to waste a single previous drop. The fresh waves of feeling, the centuries of selfless emotion fill your soul and spills from your eyes like smoke from a chimney. In your ears now your own anguished voice moans and hacks in sobbing, joining the other ghostly voices surrounding you. It is asound that is frightening and yet utterly beautiful.you wonder if one day an image of your own sobbing form will appear and join another heart sick soul who has come to save a loved one.
  Time is again lost to you.a mystical force pulls you in to this inner place of tears and you know not how long you kneel there filling the lachrymatory with you tears before somehow, it is full. You hold it away from your face and look at it as you try to stay your breath. a sparkling mist rises of the jar and floats o out of the chamber, the ghostly forms vanish.the cave is silent. You eyes burn, your ribs are sore, you are drained completely. You set down the lachrymatory. Now you must wait. You lay down on the tear dampened floor of the cave and fall into a deep sleep. You sleep for hours until you are awakened by the sound of heavy footfalls....



Last part coming soon.

Last edited by inmyarms (November 3, 2013 1:45 am)


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

October 31, 2013 10:12 pm  #5


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

Apologies if this story is overkill. I'm a melodramatic writer


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

October 31, 2013 10:15 pm  #6


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

Wow, thank you so much! You have a great style to describe things very vividly. Can't really express what I feel but your writing is inviting to live within the story. Regrettably I am not englisch speeking?

 

November 1, 2013 12:12 am  #7


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

Really? Your English seems flawless. What's your first language? I'm glad you like it.My style can be a littlo for some,I can over describe and go to far with it but I figured if there was any audience this wouldn't irk it would be here. Collecting tears in vials was a real custom in ancient times.in some cultures they were buried with the dead.in others they were collected for men at war to be given to them upon returning to show how much they were missed. These customs always fascinated and moved Me.I combined the idea of saving tears for the dead and giving them as gifts for this story. I'll be posting the final part so


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

November 1, 2013 4:32 am  #8


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

Ugh.I finished writing this last post and then my battery died and it was lost before I could post it.gonna try again


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

November 1, 2013 5:00 am  #9


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

The sound of footsteps rouses you from the deepest most peaceful sleep you have had in months.your heart starts to pound. He's here. Itsworking but it's not yet done.the next part will be hard.it will be painful but you know it's right. Your hand flies to the deep pocket of your over skirt where you nervously finger the the courage charms on leather chords that you made for your brothers in law before they left on their final journey.You found them in the personal effects your husband brought back from that cursed battle in his sack.they have been with you ever since.it make them feel near to you, giving you their courage. You need their strength now more than ever. You miss them sorely, that crazy beloved bunch of boys. Your own greif will have to wait just a while longer. Your fingers tighten on the little bundle.You close your eyes . Please, you beg their souls silently, if you can hear me, help me help him. You open your eyes and he is there at the entrance to the chamber.he is looking around, confused. He is disheveled, his long dark hair have limp, his tunic untouched, his boots unlaced. His eyes fall on you.
  "There was a mist.it came in through the window and settled on me and suddenly I just had to walk and I ended up here.I'm not sure how it happened. What are you doing here? What is this place?"
"A place of healing," you say as you approach him. You lift the lachrymatory and pour some of the precious fluid into your hand.
"What is this?" He asks
"A gift, my love."
You press your wet palm into his chest right over his heart. With the other hand you begin to slowly pour the contents of the vial into the fountain.as soon as the liquid touches liquid, an electric blue glow travels up the stream of tears to the vial, moves over your arm, charges through your body with a static buzz and jolts through your wet hand into his chest. He stumbles back from the shock of it and looks stunned. He looks around nervously, anticipating, expecting something to happen but all is still. Until all at once he clutches his chest and gasps. His eyes grow wide in bewildered terror as he struggles for each wheezing breath.
"Help me!" He chokes out to you desperately.
"I am," you answer softly.
He gasps again, forcefully sucking in each breath, noisily wheezing it back out. He bends over, resting one palm on each thigh, his body bent at the waist. You hear him draw in a deep raspy breath and then silence for a terrifying moment. Why won't he exhale? You think you see a tear slide down the side of his nose and then that breath is released in three long slow mournful sobs.
You take a tentative step towards him when he suddenly rises up and lashes out at you.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME, WITCH!!!" He is angry.You didn't expect this.

Last edited by inmyarms (November 1, 2013 5:03 am)


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

November 1, 2013 5:26 am  #10


Re: The Gifting- a fantasy about the power of tears, love and remembering

He is fighting hard, the warrior instinct within him fully alive. He is forcefully steadying his breathing, blinking furiously, his jaw clenched.he is fighting the magic trying the free his heart. A battle rages within him for control.he shaking with the effort.

"I AM A SOLDIER!" He rages. You step forward and open his palm.
"Not today," you say, pressing the amulets into his hand and closing his fingers over them.
"Today, you are a brother." 
He looks at his fist, leather chords hanging out of the sides. Two huge tears splash heavily into his calloused fingers. He looks back up at you,  breathing heavily through his mouth. His  looks into your eyes a moment, his own eyes filling fast and wide with fear. A strangled sound escapes his throat. And then he just crumples. In an instant he is in a heap on the floor, both hands closed over the charms and pressed deep into his abdomen while he is doubled over it, his face low. You see four tears hit the cold stone floor, while his back heaves rhythmically in the  deep, strangled frighteningly silent sobs that have overtaken him.You stand frozen, transfixed,a mixture of horror and relief washing over you. Finally he draws in a soggy breath and lifts himself up just enough to look up at you. His face is redand his lashes are wet
   "It hurts"  he says in a voice devastatingly small.his voice catches and his eyes spill over again. In a flash you are on your knees in from of him, his face in both of your hands.
"They're gone," he utters in the most broken voice you ever heard. "They're all gone." His face squeezes, his mouth in a devastated grimace, tears running messily into his unshaved chin. You lower his head into your lap and stroke his tear dampened hair, while his profound sadness soaks into your skirts, his quivering breath hot and damp as the slow sorrowful cries rise from him.

More tom

Last edited by inmyarms (November 1, 2013 12:20 pm)


Tears are the last gift of true love.
     Thread Starter
 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum