over sand and under sun

the saddest spring.

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:14:37 GMT

He caught me by the stairs, called my name and made me wait. He's gone all gray and soft around the edges in the months since I fled. Looking at him doesn't hurt so much anymore, he's got a different look in his eyes.

"Who are you?" He asked me, his hand on the bannister, close to mine, never touching. "I don't recognize this woman."

I almost smiled -- there's many things he doesn't recognize anymore. "I don't know," I said, lowering my eyes to look into his eyes. They were soft with grayness, like an old shirt gone to the pills.

"Do you love him?" He asked me suddenly, with such a wildness I thought he would go back to the way it had been before, when we screamed and fought tooth and claw for some human dignity.

"Isildur." I could feel myself smiling as he said the name, smiling because my head was full of him and he was crowding out my other thoughts with his perfect strangeness.

"I don't know," I said, but he was always sad of eye, gentler than he had been seconds before in face.

"Yes you do," he said, laughing. "Do you still believe in your curse?"

"Do you?" I asked, and he faltered, and I saw Halbarad in his eyes, and the terrible loss pressed near me again.

"...no," he lied, and I knew he meant that he believed in my curse as much as I did. "No, Karigan, what can control your destiny but you, yourself?"

He must have heard my sigh, because he looked up at me with new sadness. "I never knew they called you Azra."

"No one knew," I said, and turned round to go back up the stairs. "Why should you have known? You've never known my secrets, Elessar."

He made a sound that wasn't a word, and I looked back over my shoulder, and his hand covered mine. He had been a ghost of the past, and suddenly he was a human being, tangible in the moment.

"...will I ever know you?" He asked, almost plaintive. His hands were cold, immense and rough like a sailor. "Will you ever let me see what's underneath the tough skin, the big show, the great act?"

"This isn't a game of hide and seek, you cannot seek me until you find me sitting somewhere alone," I told him, but his eyes were sad. "I'm not that girl."

"What is love?" He asked me, softly, sadly, his eyes gleaming with shades of sadness. "Is it the bitterness in your smile, or the hope in your eyes? Is it the shadow under your skin or the light in your gaze?"

"...you tell me, you're the poet." I said, withdrawing my hand. "I'm just the explorer."

"We could have been beautiful together," he whispered, suddenly an echo of another man's word, we were...

"Only a fleeting whisp of purple storm-cloud on a mottled summer sky," I told him. "I am in a state of Spring, you live as perpetual Winter."

"You are the saddest spring I've ever seen," he told me, as I turned my back to him and began walking up the steps.

"The ice you left on me is still melting to pieces," I said, and in his sudden silence, I fled with dignity, afraid of his reply.

I hadn't known my heart was racing until I was alone.

sudden pain, sudden redemption.

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 17:54:43 GMT

If I look for it, it won't come,
I tense up, my mind goes numb
there's nothing harder
than learning how to receive...

Calm down, be still
There's plenty of time to kill
No handwriting on the wall
Just the voice that's in us all

I don't know what happened, but I feel extremely unwell. Something shifted.

I'm terrified, I have the very faintest idea what it could mean, but I have no idea how it happened. It can't happen when you're alone. I'm too old... it's something else, but I'll be damned if I know what.

I'm 42, damn it, I'm too old to feel things shifting inside me...

the pain you feel.

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:36:37 GMT

I wish I had died 8 years ago at Cormallen.

kill me, break me, make me fall
crush my heart, force me to crawl
show me love was never real
the weight is worth the pain you feel

Dear God, if you answer prayers, just let me die.

I miss you I love you I want you I'm sorry I still need you please don't leave me here alone

entry #002 : and so we die

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 04:43:29 GMT

Note: This entry is neccisarily cryptic. It is about someone's death, and details about the circumstances around his death aren't really available at present.

It wasn't personal. It wasn't personal, I didn't know anyone involved, they were all strangers. I could view it objectively. Of course, it's bad, when people are hurt, I never said it wasn't but I thought I could objectively assess the threat level that way, I was outside it enough, I could decide what they were doing, and what to do about it, but I never thought...

...and then he said they were killing people, and I knew right away. The weight settled in and I knew why I hadn't seen him, why I had heard nothing, when in my heart I knew he'd followed me. I knew he was gone. The verbal confirmation meant almost nothing, my heart knew it before the rest of me had caught up.

Damn you, Nurzhan, why didn't you wait?

I loved you, and you loved me, and you didn't want to wait. But you should have waited. I never should have told you, but I loved you, and I wanted to see you again. And now maybe we will never meet in this lifetime, and I am to blame. But I wish to avenge you, and I will try.

I never told you the words, but...

I loved you. I will treasure everything you gave me.

entry 001 - errand-rider

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 20:29:59 GMT

My official government title is Captain Karigan Tarandoriel, head of the Minas Tirithian errand-riders (which merits a Sir), and an official representative of the Province of Lebennin as the lady of a noble landholding, the king's errand-rider and a member of the king's council as the official consultant on Southern Affairs. I am obligated to raise military units to pay for at my own expense by the king's request, oversee the payment of taxes of my parcel of the province, and maintain the roads through there. I am also obligated to sit at the king's dinnertable and give advice on Umbarean and Haradric affairs as invited.

A lot of this is civil society bullcrap except the part that says Captain Karigan. I am the seniormost (oldest) errand-rider in the Tirithian branch of the errand-riders. I first joined the ranks at 17. I am now about 40. Most riders die or retire within 5 years. I have been riding messages, on and off the battlefield, between captains and noble lords, pretty much all my adult life. Except the periods where I was spying in the south. I am in charge of training all errand-riders that come through the gates of the sixth circle, purchasing and training all horses used in the errand-riding service, and during my tenure as Captain redesigned the roads through Gondor to make message-riding faster. I hold the current record for delivery time between Tirith and Amroth, being six days and twenty hours one way. I am the second woman to achieve captaincy in the Tirithian errand-riders, and have held the title since I was 35.

My job description was very similar to a courier or messenger. During active campaigns, I was posted with a unit of soldiers to ride messages for one or more captains; across the field, from the field to the command post, from the command post to the soldiers, and so on. As one of the only mounted units I also served scouting capacities. It was not a glamorous job. I rode messages this way with Captain Boromir since I was 19. When I was not posted to his unit, I rode messages given to me by the steward to other lords in Gondor. I was instructed to carry out espionage and reconnaisance south of the Gondorian border on some occasions.

During the Siege, I was the only rider remaining in the city walls fit to ride. Everyone else was sent away to other cities, and many died on their errands. Being the only rider left, I was the only one to come with Elessar and his soldiers to the field, where I was given temporary command of a captainless unit of militia cavalry who would not take instruction from Rohirrim. I was injured during that battle and became barren (a small price to pay for my life, some say).

After Elessar was crowned king, he called me up out of retirement and asked me to reoutfit the Tirithian errand-riders, train new riders and foot messengers, and help him turn the joke of the messenger system into an effective and efficient extension of the military. I was largely responsible for the rebuilding of the rider roads (a lot of the money came out of my own pocket) and the revitilization of the errand-rider waystations, which had served as all-weather stopping points for riders in older, better days. I learned a lot about management and training, then.

After I came here, there was not so much to do like that. For a long time contact with the old worlds was not very common. I used to roleplay myself in games, riding messages and the likes because I missed the life. I got into the habit of buying green horses and breaking them in for riding, and then dabbled into the realm of equine breeding, trying to find the fastest endurance strains to make a proper racing horse. Most messages were electronic, instantaneous, deleting the need for a messenger, but I made it my business to be good with computers and electronics and modern communications.

These days, most people do not write or send mail to and from home, the exception being the American revolutionaries. David Noble delivers most of their mail, he's a courier, after all. Kari is reading a book set in Ankh-Morpork (home of Lord Vetinari, who is an interesting man, we've talked a few times) about the reinstitution of their postal system (Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, as it were) and a great deal of it has to do with mail that talks.

I will say, though I was never a postman as such, after you carry mail with you long enough, it does start to talk. I've ridden personal letters back and forth between places, governmental missives, written orders... whenever you send a courier out towards a city from the field before combat, you always get letters people want sent along the way. Sometimes you carry those letters a long time before you find another rider going towards somebody's hometown. I've had more mail given to me personally in my life than I know what to do with. At home, in my quarters at the errand-rider barracks, I had a desk with drawers full of 20 years of mail I had never been able to destroy (Aragorn used to communicate with me almost exclusively by letter during periods in which we did not speak outside of formal settings. We haven't been officially on speaking terms in about two years.)

If you carry written words around long enough, they start to eat through the paper and into your brain. When you deliver mail for people who are now dead, you start to carry a bit of them with you, and late at night, when you're lying awake thinking it'd be nice if you could sleep, you hear bits of them, wandering through your mind, whispering. Going postal, I guess, is more than a term; there's a special kind of insanity to the mail, it makes you go crazy. (I'm fairly unhinged, for those of you who don't know. I'm on more drugs than I can name to keep me calm and from shooting people over minor offenses. Suddenly discovering I was a parent was sufficiently motivating to turn my life around and get stable.)

I once carried a letter for a poor dead bastard three years, trying to find somebody heading out to the remote post where his parents lived up in the north. I never did deliver it; eventually, word got back to Tirith that the town had been struck by sickness and those who'd lived were scattered to the four winds.

I read his letter, and it resides in a special box in the rider barracks, for mail that can't ever be delivered. You never burn dead letters; that bit of writing is the only thing by which anyone will ever remember poor Andin or his parents. That letter, and his memory, will live on, after all his friends are gone, and the town where he was born is nothing but a puzzle of archeologists. And someday, a librarian or clerk will go through the mail in the barracks, and find an irreplacable piece of Gondorian history.

That is the legacy messengers leave to the world.

entry 000

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 16:40:22 GMT

In the ancient fashion of both my peoples, I will tell you a tale of who I am. Come young and old, sit by my fire and break bread beneath my tent, share the hospitality of the Southern sun, or sit at my table and drink a pint in my company, and I will tell you of journeys long ago begun.

I am Captain Karigan, an errand-rider of Gondor. I have ridden for stewards and kings, I have worn the silver and green livery of Minas Tirith, I have worn the black and dust of the south. I have ridden the world, from the shadow of the tall trees of the darkest southern reaches, to the snow-white mountains on the edge of the civilized world above the Riddermark. I decide who stays and goes. I have filled in empty places on the map.

I am Lady Karigan, a noblewoman of the Lebannin province. I hold a seat of representation in the courts of Minas Tirith. I am a diplomat of Gondor. I have brokered treaties and peace. I have entertained foriegn lords and dined with kings.

I am Azraôdulgî, the daughter of a witch of Umbar. The blood of corsair kings ruins in my veins, and the southern sun does not burn my skin. I am cursed, a black mark stands on my head. I have worn the veils of the south, I have known the days of endless sun and seen the mark of the Eye. I am of the South.

I am أم, Mother. I foster three children, none of whom were born to me but all of whom are mine; Aya and Timoran of the south, and Aelfwina of the Mark. I have been a mother since last year.

I am a bond, a muse, a system maintainer. I take care of system business. I breed and train errand-horses and racing lines. I am an old hand to this place, one of the first. This is home. This has been home for 5 years. I live and love, and someday I will die, here.

I am Karigan, and this is my book of days, and these are the tales of my life.

PSA: Revamping.

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 14:42:45 GMT

Entries in this journal are being filtered to private and I am revamping for new use.

- Captain Karigan