eternities:john_le_tillyer [Threshold]

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======John le Tillyer Eternity======

And, later (how much later? Does it matter? Time uncurls like a fern, an unending series of spiral bends), the forest will have grown. The mist will cling to the treetops, wetting the ground with occasional rains of memory and fear, and every step will sink, soft, into a carpet of mulch, forever freshly decayed. John’s billhook will once again have seen blood, smelt it, tasted its iron tang. But it will have been for a good cause, this time. Moved by revolutionary hope, not the pointless cruelty of a soul on the brink of losing itself or the forgetful brutality of a soldier seeking food. When he reflects on it (and there is no shortage of time for reflection, now) he’ll almost be glad. Glad that he never saw the sky blacked out by arrows, never faced the opposing ranks of men no more committed, no more certain, than himself. Glad that the first time he saw battle, the first time he left his home and managed to reach his destination, it will have been for freedom, for memory, for hope. It will be another wrong righted, another cycle closed. And as he thinks, he will tread the quiet mulch with confident steps, because this forest — this cathedral of trees — means nothing but peace. There are no spirits here, no knife-edge of danger and safety, sanctuary and oblivion — or if there are, he will not feel them as he did before. Only the memory of work, hard work, real work, and work amongst friends.

Work that had not felt as it did then since he had last bent double in a field, harvesting wheat with a scythe and a groan in the sweat-soaked August sun.

Living work.

(And maybe, just maybe, he will be beginning to realise that death itself is another life. A different life, perhaps, but a life that is no less alive than that which tasted of sun and salt and smoke, where the spirits thronged thick in the air and, in winter, the fire leapt tall. What was it he missed? A village close as family? The beauty of the world?

Perhaps he will think he’s found both of those here, now. In the community of the Block, and in the forest and the garden. Even that distant dream, of moving and exploring and seeing the world — even that, now, has arrived. And it will be far better than it ever was in life, because it brings with it not churned-up mud and burning homes, but liberation, beauty, and new green shoots.)

Time moves in circles, in cycles, and maybe in this place, they will reach their ends.

The light in this forest will be different, too. In this place where the sun neither rises nor sets, where the stars hang still in a too-perfect black, the shadows will be dark, the colours muted. 

But John can carry a torch. A flaming stick, as he would have done before — or a flashlight. And where that bright light falls, it will illuminate the plants in a new way, highlight the textures of the roots and the colours of the old, fallen needles in a way he could never have known in life. There will be a beauty in that, too — in picking out the small details, in remembering that, even after fifty or eighty or however many years it has been, there are still new ways to look, new wonders hidden in the darkness.

That light, however, will not reveal any woodlice or centipedes, snails or ants. And there are no birds here, of course. Perhaps that is a loss he will always feel.

But if it is, it will be a bearable one, a tolerable one in this newly-opened world of myriad colours, infinite variety, sprawling block after block into the mist not of things forgotten, but of things not yet known. John will stand in the forest, starlight glinting off his blade, and exhale, and accept: //this is not the same.//

And: //that does not matter.//

Up above, in a long-distant land and a long-distant age, a woodland jay will flap its wings and flutter away, into the bright blue sky.


// -- by Eloise P//
                                                                                          
=====Growth=====

It takes a lot of effort for John to track down the archer, but that doesn’t stop him. He knows the time period and the rough location of the camp by the forest where his fellow soldiers from his village were killed, but it’s hard to find a person without a name. He uses a map to find the closest neighbouring village and searches Psychopomp’s records to find all the young men who lived there in that time – all 157 of them. It takes a very very long time, with Everard and Willl keeping him company for parts of the journey, as he meets man after man, some of whom are able to give him leads on the identity of the archer. But finally, the seventeenth man remembers that his friend was the one who planned the attack and got John to reveal the location of the camp. The name is the ninetieth on the list, but John goes straight there. It’s been decades, probably centuries, but perhaps, finally, he can get closure.

The archer recognises him on sight, “I thought you’d come here eventually for revenge.”

“No, not revenge.” The archer is surprised at this – unable to see John as anything more than a soldier intent on destruction. How wrong he is. “I came here to tell you that I understand why you did what you did. I understand the urge to protect your community from people who might cause it harm. I only went to war because it’s what everyone in my village was doing. I’m sorry for the things me and my fellow soldiers did to villages just like yours, and I forgive you for what you did to the people I care about.”

After a moment of contemplation, the archer holds out a hand. “Thank you. I’m sorry that it came to so much bloodshed – I really didn’t want to kill anyone, but I needed to protect my home.”

“Of course. Home is one of the most important things we have.” They shake hands. 

And now, perhaps, John might finally be free of the guilt that has loomed over his entire time in the Threshold.
 

----


There is honour in fighting for a cause you truly believe in. John fights for freedom and truth with every flower planted, every word added to the manifesto, every Tower destroyed and every forest sprouting up across the Threshold.


----


The official opening of the garden is a day of immense pride for John. Many months of hard work have produced a space for the entire community to love. And they do love it – almost every resident of the Block has gathered outside to celebrate. Even some of those who have gone away travelling, like Juliette, make the journey back for this special day.

Just as the ceremony is about to begin, the revving of engines sounds from above. Willl, zooming at high speed on a hoverbike, screeches to a halt outside the garden. He jumps off the bike and speaks with a cheeky grin, “See, I’m not late!”, then takes a seat in the audience. Free from the centuries of almost-yearly tampering by Psychopomp, Willl’s memory is beginning to return and function properly. Although he still seems to be nearly-late to everything… perhaps the main problem is his lack of organisational skills. He smiles with pride as John starts the event with a short speech, before passing onto the other citizens who’ve contributed so much to the project: Phoenix, Everard, Livith, George.

More than just a lovely location to brighten the Block, the garden is a symbol of defiance. A symbol of the intent of the people. In the place of the Tower – the most visible monument of Psychopomp’s oppression – the people of Block 2845 made what //they// wanted. Not another skyscraper, or a prison, or even a farm – they made somewhere calm and beautiful. A place whose only purpose is to give people space to be happy.

=====Highlights=====

==== Downtime 1: break_character_here ====

=== Screaming into the abyss after Quite The Introduction to the game. ===

...//He finds himself in the Dome anyway, looking up at the false sky above. It isn’t quite the same as at home. It never could be. But it’s… something. A reminder, so desperately needed, that he isn't entirely alone. Though they move and though they change, at least some of the stars are always there. They see it all. They always have.//

 
//If only they could explain to him what he’s missing.//

 
//He’s missing __something;__ that much is very clear[...] How much else has he forgotten? How much else does he simply not know?//


//He has no idea.//
 

//And all the while… he closes his eyes, rubs his hands over his face. For a moment, the stars blink out...//

\\ 
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==== Downtime 3: Forest Memories ====

=== Two particularly hingeless days resulted in 7000 words of emails between John and Everard and a promise to myself never to email at 3am again. ===

...//Why should they be? Why should they be remembered? Not-soldiers who died for nothing, for less than nothing, even – John died for what he took from the world, not what he dreamed of or what he gave. Not a footnote, nor even a footnote of a footnote — but a shadow of a speculation in six hundred years' time.//... [not me writing myself into an email... Scripture GM Eloise would never :p]

\\
...“Dead before the first shot. Ha.” //He knows how that feels...//

\\
...“It was. It was truly beautiful. There was the coast, the village, the fields, and then beyond that the forest… it was very peaceful, very quiet. Needles and mulch like a carpet underfoot, and you could feel the spirits gathering there. It was a sort of sanctuary – for all, no matter who you were or what you’d done. The spirits didn’t mind. They’d protect everyone alike. Not everybody dared go there, because of that… but sometimes, at festivals and in autumn, we’d go in and hunt and it would feel like I was truly one with the world.”...

\\ 
...//Maybe people do return. And he hopes, if they do, that time freezes while they’re gone – so that his parents, and the rest of the village that might as well have been family too, have a chance to see a woodland jay, a flash of dun and white and blue, amidst the trees and think of him.//... [and a motif was born...]

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==== Downtime 4: Wreathed in Ghosts ====

=== Mist-related trauma... ===

[To Harry:] //It won’t. You can’t. There’s nothing doing, nothing to try. Only one thing ever seems to bring anything even close to a solution, and it’s memory, memory, painful pounding memories that crash and break and overwhelm, storm waves screaming on a beach. A forest; a sky; an absence; a guilt; a heart-sick, fog-tangled wreck of a man.//


“I… don’t know if it __can__ stop.”


//He speaks quietly, very quietly, and you’re not quite sure if he’s talking to you at all.//


//The whistle-thud of an arrow. The silence of stars. The shattering sound of a soul.//

\\ 
[To Juliette:] ...“I don’t know.” //He laughs, again, a little wildly, shaking his head.// “That’s the problem. I __don’t know what I’ve done__ – I just… there’s this guilt, all the time, in __everything,__ everywhere I go, everything I do, and I know that, whatever I did, I can’t see __anything else__ that could be keeping me here. I’ve been here so long… I’ve tried everything.”...