All's Fair in Love and War

So, I had to write a short story for English at school... It's terribly cliche, and I apologise, but here you go.

All’s Fair in Love and War

My sputtering tallow candle cast an uncertain light over the letter clutched in my hand. Guilt gnawed distantly at my insides as I held the paper before me, but I pushed it away. Tilting my candle so as to dispel the shadows that crept onto the page, I brushed all other thoughts aside, and began to read the letter that was not mine.

Dearest Tristan,

I thank God for every letter I receive from you – nothing is of more relief than the assurance that you may yet return to me. How are the men? There has been no word here for a long time. Your letters are, of late, the only news I have, and renew my constant hope that the day draws nearer that I shall see you again, brave soldier – alive and well, and safe on our home shores once more.

Laurel’s words sprung from the page and danced through the shadows around me, bringing them to life. If I closed my eyes, I could see her; touch her; hold her. I could taste her lips, tempered with the bittersweet memory of that one stolen kiss… For a brief moment, I could almost imagine she was writing to me.

I could never forgive Tristan for sweeping Laurel off her feet right before my eyes. Every time I saw her slender frame wrapped in his arms, radiating with that perfect, inexplicable light, I burned with jealousy. She was breathtaking; the fulfilment of my deepest dreams and desires. And she was his.

My mind suddenly wandered, unbidden, to last night – the night I waved Tristan goodbye. We both knew it would be a dangerous patrol. It would risk exposure during the day – exposure to both the relentless, unforgiving expanses of endless sand and sunburnt stone, and to equally relentless, unforgiving enemy fire. But there were no alternatives. Lives would be lost, I knew, but a good leader knows when to sacrifice a few for the good of many. Laurel told me that, once – via Tristan, in one of her letters. It stung bitterly that she wouldn’t write to me personally. Often, at night, with nothing to keep the shadows at bay, my darkest, most twisted thoughts crept from their lairs and overtook my body with envy. ‘If only’, they taunted, their voices sickly sweet, ‘If only Tristan was out of your way’…

At this, I shook my head violently, shaking myself into the present, and re-immersed myself in Laurel’s words.

All is well at home, save for your absence. Ma is recovering steadily from her fall – praise the Lord! Winter has come – it is bitterly cold – but my job holds steady, and should until at least next year. My nightmares have not ceased – I dream more often of your death than I do of your return – but my sister is always here to comfort me, and to remind me that upon your return, you and I shall be married. Married – it is still the sweetest and strangest thing to say!

Her words jolted through me, snapping me back to the hellish reality in which I existed. The light that had burned inside me as I read her words was extinguished as my mind registered the truth: I was here, in the dark, alone. And she would never be mine…

My candle flickered listlessly, barely keeping the dark at bay. Again, I couldn’t help but think back to last night. I had gazed at the unforgiving, endless sand, its menace untamed by the shadows of night, and fixed my sights on the five figures slinking away, soon to be engulfed by darkness. I recalled my sense of triumph as the silhouette on the left turned to wave at me, before he melded into the gloom. Right now, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy at the memory.

A drop of wax fell from my feeble stub onto the letter like a single teardrop, calling me back to the present. The darkness crept further, licking hungrily at the corners of the letter, my waning candle struggling to repel it. Tristan’s silhouette flickered in and out of the shadows that never faded from the corners of my consciousness.

I took a deep breath to steady myself, bidding my hands to stop shaking, and glanced back to the letter. The words tumbled over themselves before my eyes, nonsensical and incomprehensible as the molten streaks that ran down the side of my tallow candle, and of the next few paragraphs I took in very little. So it was, that when I reached the final passage, I found myself reading it over a further three times before understanding finally dawned.

Brave soldier, before I post this letter, there is one final piece of news which I must impart. I pray that it does not change your feelings for me, or your hopes for our future. I am six months pregnant with your child. I ought to have told you sooner, I know, but please forgive me – I was scared. I can put it off no longer. I must share my secret joy in hopes it will sustain you too, and see us both through this terrible war. We both knew we were rash, that night before you left, and we have not been proven wrong. I do not regret it, though. I hope the child has your eyes.

“Oh God”.

Only now did my actions of last night fall piece by piece into their terrible place. I had – fully knowingly – sent my best friend to his grave. And for what? It made me sick to my stomach to think of it. Was it on my conscience that he would now never see his child? I found myself hoping, with all my heart, that I should see him again, alive and well – for not only my sake, but for that of Laurel and her unborn child.

“Oh God”. What had I done?

It was then that the messenger arrived. He stood, panting, filthy, and exhausted, in the struggling light of my weakening candle stub. “The patrol”, he gasped. My head snapped up.

“Yes?” I demanded. “What of them?”

He hesitated, seemingly unsure of how to proceed.

“Go on”.

“We lost them all, Corporal. Encountered enemy fire at sunrise. They stood no chance”.

I dropped the candle and it clattered to the ground, its flame instantly extinguished in the godforsaken sand. My world spun before me; my ears filled with unuttered screams and the harsh assault of gunfire. I swore I heard a newborn’s cry as the shadows rushed forward, uninhibited now, and engulfed me. 

When I grow up...

Recently, I've fallen into the habit of telling anyone who asks that I want to be the Minister for Magic when I grow up. In all honesty, I think I'd loathe the position, but it's a much more exciting answer than 'I don't know'. 

It's a question we're all asked since the age of about five. There are those kids that know the answer from day one and never waver, and there are those kids whose answer is different every week, but at least they have an answer. And then there are kids like me, who in all honesty, have never had a clue.

Not that I think there's a problem with not knowing. My aunt didn't know what she wanted to do right up until the day she filled in the paperwork. The first thing she ticked, practically at random, was 'speech pathologist', and she hasn't regretted it since. Of course, not everyone's as lucky, but that's a little bit of spontaneity I admire. 

Society has this sort of a 'life framework', as I see it, and it pressures us all to adhere to it as best we can. If you don't know what you want to do with your life at the end of 12 or 13 years of schoolwork, you obviously haven't given the matter enough thought, and should go home and seriously rethink the way you're living your life. Previously, I've felt this to be true, and have considered myself seriously encumbered by my lack of direction.

More recently, though, I've come to realise that life in general is a wonderful, spontaneous thing, and cannot possibly be confined to a framework such as many people attempt to restrict it to. I think I'm becoming more desirous of this kind of spontaneity, and find myself more often rejecting the humdrum nature of my current life. Not that it's a bad life - quite to the contrary, in fact. But when I get out of school I want to spend at least a while living some form of thoroughly unstructured lifestyle that does not involve university. I should indeed get a job, but other than that...

In the long term, I do want a 'proper' job, not the check-out chick type part time job that every high schooler has, but to be honest, I don't want my life ruled by my career. I'm not the ambitious, career driven woman that many of my friends are - aspiring lawyers, engineers, nurses, and marine biologists as they are. 

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I know that I want some kind of wonderful, spontaneous life that involves more surprises than not. I don't care that I don't know what to do yet - next year I will do something, and that's good enough for me. I may get to uni, I may not (imagine that - probable OP1 student never attends uni), but either way I just plan, for now, to try and enjoy myself.

So, uh, hi, non-existent readers. I haven't been here for ages, have I?

Anyway, recently I ended up in my town's annual poetry slam by accident. Kind of a long story, but let's just say it involved me writing and half-memorising a poem in one afternoon, and performing it that night.

Well, it's not really poetry. Well, it is? It doesn't rhyme, and I didn't write it in any kind of traditional 'poem' format, but I think it sounded at least sort of like poetry when I said it.

As I don't really have much to say despite not having been around for months and months, I thought that you (if 'you' are anyone at all), might like to read it. Please excuse the dodgy non-poem-y formatting.

Life Lessons

Ever since I was a child I’ve been told that school is a place for learning things. Important things – life lessons, an old person once told me, a wise smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. Funny that.

In my 12 years of schooling, I’ve certainly learnt things. I haven’t been taught to handle taxes, or take control of my income, but praise the Lord I know how to use the quadratic formula. I never learnt how to write a resume or find my passion – a passion that, I’m told, will influence all my life choices, and I’m supposed to have found for myself – but thank heavens that I spent three consecutive years studying the reproductive cycle of a green tree frog. I’ve never learnt how to deal with people – grieving people; angry people; hurt people, and I’ve never had it explained to me how I should go about making a life for myself. I have however, you’ll be pleased to know, been taught how to analyse a memoir. Yeah. Life lessons, right there.

I’m sixteen. I’ve spent 12 of those 16 years being taught to spout formulas and recite elaborate phrases to garner the pleasure of my English teacher, whose favourite I am because I know the meaning of the word misogyny.  What have I actually learnt, though?

I’ve learnt that in 16 weeks, 18 if you count holidays, I’m going to finish school. And once I finish school? Who knows? Go skydiving, maybe. Learn Malaysian, get my hair cut short. Who cares? But first, I’m going to visit that old lady, with the wise crinkled eyes, and tell her that I’m finally going to go learn some life lessons.

For the record, in case that night wasn't random enough, my English and Japanese teachers were at the poetry slam. I think it was OK though, they laughed lots. 

I feel like it was pretty successful. Definitely a night worth going to - the host was hilarious and it was generally a very friendly and enjoyable night.

Moral of the story? Everyone should spontaneously enter poetry slams! Well, maybe that's not for everyone. Perhaps the moral of the story should be that everyone should do spontaneous things that they've never done before every once in a while. It makes life a lot more exciting, and who knows? Maybe you'll enjoy yourself.

May your day be filled with sweet surprises and stolen kisses and chocolate-covered strawberries.

^.^

I was told that we all have honest struggles and that's OK. I'm not sure how I feel about that:

My honest struggles don’t belong in the real world – they exist in 2B pencil and piano music. 

I'm terrible, aren't I? Haven't posted for ages...

Have some more pictures ^.^

A rare experiment with watercolours. I do not know why it is sideways. I can't make it rotate.

Bother, this one's sideways as well. Why? My apologies.

I'm despairing. Why are they all sideways? I can't fix it, I promise, or I would have by now. Anyway, the above was a brief foray into decorative writing.

These are all quite old - I haven't done any proper art in such a long time. Bit of a shame. I have a feeling I'd like to try out some bizarre and simple abstract painting, but I have no idea how to go about it.

Ideas, anyone? (Not that I imagine many people are reading this at all)...

^.^

Am I the only one who thinks Valentine's Day is incredibly pointless?

It's so commercialised - so fake - that it has nothing to do with love and everything to do with 'love' (the latter being written in bold pink writing and surrounded by lurid love hearts). I could go into such a long rant about this, but I hope I can keep somewhat concise. 

Valentine's Day advertises love as garish and materialistic - exactly opposite to what it actually is. Real love cares nothing for chocolates or roses. Of course, they're sweet, affectionate gestures, but on Valentine's Day, it seems to me that they mean nothing. They're just 'the thing' to do, because everyone else is doing it. All of a sudden proclaiming your love for someone becomes a bigger thing than on any other day. 

I object.

Love, if truly felt, should be professed constantly - through actions of support and encouragement more than through words or roses. Valentine's Day quite defies - almost ridicules, in some ways - what I think love should be, and I have a problem with that.

OK, rant over.

^.^

My dearest,

I can smell the storm from inside my room. It smells like stifled conversation, and music, and purple. And it reminds me of you, in more ways than one. It’s beautiful, for a start, if either boys or storms can be beautiful.

I think they can.

Lightning dances across the sky like the way your eyes sparkle, and the rain-song sounds like your voice. The grey that shrouds the world beyond my window pane is hauntingly beautiful, too. It’s that grey you like; the grey I wish I could take your hand and fly into and dance and laugh and get blissfully lost in with you forever.

Don’t tell Mum, but I’ve left the window open, just a crack. The air sneaks in and swirls around me in a cool, gentle embrace. It almost feels like you’re here. Almost. I wish you were, you know. I wish it every day, and miss you more with each passing minute; with each beautiful, lonely raindrop.

I must go now, Mum’s calling me. Her voice is muffled by the rain-song, and I wish I could ignore it and lie here and think of you, and write to you... Sadly, she is not one to be ignored.

I send you my best wishes and hopes and dreams, and the assurance that soon we’ll be together again. I promise I will be waiting for you when you return.

Perhaps, when a storm comes your way, you could think of me, too?

With all my love,

R.