i sat in moonglade tonight, the festival all around, and thought i was going to have the most marvelous night.
instead, as i sat there, memories. memories of happy times and smiles and tales by another fire. memories of names long gone and presence withdrawn and the ache ofwishing i might once more seen them moving slowly toward me through a throng of pixels and particles.
malkura, oviel, cassielle, beregrond, talshalan, miira, fedartairin, arthullius, and others that i remember even if not by their chosen names.
i am surprised how immediate and throbbing this ache. it has been a full year. i do not from day to day think on any of it, having long ago bid it farewell and there are no other places or spaces in that world that hold such power of evocation to what once was… but it seems the power runs deep and lives still within the moonglade.
ironic, really. some link to deeper psyche than i knew. the power of the moon, the pull of a peaceful, contenting time. memories of smiles. warmth by the fire that had nothing to do with roleplay proximity to flame.
oddly, perhaps foolishly, i sit here and weep for it. i miss them all. still. i weep for the knowledge they miss none of it. or if they do, not enough to care to try and reclaim it. not enough to be willing to share it as once we did. not enough to share it with me.
astonished by the force of memory, i said to one of our house nearby that i was missing those long departed. he, stranger to the past, said to me, ‘no matter we part, we will always meet again.’ and that was so close to the tender words of others that i could not remain. i’ve stopped believing in that kind of forever, and the way to the canyon was sealed by bigger stones than i may alone lift… and there are none remaining who would shoulder them.
and to hear those words upon this brother, this stranger-to-it-all’s lips… was both confirmation and agony and as stupid as it may be, i could not remain there with those pretty pixels and particles, missing minds and spirits that have flown, never to return.
i am too sentimental. i know it. by far. but perhaps it is not foolish to miss tender times and smiles. perhaps it is not wrong to think of those others and smile through tears. perhaps i am not as alone in my ache as i often feel. i wish i could know. but i do not. and likely will not.
they often would say ‘it is just a game.’ and in darker days, much derision of me for the sense here that though this was true, there were deeper connections that ‘just a game’. perhaps i am the only one who really felt them or believed in them. so the silence would seem to support.
i have since learned that at least three now claim i ‘stole’ this from them. i cannot say i understand that, especially as they gave it to me and then, left. how does one ‘steal’ a thing when it is handed to them?
were they to ask, it would be the same as it ever was, i would tell them that i took what they abandoned and have kept it alive. first, in hope it would be of interest to them in its survival… later… on behalf of new minds and spirits, others who believe more truly and fully and loyally than those who abandoned, departed, gave up.
there is part of me, old and ancient soreness, that snarls for such abandonment. as if dreams are ever made real by walking away from them. but then, it was not the dream they walked away from, was it? it was me. which is a heavy thing, because it says they would rather a dream die than see it live by my hand.
i sit here and ponder this, and almost wish i had let it die rather than suffer disdain for working to keep it alive. it seems so backwards. wrong. unfair.
i continue this the next morning…. at the moment last night when i set that period after ‘unfair’, the phone rang. it was the master sergeant. he has the same knack of reaching out to me in the precise moment i most need it as once did another. i am so thankful of him, for him. and i miss the friend i thought i had in the other. even now. a sigh. nothing more, though many things in the sigh that i will not here put to words.
i’m not sure why i’m sharing this with you, except that i know you will understand. i miss you, you know. just as i miss them. still.