elope Looses Olivier
She watched him go. Despite her earlier conversation with Celeste, she didnt care if it was an event caused by intention or destiny; she could only view it as loss. One moment he was here now he was gone.
It was a mistake easily made. We loose and find each other every day. Who could have known that last chaste kiss would be it.
She chastized herself with a curse for entertaining such a small hope. All she was really asking for was a proper goodbye, which was no demand on fate at all.
But then her aesthetic nature fought back. What was so wrong with a proper goodbye. At that moment she acknowledged his certain death.
She looked up at the advancing army. The gloriously attired Lords had disappeared behind a copse leaving a train of poorly armed, lean and hungry stragglers in their wake. The damp road had been trampled into mud so was slow and dirty. The peasant warriors and their marshalls moved slowly. But they were moving. They would get to Chateau Gaillard eventually.
What is war Why do we fight
Only the rear guard was visible now, a cohort of badly armed peasants kept in line by hedge knights with dented dirty armor , their valets trailing beside them with their gear, on burdened horses. A second, junior valet trudged beside, his only duty to carry the Lords lance.
What does it say about our nature
As a half-human she knew all about the will to violence but as an aelf she looked at it with an aesthetic eye . War was a filthy ugly business.
As she thought this a man stumbled. He was the most ragged of the lot, an old man, doubtless a substitute and certainly fated to die in his first battle. With an awkward cough he tripped and fell face first into the mud.
A dozen of the men s friends stopped to help him. The marshalls lowered there visors and readied their lances. Their captain, a Du Blois, junior but wearing expensive doublet made of Damascus steel and a sword from Seville, both plunder from the Third Crusade, shouted hurry up and gestured for his lance.
The man stumbled up and then fell down again. A crowd had gathered to watch. The marshalls, not wanting to provoke a riot withdrew.
A tall, rosy cheeked lad was pushed forward. An old lady prodded him and he spoke. Ill be his substitute. He turned to face the Captain. Penelope saw him head on. The right side of his face had been seared by fire and his eye was covered in a patch. But he was sturdy.
The Captain, looked to his right shoulder where the army was and then back did not deign to scold. Oui vit vit.
The marshalls closed in on the peasant soldiers and they started to move. The old men fell in the dirt. His village friends waited until the Captain had disappeared into the copse and then rushed forward to help him.
Although their progress seemed so slow it was only moments before they disappeared.
The aelf in her wished for it to be dusk; nature was such a good complement to strong emotions. The sky was bright and the air hot and and dry enough that emptyness could find purchase.
She had lost Oliver without a parting.
Her sadness did not spring from any thing; it came from absence.
fin
Despite this she wondered what would be the point
A strange question to ask of a haffen aelf. When your life is long the point of it stretches thin. Penelope wondered if for Eleanor the point had stretched to nothing.
Fee for no service : we need to tread a fine line between allowing billionaires to buy private jets for their mistresses pet corgies and ensuring that only brown people die in childbirth. (too harsh)