There's no place like home.
Sept 23, 2014 12:14:30 GMT -8
Webmonkey, Klaus von Klempt, and 1 more like this
Post by The Marquis on Sept 23, 2014 12:14:30 GMT -8
“Clementine, it robbed me of my breath.” The Marquis was waltzing quietly to himself, thinking she would not notice his tiny steps to and fro. She noticed.
He had been describing the vision of his childhood that was shattered by the petrol bomb in the Elysium. The Romani woman had whispered it into his mind as the riots grew outside. The crisp spring air, the sounds of the young men and women braiding the maypole. The fife. The drum. The laughter.
The recreated memory had been annihilated in an instant by the shattering glass and licking flames. The Marquis had thought since then that it was like sugar dissolving in tea - the memory too sweet to be real. It was so easy to forget the bitter bite of childhood disease and war, and to remember only the sweetness. But these nights are like overstrong tea - murky, hot, and bitter.
“Well it explains why you were starin’ off into the distance like a statue while we were callin’ for you.” Clementine was fussing over a troop of small dogs she had been teaching to jump through hoops. The Marquis had brought her an orderly printout of official city forms, indulgently filled out in broad strokes with a quill. It was a land usage permit.
“It was then I decided, even as we plumbed that catacomb, to bring her here to America, my ‘Leibethra sur Puget Sound.’ I arranged a barge, and it shall be conveyed here, stone by stone. And so much native soil, so uncorrupted, perhaps still bearing the faintest aroma of wildflowers.
“How sweet it will be to walk under the eaves of that place, to snatch it back from the dead fingers of the peasants who burned it. How very sweet. And with you and the others, there may be music and laughter there yet again. So that we may all briefly forget how horrible we have become.”
… Is what The Marquis meant to say. But instead he was standing there, motionless in a shadow. The shredded echo of a man.
