The Writings of a Paladin: Salvation (01/19/06)

It came about by chance.
I had wandered out of the house, restless within its confines, down the familiarly worn path to the Fatted Calf, for no other reason than the escape, however temporary, from my own thoughts, the roar of them too much to bear in the quiet of a house gone to slumber.

She was there, sitting by the fire, alone with her own thoughts. So very unlike her, to choose to be alone.

I had done that to her.

I had not realized it.

Until that very moment, as I stood in the shadows and observed her, I had not known that the struggle within my own soul had affected her so. She looked tired, the worry of it pulling at the expression on her face. The very fact that she had shunned interaction with others....the very idea that she had ventured out of the comfort of the townhouse to make some sense of her own thoughts that must have been as confusing to hers as mine were to me....so unlike the woman I first met in the very same tavern....and I was the reason.

I had not realized it.

Until that very moment that the torment of what I had done also lay heavy upon her shoulders, even though she was mostly ignorant of it, certainly innocent of it, and how unfair that was to her, for even if she could not love me anymore because of it, it was not right for her to bear it and not even know it.

I stood behind her, aching with the need to touch her, but.......afraid. Its a word I do not believe I have ever used before. Certainly not to describe and mean....me. That, in and of itself, was humbling.

Then she turned. So like her, to sense my presence even in my silence. And with a single question she brought me to my knees.

There in front of her, touching her hand for some sense of courage....God, but the woman is full of it and I supposed in some obscure way I was hoping for it to flow from her hand into me....there did I lay it all out for her.

Every single horrid and sorted detail of it.

I suppose I did get the courage from her. I have no knowledge of where else it might have come from, to be sure.

No one else would have heard me.

And no one else would have understood me.

And when I finished she had the audacity to say to me that still.....still...she loved me.

I don't know if that will be enough. I don't know if that will repair the rent in my soul and give me back the peace of living with all I have done, and have not done.

But I know that without it I would be damned.

She believes in the purity of the end that so justified the means.

How did fortune smile on me so?

I am married to the most incredible woman.

And without her in my life....truly....I would be lost.





~~~ Sir Antonio Sabatier ~~~

The Duke of Benvenuto in the Lands of Ashford

The Marquis of Pantera, a.k.a., The Black Panther



"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within." ~~ Emerson



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