The wagon clunks and rocks across the wilds.
Inside the sixth cabin of ten are two hulks of men,
sardined together in a tiny, sweat-drenched cot.
It is dark outside. It is some indeterminate time in the pre-dawn morning.
The tiny enchanted flame Laurent crafted for them is concealed within a glass jar.
The only significant light,
other than the distant soft glow of the moon
that slowly seeped through the windows
of their tiny wooden cabin,
seeming to illuminate nothing at all.
Both men can hear one another’s breathing.
One drawing of breath is significantly deeper,
Seward Olson need not speak, or even whisper,
for one to know he is anguished.
He breathes in, every inhale a chore,
every exhale empty, devoid of relief.
The other breathes softer, controlled. Calm, but not wholly so.
A tinge of tenseness lingers in his huffing.
Though, nothing compared to the deep, guttural drumbeats
that are his companion’s gasps of desperation.
The palpable sorrow airborne with every echoing exhalation.
Finally, Absolon has had enough.
Both men are awake, but not speaking,
and Absolon is growing increasingly perplexed by their shared silence.
Seward’s breathing is as loud as the loudest glacial groundswell,
and his silent agony is almost tangible.
Absolon feels he could reach out and touch it.
But first, he must break his way through
the invisible barrier that builds and rebuilds itself
every time his heart hurts for another:
demolish another part of this barricade, constructed by his mind in childhood and
strengthened throughout his teen years and adulthood by every day of silence,
After endless droning minutes of hesitance stretched into hours,
flowing like a river with no source and no sea,
going on forever with no end or beginning,
to place its start, or facilitate its finish,
Absolon’s internal insecurities are enough defied.
place his metaphorical hand through the tiniest breach in the wall,
the most miniscule crack in the surface,
and slowly scale his way up
to push his mouth and mind out above the gap, into the freedom he craves
ever since the light from above the wall shone down on him
“Why are you crying?” he asks,
his voice quiet, weighed down with
his breathing temporarily halted.
When in one deep and loud exhalation,
cracked voice crawls its way out of his raw throat.
Pathetically spluttering his words
and don’t deserve anything in this life.”
Punctuated by a brief pause before adding,
Absolon says, his voice softening further.
but Absolon stops mid-sentence,
cutting himself off abruptly, attempting to filter out his frustration.
“We… we have spoken about this before, haven’t we?”
fighting back the shame and lead-laden guilt
in every corner of his heart and mind.
ABSOLON: “Sorry. I… sorry, I know. I’m sorry.”
ABSOLON: “For… what you’re going through, I mean.”
Silence lingers. The soundscape of stillness stretches into eternity.
ABSOLON: “You’re a good man.”
Seward responds almost instinctively,
as if somehow mindlessly programmed into producing said retort,
as Aerim is programmed to blurt out the time, hour and minute
often before the question asker can finish their sentence.
“No it isn’t,” Absolon responds, his heart
that a man with as much potential as Seward is so deftly
incapable of seeing his own worth.
That one may as well have been better off
asking him to invent a new colour.
Absolon falters briefly, before asking the question that has been brewing within him
since Seward first expressed, if only subtly,
the titanic self loathing that punctuated his every breath.
ABSOLON: “What makes you think that?”
his words, raw and pulsating in his strained, tear-soaked voice.
SEWARD: “They say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
That things will get better.
And I believe that’s true, for most people at least. Everybody, really. Except for, well,
me, I guess. I’m the exception.
Because when you help people there -
to the end of the tunnel, where the light is -
it means you won’t ever find another person,
someone who can take your own role,
to be the one who guides the guide
to that light at end of the tunnel.
I want to help so many others to the end,
but I want to follow them,
and I don’t know how to get there.
I haven’t even saved one person.
All I wanted was to help people.
SEWARD: “And I haven’t even helped one person.
I came here, with Manfred, with you guys,
to the world, to the heavens.
To showcase - to everybody
that I plead for forgiveness!
And the world, the heavens, fate - none have provided me with a single opportunity
ABSOLON: “I guess it wouldn’t do you any good if I told you that
there is nothing you need forgiveness for.”
though Seward’s erratic, guttural sobbing breaths
have slowly begun to lessen
ABSOLON: “Are you kept awake often?”
A gulp from Seward. He does not want to talk,
ABSOLON: “What do you think about?”
Another silence, seemingly everlasting.
Absolon quietly nods, expecting this answer.
ABSOLON: “Don’t you wake Gratien and Laurent?”
SEWARD: “They’re heavy sleepers.
ABSOLON: “I do suppose there’s no worth in my asking, again,
why you feel the need to repent, when it clearly wasn’t your fault?”
SEWARD: “I wish you would stop asking me that.”
but I feel as if you don’t want to face up to the truth.”
ABSOLON: “You seem to be more comfortable
living in a fantasy world,
where you can choose to overlook the fact that you cannot be blamed
for the actions of another –
even if all signifiers of the imminence of that action
had not been deeply masked, buried, repressed.”
ABSOLON: “How could you have noticed the signs if you weren’t looking for them?
But It will do you no good to hear the truth,
when your mind is so hell-bent on ignoring its importance.
The answer can’t and won’t come from me.
You think you will be forgiven for something
that I remind you, you need no forgiveness for,
if you push your grief aside,
and expend the emotional labour
that you could be using to help yourself
Seward, you are more important right now.
If you really wanted to help others,
you’d understand that you need to mend yourself first.
It doesn’t help anyone in need to receive counsel from someone as pained as them.”
SEWARD: “You’re probably right.”
ABSOLON: “Yeah. I think I am.”
He says with desperation.
it doesn’t function under logical parameters right now,
ABSOLON: “What can we do to fix that, then?”
is it that your mind doesn’t want you
to be able to think of anything?”
ABSOLON: “Seward, melancholy’s end goal is to kill you.
It does it by rewiring your mind to disregard truths,
It does it by getting you to ignore reality,
in favour of images and compulsions and behaviours that will, eventually,
snowball, ending in your death.
I can think of things. I just…”
ABSOLON: “On some level, you just don’t want to?
Ah, but that’s not you. That’s the melancholy. It’s a really good actor.
Melancholy convinces your mind that it is simply
That has always been and always will be.”
turns more into a static, heavy, sinking desperation,
with fewer jerking, convulsing breaths than before.
ABSOLON: “You really need to sleep. At the very least, you won’t hurt when you sleep.”
SEWARD: “My thoughts won’t let me.”
try to focus on the noise of the wheels on the ground.”
At this, Absolon reached his arm out,
nudging and nestling it around Seward’s neck, pulling the shorter man into a gentle,
Absolon cradled his neck,
his arm firmly supporting the top of his back,
and Seward nestled his head into Absolon’s body perfectly,
sinking into the muscular curve of his shoulder,
allowing the man’s hand to hold him
to the crunching of the wood and metal wheels on
The ever sprawling landscape,
was cut through by the tiny train of wagons.
With the tiny occupants inside,
and the gargantuan forge of guilt
that had long since melted down his soul
into nothing but darkness and ashes
and consumed his life, his being, his mind and body.
A leviathan, of course, to him,
in the endless, deserted wasteland.
