#tsv 8

[tsvwords]

We drift helpless in a sea of monstrous changes beyond our control. We suffer, half-complete things that we are, because we cannot progress and we cannot retreat.

So, then, what’s left to us, lost as we are in this dreadful landscape, caught at the waystation upon the endless road of ourselves, unable to go forwards, unable to go back?

We do not know what would be waiting for us, if we could go forwards. The only certainty is what lies behind, and thus the only safe move is retreat back into the depths.

I have always watched the nomad-barnacles and grey lobsters of the city canals with an unhappy envy; I have waded into the polluted waters to chart their pointless and erratic movements this way and that way, longing to achieve their skittering clarity of purpose.

Since my very childhood, my Muse has whispered to me, in the lonely places, of the need to turn back the tide within myself.

I have sought to embody this message through furious action, but in vain. When I went out to the pond in our local park and buried my head into the water, seeking communion with the things that lived beneath, seeking to return to the water, it was my parents who caught me.

They dragged me back out, before the last air bubbles had fled from my throat. Told me something must be wrong, not with our mutual condition, but with me, personally. The gall of it.

So I stopped trying to live what I believed. And I painted instead.

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.

[tsvwords]

That’s a lie. A lie.

Mason told me to take you with me because nobody else wanted you. Nobody wanted to have to swaddle you, comfort you, clean up after you.

I’ve been building this faith back up to something worth anything with the best of them in the ditches and the rotting cellars for the past thirteen years.

My Nana Glass kept the fires burning when nobody else would dare to try. When our god had nobody to whisper his name in the silent places.

And you - a child with no sense and no talent - you think you can tell me how I’m seen? You have the gall to tell me I haven’t earned the trust of Mason, and the Katabasians, and the rest of them? That I haven’t given everything to this?

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.

[tsvwords]

They say there were radiant churches up and down the river’s edge, a generation ago. Bright and alive with marsh-lanterns and laughter and when the Trawler-Man brought you his truth in offerings returned, you gazed upon it together.

Now we’re scrapping in ruins. Chasing shades.

She’s been doing this for thirteen years, she tells me. And we’re still scattered, and we’re still no closer to the river’s rise, and yet she wants to hold that over me.

When I joined this church, when I first came to it - alone, in my hour of need - I thought that was it for me. I’d be among people who would truly know me, people who would truly understand me.

Instead it’s more of this. More of her. And I’m still alone out here.

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.

[tsvwords]

Do you recall when you were last happy, truly happy, for longer than a passing instant? Myself, I cannot, and I remember even as an infant feeling unable to recall a time when I had been happy. And yet it must have existed, once, mustn’t it, this state of prior happiness? Otherwise how would we know that we’re looking for it? How would we feel its absence?

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.

[tsvwords]

They aren’t looking at each other. The younger one with the kind eyes and the older one who looks like a crow. It’s...like they’re sulking, these renegades who’ve kidnapped me and hijacked my car. Like I’m eight years old again and sitting in the back seat as my dad and my mum snipe at each other over the sound of the radio. I almost want to laugh.

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.

[tsvwords]

Stories are snares, someone told me once. And by now mine will be tightening.

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.

[tsvwords]

You cannot begin to understand what I’ve done to get to this point, Carpenter. You don’t know what I’m capable of - and you do not want to test whether our god loves you more than he loves me, because I can see you flinch away from him every time you think he might be drifting close.

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.

[tsvwords]

Drown me and drag me, but...you did all right, Faulkner. You did all right back there.

— Chapter 8: And Those I Love, It Rends.