A picture says a thousand words. Write them.
Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a
metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about
this picture.
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Sanctuary is an ancient concept.
Guest rights. Share your bread and salt with someone and you owe them a debt.
You have to protect them if you are attacked. You cannot harm them while they are
in your care. If you do, you suffer for it. Karma. Bad luck. Whatever you want
to call it.
Maybe it didn’t apply anymore and
maybe you don’t care. You feel safer in the ruined church. More so than
anywhere else. It barely had an unbroken window and certainly didn’t have a
lockable door, but it doesn’t matter to you.
It was still a place of sanctuary.
It was familiar.
You are old. So very old. You can
remember when this church was not a ruin. When it had been full of people, lit
by candles and was a place of worship. Then it had been a place of light and
faith. Faith seemed to be a thing of the past, like you. Although you are
definitely a thing of the past.
You stand for a while until you
feel fatigued and then you sit on the floor with your back against the wall.
You stare at the altar. It is
broken and graffitied, but still recognisable.
You remember nights when you stood
vigil for important personages as their bodies rested in state before their
burial. And further back, when you were a squire. After a cleansing bath,
fasting for a day, making your confession and dressing in a white robe covered
in a red surcoat (to indicate your willingness to bleed), you went to the
chapel to pray all night. You would be knighted in the morning. At some point
during the night, light headed and exhausted, you asked God to make you an
eternal fighter for faith. God granted your wish but it took you some time to
realise it.
You always needed less sleep than
the others. You took more watches as a result to help out your brothers in
arms.
But then your friends started to
die... and you never did. You were an excellent and experienced knight but your
skill could not explain everything. There were other signs; your wounds healed
too fast. Your hair did not grey.
Blessed by god, they called you,
and you agreed, until it didn’t stop. You tried. You were at the front of every
charge, you killed countless destriers; leaving their bleeding sides under you
as you attacked over and over, stopping only when you were fighting alone.
You could not die.
When the enemy understood what you
were, they threw down their arms without a fight. You railed at them, screaming
at them to pick up their swords and fight you. Your code prohibited you from
attacking them empty handed. Mutely they shook their heads. You swore them to
damnation with the creeping understanding that you were already there.
You could not die.
A paladin with no hope of entering
heaven.
You couldn’t hate God but you were
angry with him for a while.
Now, you were an anachronism. A
knight for faith in a world where it barely existed.
Now, you waited. God meant you for
some purpose and you were still waiting to see what it was.
~~~~
© AM Gray 2014
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