Hypatia Kometou - Visions Profane and Sacred

[Astra]

[A journal bound with lambskin, which the seeress Hypatia carries on her person at all times. ]

Invocation

O gods of the Wheel, now grant me your graces
I beg for your boon, to make vision flow freely
Let my tongue and my hand spill truths that will please you
And bridge the sacred into our late days.

I sing to the Pentad, who guide the aspirant.
Grant me, o Izdu, the lantern in shadows.
Grant me, o Warad, the wisdom of travel.
Grant me, Gellema, the prism of clearsight.
Grant me, o Martyrs, your peace beyond death.

[Astra]

Ash

I think I am made out of the ash now. It has been in every thing that I touch, have touched and felt and been for a decade. For ten years of wandering, of breathing air, of drinking drink. All tinged with ash. Gritty. Coarse. My skin tends raw.

I remember only distantly the danger from a decade ago. I was a young girl when the Nothing clawed at the Walls. All I remember from those days is terror, terror and running. My mother's face is hazy. My father is a shade of memory.

Now I am still a girl, but I do no longer know the fear of sure death. Only the dread of these late days, the dread of hunger, of seeing ash storms blot out the stars at night. Always is the wind and the ash.

When I sleep, I don't dream about ash. I dream about a midnight coast, the cool night air on a cloudless night. A sky so bright with stars that they glimmer and glint off the waves. I am resting below a fig tree with my mother. The soft mist off the sea is invigorating and it is soothing.

I wake, and I hear the howling wind.

[Astra]

Mae

Let me share with you,
All that I was,
All that I couldn't be.

Let me share with you,
All that I lost,
All that I surrendered,
All that I've forgotten.

Let me share with you,
All that I wanted,
All that I denied.

All that I never knew I needed.

Let me breathe into you the life I lived.
Let me breathe into you the love I loved.
Let me do this for you, my heart, while we are here. While we are still here and ourselves.

[Astra]

I knew, in some intellectual sense, that this would happen. But the moment now demands an answer which I had put aside and buried in my heart.

To join the Sisters requires discipline and self-sacrifice. I knew that. Duty is one thing. But my heart aches now more than ever. I do not know what I'll do if I see her.

This is what it means to sacrifice myself. This is what it means to kill the demon in the water.

[Something stains this undated entry.]

[Astra]

We spoke.

She is gone, she is gone, she is gone.

A sacrifice, to light anew the fire of this world.

[Astra]

I've made a mistake. Somewhere, I don't know where. Maybe it was that my words were too harsh. Or maybe I shouldn't have given her that doll. Or maybe I should have said it was from me. But she knew it was from me, didn't she?

Maybe it was...

Pointless to dwell. I can leave, but I can't change the past. It wouldn't change the past if I was to throw off these robes. I'm not in her heart anymore.

This is my road. I have to keep walking or I'm going to die where I stand.

[Astra]

To look into the water is to recall the person I once was. So much weaker, so much more fragile. I am fragile still. I am shameful still. For these histories etched into my brain, woken again when I see my face in the water, when she calls me 'dear,' when a stranger mentions Shane Gallows, when I try to remember Pirouette's face amid smoke. Vanity to cling to these things, good and bad both, as though they have any use or meaning to me now.

But there is use for some still

Wouldn't it be best if these memories were drowned in a well, were held under until the thrashing stopped, were forgotten, and forgotten, and forgotten? That would be too easy. So easy.

They think it is so easy.

Unwritten. Not never written. Un-written. Scour the page. Rub away the markings. What is left? What is left of me?

[Astra]

I am not afraid, afraid, afraid, as I become myself, myself, myself.

This is the grace of graces. This is the peace of peaces.

All of me is given up. Now I am not afraid. Now I am only myself.

I have never been more free.

[Astra]

It's interesting to consider how I feel about this.

How 'should' I feel? The answer is not obvious. Perhaps I should be vindicated. She did not listen to the advice of her sisters, now here she is paying a price. And it is such a mild price, such a minor rebuke. And she will never make that mistake again.

Acolyte Hypatia, surely, would feel such a satisfaction, and perhaps even might gloat to the poor, whimpering thing.

I know now that would be cruel. She is my sister. She has made a mistake, but it is so that she corrected her error. To err is not a sin, but persisting in error is. What is more righteous than to welcome her now with grace and love?

This, it seems to me, is how I should behave, but I haven't arrived at the answer of how I 'actually feel,' whatever that means.

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the question is immaterial. What matters is how I act. 

Gloating isn't necessary, unless it has an effect. Welcoming her is necessary, for it has an effect. So how I feel is of no consequence at all if I do not let it affect my actions.

And isn't the answer obvious? When she smiled at me, when she shared how it felt...

Yes, that gave me permission to feel it with her.

[Astra]

20 Hziran, IY 7788

I haven't had coffee in a while. It's really nostalgic. But everything about her is nostalgic, isn't it? It's nice to get a second chance.

Today I talked to dear Aletta about fennec foxes. She was terribly enamored.