|| Lies & Departure

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They all have tears in their eyes, welcoming the long gone man in with heavy hearts."Cheers for comin' back, Bandy. I know you came from afar but--"The situation becomes clear immediately. The time for departure has come.Too soon. Too bastarding soon.Still. He knew this day was coming and it was not long enough. Infact he had deliberately positioned his latest station within riding distance in preperation for this miserable scenario."This is probably the last time I'm gonna see you, huh..." she murmured this to herself with a hopeless ickle smile. The last thing he'd heard her say before having to take his leave overseas. That gaunt face almost transparent, so fragile, so uncannily white—pulchritudinous and perfect—as she lay there in her bed."I need to see her now. Is that alright? I'm ready." the soldier asks.The proprietor gives him a stoic nod, "Aye. Listen though son, I-... I don't think she's gonna' recognize you.""Her eyes havenae' opened for a day or so now," he purses his lips as he delicately informs Seneca."She's just clingin' on, just abouts. Her chest is movin' still." Whatever trappings of life still lingering were frail and she was not long for this world."Fuckin' shame, man. I appreciate you comin' down here, I know you were a ways away and all. It's just..."He pinches the leathery breadth of his nose and his haggard tired eyes clench shut, stifling tears. He offers an open palm in surrender. He can't talk about this. He can't deal with this any longer."It's fine. I'll see her out." Seneca says calmly, coolly.Seneca, affectionately dubbed "Bandages" and afterward "Bandy" after his plentiful gauze wrappings, has been present for innumerable deaths. His experience is unmatched, not that it was any manner of bragging right.The process was always the same. Death robs their speech first. Their sight next.What secret Seneca knew however, was what lingers to the very end. Their hearing. Unconcious, on the precipice of the end, they can still hear. That is why the most veteran medical practicioners encourage families to mollycoddle their ill. They may be fast asleep, in a coma, even. They will hear. They will react. Their expressions will change. In rare cases what is said to them will even linger beyond till they wake again, should they have the luxury.Before making his way to her room, Seneca slings a massive arm around the wife of the Innkeep, gingerly and tenderly. He makes a vague attempt at consoling her: "I have so much to tell her, so many stories. She's going to love it. Don't worry. I've been working on this since I left. I've got it down."He was not exactly a convincing masterclass of sympathy and humanism, the woman's face remains unchanged. She, like everyone else, knew, suspected, felt something amiss with Seneca. Like he was approaching this with far too much experience. Tears continued streaming down her cheeks as she half-sobs her words: "She wanted to hear them. So badly. I just hope-..."Her husband promptly takes Seneca's space and cradles her close: "It's fuckin' cruel to have you just go in there without at least gettin' rest first from the ride but-..."Seneca interrupts his apology with a waft of his oversized hand: "Against the clock. I get it. It's fine. I'll see her now."Against the clock was an understatement. The fact there was any time left at all was bordering miraculous.This young woman, the lone daughter of the proprietor and his wife, will undoubtedly breathe her last tonight.Seneca lowers his hefty tattered pack to the foot of the stairway and ascends silently with practiced grace and finesse. He adopts militant posture and does little to stifle or contribute to the rampant sadness in the air. He is merely here. He could only wish he weren't, alas.Their daughter had been sickly from the get-go. A pathetic little sick whippet who was deigned by fate itself to be as far out of reach as possible from enjoying that which she yearned for most. Travel. To walk around town. To see what lay yonder. To climb mountains and cross oceans. She was and always had been confined to this inn owned by her parents."This child will not see adulthood." This was her first and only diagonsis. Pure and simple.That tiny little girl, with a porcelain perfect little doll face, had been brutally handicapped by her makers. Be it atonement or a mere attempt at twisting the knife further, this iniquity came with one more catch.Her short, bittersweet life would be spent inside the inn next to an immensely populated highway. Plenty of foot traffic, plenty of soldiers, farmers, nobles. Everyone and anything you could think of.The girl of course, unable to go elsewhere, did what any child would when absolutely overrun by strangers from the world over. Ask questions. Dozens, hundreds, thousands if the poor bastard entertaining her had the patience.Often mistaken for a greeter or a hostess, she would linger at her affixed post right by the front doors. Before anyone could so much as park their arse and whet their whistle, she has already interrogated them."Who are you? What's your name? Where ya' from? Where ya' goin'? Got any stories? Pleeeease."One perk that came with her being born cute as a button and dusted in all things sweet and tender, nobody had the heart to knock her questions back. There was few men that could regard a face as innocent and curious as that and refuse it outright.Once in her vice grip of endless questions, she was simply sit there, eyes like saucers full of sparkles as she prompted a new arc, a new episode, a new chapter. "Huh! Then what? Theeeeen who? And theeeeeeeeen? W-wait! Come back again and tell me more next time okay?!"She'd follow her newfound friend to the inn's doorway and wave them off down the road till they were out of sight, heave an impossibly lonely little sigh and do their best to scramble back up the stairs and in to bed.That's where she lay now. Before Seneca. Sound asleep.There's nobody else here. The usual heap of medicines, vials, bottles of bitter cures for her ailments all gone, now.She was beyond any comforting and beyond any saving.Seneca pulls up a chair and delicately lowers his oversized self into it, clasping his hands together tightly, knitting his broken and mishapen fingers in anticipation. His head bows and he stares on at the floor with a blank expression, the mirth and kindness of his voice a total disconnect from his true outward conveyance."I'm back, rabblerouser. Storytime."The daughter of course, does not respond. That tiney ickle chest of her's was lax of course with the swelling of a grown woman, which made the rise and fall of her chest almost imperceivable."Was across the sea this time," he tells her. "The sea on the side where the sun actually comes up. Took a huuuuuge~ boat out from the harbour and went waaaaaaay~ beyond the mountains there outside your window. I was on that ship for so long that the moon was went perfectly round till it got tinier and tinier then bigger and huger until it was all full again. A lot of the time there was nothing but sea as far as you could see. Just the blue water and the clear skies above. Can you imagine that? We talked about the ocean a few times, right? It's like a big neverending puddle."He mimics a hoarse laughter to himself. That experience of his coming in to play. As long as it sounds convincing that will be enough.That's when Seneca spies it. Her little cheek shifts ever so slightly. A signifier he had seen so many times prior.She can hear him. She can't speak. She can't see. She may not even be able to comprehend him, but this has happened so many times. Surely, surely he was right. She can hear him.Hoping his experience was not about to mislead him, he followed up as he had a thousand times before. He continues to speak. To comfort and keep company those who stand upon the precipice.Hereon, he will never again make mention of them parting.Instead, he will revere her with a special gentleness he harbours only for the dead or soon to be so. He will continue allowing her to revel in his tales, ushering what he can out of himself against his sorrow to sound bright, bombastic, beautiful.Sometimes he'd even gesture to himself or her, just to let her hear the sound of his familiar leathers creaking against his figure.He continues to tell her stories of the blue sea.He continues to tell her stories of the blue sky and the white fluffy clouds above.He omits the wartime violence perpetrated at sea that stained that immaculate blue a bloody crimson.He will never tell her about those kind of things. Not even now.She was a tiny waif thing when they first crossed paths. She addressed him as she had everyone else thus far."WHUH! You're so big! Where are ya' from?! Can you tell me stories?! Pleasepleaseplease-" The infantile pronounciation and innocent little smile set his heart aglow, as it would hundreds of others. Even he was not immune to such things.He lied to her then, that he was merely a nomad. He was wandering as a free spirit, making friends, charming damsels, bartering and causing all manner of child friendly hijinks.He never tells her the truth of things.He was returning from one skirmish on his way to another.More specifically, he had personally put an end to a battle and was due to do the same elsewhere.His life had consisted of traveling from one open battlefield to anotherr, protecting the little girl's motherland through unparalleled violence while she lingered in this little establishment with nary a clue of the world warring around her.Long life and immortality quickly robs one of belonging. When you have no tue place or allegience to the world around you serving as a private mercenary becomes the most obvious and agreeable career path. A man needs purpose, regardless of how vague and unfulfilling. Not to mention coinage.The plague that which was eternal life brought a great many negatives. Most importantly was a complete and utter lack of fear of death. It brought an immense loneliness and took a toll until now utterly unexplored on the human psyche and soul. To live with so few concerns made way for others of a darker and troubling nature, such as each and every face of hundreds of thousands that have fallen to him. Each face distorted horrifically in fear and agony imprinted into his core memory in perfect clarity.He tried a great many different ways to cope. Drinking. Violence. Drugs.He'd wander to and fro across the country in a stupor, hoping it would somehow allow him to forget what is always going to be unforgettable.When that little girl first accosted him at the entrance of the inn, he felt something new. Something warm. A comfort he had not felt in an age. Something that liquor and narcotics could never come close to bringing.So of course he told her a great many things.Beautiful flowers he had bundled into a bouqet from a battlefield.How strangely beautiful mist snaking through the forest at night was and it obscuring the final battle in the morrow.About the ravishing taste of miracle spring water found in a nearby ravine he and the other soldiers drank of after their immense defeat.About another boundless sapphire sky unblemished and brilliant after waking up amidst another battleground.Everything else was omitted. He refused to tell her about human ugliness. Human stupidity. The endless pointless expenditure of human lives as they warred with one another over seemingly very little.Everything was strictly sweet, beautiful and lovely. It was only now, after repeating this act for another fallen comrade for the hundredth odd time, had he realized he was probably doing this for his own sake and rather to maintain any false sense of her own purity.This was one of the only true pleasues he had ever found in life. To share and pay reverance to memories of his that were anywhere from a dozen to a hundred years old with her. It brought some strange feeling of salvation, if very slight. Five years had become ten years so quickly with her and he knew in his heart she was nearing adulthood. That is why he stationed himself nearby. Each day now was a dice roll. Each day forward only brought her speeding faster and harder toward the end.Now, that end had come. He had shared the last story he could with her.He will never see her again. He can't share anything with her again.The night had hit it's most atramentous pitch now and her breathing had began to pause. The first slight but familiar to him. Another pause, longer this time. Longer... Longer...The thread that lingered was fit to snap.It was then Seneca gestures over shoulder to her parents to enter the room again. There, the three of them watched on in silence.He felt it, then. One of the miserably few tiny embers that still burned in his chest had suddenly extinguished.Tomorrow his solemn and lonely travels begin anew. Long, painstakingly long travels without end."Now it's your turn to travel, kid." He murmurs gently."Yours will make for the most exciting story yet. You're going to travel to a new world. A world nobody has ever told you about. A world totally unlike anything you've ever heard. You'll be able to spring out of bed and go wherever the hell you feel like."He couldn't bring himself to say what was on his mind, then.He wanted to tell her that death is not sorrowful. It's an unparalleled joy laden with tears."It's up to you now, kid. You better have some damn good stories for us all when we catch up with you."He knew in his heart that at the very least the child's parents will make a similar journey someday. She'll be able to meet them again and finally regale some tales of her own.Cold reality, however. Now sets in.Seneca's burden, becomes nauseatingly clear in this instant."I can't see you again, kid.""I'm stuck here forever. I'm going to be left behind by you and everyone else.""I want more than anything for this not to be a goodbye. Your journey is only starting. I want to see you again."None of this escapes him, it's grief stricken internalized lament.Instead he says something else entirely."I'll see you soon, kid."One more miserable lie.She departs, then. Right in front of all of them.Her final mote of life is spent affixing her face into a tired tranquil smile.Her own way of responding."See ya' soon, Bandy!"A single tear started to glide slowly down her cheek.

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