Lanfear's Diary

[Mon Jul 1 23:08:32 1996]
From: Awakening the thoughts of Dreamers (lanfear)

Subject: Past - part one.

An introduction to some of the Guilty.

Castaway, who saved my life with pieces ripped raw and bleeding from his own soul. And who then almost broke me when I thought myself recovered... How did we come to this pass with love, only love, as our guide?

Apple, betraying a trust to chance a lust that can never be fulfilled. Helping me and hurting me, and never realising what it is he does by his faithlessness.

Mage, he who summons daemons. Who gave to me myself, enough to allow me to face losing him. What is love? Faithless, but unrelenting. But no longer painful.

Mako, who I trust more than I should. Notorious for being what my heart tells me he is not, poising me in the high point between betrayal and regret.

These names shall come up in the future, with a little more explanation than you now have. And it will be you, the Jury, who must decide.... Am I forsaken, or did I forsake.

[Thu Jul 4 13:38:45 1996]
From: Pinioned by the only Bonds which Hold (lanfear)

Subject: Past - part two.

When first I came here, I was Innocent. Hovering on the verge of life, of the paths of fire, never quite daring to try lest I be burned for my temerity. I remember how young I was, and how uncertain. And I remember what it was that aged me, almost to the limits of endurance.

Lugh, it was never your fault. My love for you was three-parts desperation at the best of times, a belief in my first chance, and my last. You were always right to refuse me, for fires that burn so bright are too hot to live by, and the embers that they leave are the falling of lives into dust.

A year went by. How could I look at anything else? Your eyes were like summer when I was lost in winter, and dawn broke over me in the complexity of your smile.

But in me then the hope was dying, for the last chance had been essayed and there could be no recovery. Stubbornness alone had brought me to the brink of love, and there was nothing left in me to seek it again.

I was dragged down by my demons, into the chasms of my mind where I was left screaming in chains on the edge of the abyss. Where I clutched futilely at my bonds when they were all that held me back from a place within that I dared not see. The covering broken over like ice in the thaw by the light that I had followed to you.

And at the last I descended into darkness for I could hang on no more, and surely the evil within could hurt no more than the jagged bones of my fingers from holding to something that slipped away... Behind me was the future and before me was the past, and I dared to see what I had hidden from myself and the pain was too much and I let myself fall...

I was brought back. One caught me who had watched my fall, although I had thought myself alone in that night where surely no other dared to tread. But he, trapped in his own darkness, falling to the demons he could not fight, had cast me back up to the light I had fled, and knowing his sacrifice I would not fail again.

And so I knew love. Not for the sun that had blinded me, but for a fellow Castaway who held tight to me as we fought our way out together. Love fades. Friendship holds. Which is the truer, more valuable gem?

[Sat Jul 6 14:09:53 1996]
From: Pinioned by the only Bonds which Hold (lanfear)

Subject: Past - Part three.

You were not there when they hurt me. I have never seen hate but in the children's eyes when they came to hurt me, and leave me bleeding in the corner from wounds that were not. I fought them for my right to learn that I was nothing, and that the sky cared no more than any other. But it was my pride that broke me.

Pride. Stupidity. If I had begged I might have been spared, but I would not be defeated. And so I stood silent, strong, unfalling beneath the winter stars waiting for a summer that never came. And it was the years of winter that finally cracked me open.

I do not know, I do not know why they had to hurt me. But I can see my wrongs in my memories of them, knowing that nothing is uncaused, that the night could not devour me without shadows in my eyes already, waiting. Hurting. Laughing at them and bringing them in to eye me, in justice and in right casting me from myself. Knowing they had cause.

You were not there when they hurt me. But if you had been, then maybe you would have hurt me too.

[Sat Jul 6 19:54:11 1996]
From: Pinioned by the only Bonds which Hold (lanfear)

But this is not the true story of my life, or even close. What of the good times I have shared? The afternoon on the common last summer where we lay in the trees like basking cats, eating ice-cream that was already half-melted, and the hiding game we played on the way back to the landrover? I remember the Great Punting Expedition, where we sacrificed the whisky to light the fire, and punted back the next morning with our punter wearing two bin bags tied with string, swigging Ruby Port from a bottle.

The night in spring we spent curled up together on various seats and men, brazenly offering 3-in-a-bed where we knew the offer could not be taken up. And the times when I have needed you, or you have needed me, and we have been there for one another. To be trusted in pain is the highest compliment of all, and I have been given it.

We are friends. There are no unpaid debts between us. And this is the greatest love of all.

[Thu Jul 11 11:55:23 1996]
From: Pinioned by the only Bonds which Hold (lanfear)

Subject: Present.

What shall I say of my present? That the past slips away from me, now more than ever, on the winds of change?

What do I wait for, what revelation to make it easier? My world is changing and it forces me out from my broken cocoon into the vicissitudes of life.

The safety is passing. No longer can I turn my eyes away and say I do not see. That time is gone and now I must enter with open eyes to see the labyrinth of dangers ahead of me, but enter anyway.

There is no going back when you have set foot on the path. Follow your shadow through the jaws of the man-trap and hope you trigger it not. I hope I have the strength of resolution to gnaw through bone to escape if caught.

And if not? My eyes are open. I can see the future.

I set my teeth to bone.

[Thu Jul 11 21:12:16 1996]
From: I Trusted You (lanfear)

Subject: Present. Mako.

Hurt. Hurt. Hurt.

You want more? You want to know why? I want to tell you. I want the winds to hear. But I can't. Silenced by the ties that are me, that are what I am.

Betrayal.

How can you betray so easily? If you end up with nothing then that is the hand you played, who were dealt so much.

There may have been better endings, once. I hoped for one such. But I was wrong, I don't yet know how wrong.

How much stupidity, how much what you are? Something I can never know.

How can I still trust you?

Easy, that one. Because I'm me.

And because I still want you back.

[Tue Oct 1 09:30:34 1996]
From: Escaping the Chains that Bind (lanfear)

Subject: Present

There are many things I could say about my present, too many to keep track of and they fly from my thoughts kaleidoscoping in the sunlight.

There is a silence that is broken, and so a vengeance I could take. Words of others I could lay to rest. But vengeance cuts the soul like a knife of ice, and so I resist. For now I resist, however much you may have hurt me, however much I cannot forgive.

For, Mako, I have broken the silence you enjoined upon me and cast my words upon the winds. My lies were like chains upon me that I could not escape, and now free of them I return to sunlight, knowing that the blood will be on your hands. Not mine. Never mine.

Vengeance. Forgiveness. I tried to forgive until I hurt with the trying, losing myself to the shadows for I would be my ideal, whatever it cost me. But at the last, I cannot. You hurt us too deeply, and I acknowledge now that I cannot ever understand.

I fight my need for vengeance, but if I can ever wreak it without hurting others then beware me. My fires are hidden deep but not yet fallen to ashes, and though I try I cannot hold them forever.

Forgive me? I need no forgiveness of yours, for you are betrayer, father of lies, thief of that which I held most precious.

Burn in hell.

[Tue Oct 1 20:10:34 1996]
From: Escaping the Chains that Bind (lanfear)

Subject: Present.

A tissue of lies being woven again to bind me. Fear lest they be believed and the guilty goes his way leaving innocence slain behind him.

Burn in hell, I said. And this time no guilt will jolt me into acquiescence, for the choice was yours, is yours, always, and ultimately yours. So burn, if you will. Bleed, if you will. Bleed and kill me but I will not stop you because this shadow over us all is not my shadow, and I have found sunlight again after you plunged me into darkness.

I do not wish you dead. I have never wished that on anyone. So do not turn your sins on me. Return to the real world from your kaleidoscope of fantasy, if you dare. And I will seize you and hold you so you cannot turn away ever again, and make you see the wasteland you trod and tread still, and the skeletons of all our dreams in the dust behind you.

Mako, Mako. So much promise defied to make you what you are and ever will be. The fatal weakness within you that you do not have the courage to turn and see, see the deaths that hover like shadows in your wake.

Easy to die. Hard, so hard, to live and make good. Easy to hurt all again, and cast the blood at the last onto the hands of the innocent and turn them back from the gates of Paradise.

Haven't you hurt us all enough?

[Tue Oct 1 23:12:28 1996]
From: Escaping the Chains that Bind (lanfear)

Subject: And one more thing.

I never wanted to win, Mako. I have not won. Look at me, see the fear and sickness in me from the cards I had to play, the cards that you dealt me.

Look at me. I had no choice.

[Fri Oct 4 13:28:16 1996]
From: A Broken Flame of Truth (lanfear)

Reading over old files the other day, I realised that my namelines are in many ways a history of my life. They tell me what I was feeling at each point, far more than any of my edits can. I wish I could go through all the files and discover all my old namelines, lay them before me and remember. One day soon, I probably will.

But it's a long labour, and I wonder how much it will be worth it at the end of it. I wonder why we are so obsessed with the past, for certainly I am. The past is gone, and the future is ahead of us.

But it is a future we can never be sure of. We come from nothing and we can never be certain when we will be returned to nothing. Cherish the past. Learn to love it, and love yourself. It is all you will have.

Sometimes I believe that, sometimes I don't. I don't have the courage not to believe in a kind of God, not the courage to bear the idea that it is all, finally, for nothing. But maybe, somewhere deep within me, I reject the idea of that purpose and look squarely at the nothing and the lack of redemption. And maybe that is the source of the darkness within me.

But I'll go look up the namelines anyway.

[Tue Oct 22 10:49:21 1996]
From: Small Glass Worlds (lanfear)

Subject: Me

(Warning: I'm about to give my inferiority complex an airing)

Nuada. What would you do if I did come to love you? What would we both do then? Maybe I would have to try to love you, but with me that trying comes naturally and I have to fight not to, you should know that about me by now...

But I don't understand. You said you could love me if you tried but how, I can't see anything about myself that someone like you could come to love. I feel honoured to have as much of you as I do, to have you as friend and that little more. You are quicker than I, cleverer than I. There are more facets to you than I could ever have, more interests than I could ever share. I think you care more than I do, even. What is there about me that could hold you?

It has always been the same. Castaway, Mage, Apple, even Mako at the beginning - I could see nothing about me that could interest you all so much. Castaway, you always cared more than I did, always loved more. I just sat there and took what you were giving so intensely, and yet you carried on as if I were equal partner, but I don't understand why. I did not deserve you.

Mage. You healed me with your calmness and your random ways. When I took all my troubles out on you, like kicking a puppy, you stayed calm and instead of shouting back you asked me what the matter was, and gave me the comfort I needed. You are handsome, intelligent, you could have had better than me. I still don't see why you didn't.

What is there about me to inspire this? Tell me if you can, because I don't see it. Who am I? I see a woman racked with insecurities, fighting constantly with the mess she calls her psyche. Without the spirit and the confidence to be herself and always failing in her attempts to understand what you want her to be and to be that instead. Trying to care, trying to heal, but often too lazy to do that, to notice when it needs to be done.

That is what I see. So why do you love that?

[Wed Oct 23 23:49:07 1996]
From: Small Glass Worlds (lanfear)

Subject:

               we     all
                                          live in
                             small
                                    glass
                       worlds

.

  break one
                              see
                                         what happens

Subject: Thoughts

Fantasies. Stories to be made up in my mind in which I am the heroine, and good is good and evil is honest, and there is somewhere a white knight to ride off into the sunset with. Simple stories.

I started when I was a child. When the world was too much for me to bear I retreated into my head and thought up long and involved tales of other worlds, other people. As I grew up the tales took me over, and I spent most of my days walking, up and down, in the street outside as it grew dark, while other children played or worked or do whatever it is that children do. Making up the stories inside my mind.

There was nothing else. I wanted to escape my dull existence, and because my body could not, was forced to school and torment and the knowledge, always before me, of what I could not do, because of this my mind escaped me. Before anything, anything at all, came the stories.

At first they were simple tales of me as brave and beautiful heroine. After a while I was joined in them by a man, whose love for me was simple and pure and honest, and who I would always love back, more than the world. His hair shifted from blond to brown to black, but at last steadied as my other form did. We grew names, personalities. A rut worn in my mind. And round and round I went in the world outside, tolerating but never accepting, never belonging.

It began to frighten me. I wondered what would happen if I lost control of the stories and their dream-shapes took over, my grip already tenuous, it would take little to lose... I tried to turn away, turn from the stories, but their grip was too strong, the rut in my mind too deep. And the world no more attractive than it had been before. Fear. A desperate longing. Fantasies I would gladly die for. I was not yet twelve.

And then I lost them.

It did not happen suddenly, or all at once. But it came to pass that I did not always finish a thread, but left it hanging as I started the next. I was no longer satisfied with the empty tales of heroism and love. There was nothing my other selves could do that they had not already done, time and again. A new theme, a new twist, sometimes lasted a little while. But they all faded again.

I began to realise that the lives my other selves lived were no better than mine, no brighter than mine, no more interesting. But I looked with envy upon their happiness as they left me. I turned to the world, for the first time in too many years.

Their legacy remains, though. A belief in 'true love', a certain trust. But these days when I take up the thread of a story it takes a darker turn, and I can no longer believe in the perfect purity of the dream-lover.

The stories are gone, and in their place not much, it seems sometimes. Or that I have woken from the dream, from my long sickness, and there is sunlight in my eyes.

And it blinds me.

[Thu Nov 7 13:48:20 1996]
From: Dispel the Shadow in my eyes (lanfear)

Subject: The Attack of the Spider God

It was the size of a dustbin lid. And it was on my wall.

I saw it instantly as I entered, crouched malevolently in the shadow of the shelf (it was, I mean, not me) like an eldritch monster, waiting to spring. I froze.

It had been a long time. I had thought, almost, that the Spider God had forgotten me after all these long months moving from place to place, hiding. But I had been here too long, it would appear. And disdaining his lesser minions the God himself had come to dispose of me, once and for all.

My thoughts raced. What could I do, unaided and alone, against such an entity? A mere matchbox could not contain him as it had done all the others. A bathtub would not suffice to hold him. Momentarily I wondered how he had got in, but one look at the window swinging wide answered me. No help there. I was on my own.

Pushing the fear to the back of my mind, I slowly advanced. The great one's eyes followed me, I could see my six reflections moving in their depths. But as I drew close, he sprang!

I was too slow to evade and he landed on me, throwing me to the floor, his eight huge legs clawing me and his great mandibles clashing close to my face as I desperately attempted to fend him off. But he was too strong for me and I knew, even as my strength failed and his jaws opened above my face, that this time, this time I was going to die.

The realisation gave me the strength I needed and, with one last desperate surge, I rolled aside, between the cutting claws at the end of his legs, and staggered to my feet, thinking only of escape.

Behind me I could hear the clicking of the Spider God's claws as he righted himself and prepared to spring again, but even as I leaped for the door it opened and my trusty sidekick entered, alerted by the screaming.

He took in the situation at once and drew his Meganuke +1 of Spider Killing. He pulled the trigger and a beam of blue light impaled the Spider God through the abdomen. It screamed and exploded, filling my room with bits of flying leg.

My trusty sidekick, awestruck, lowered his weapon. 'Holy Macaroni, Lanfear, I've never seen one so big,' he murmured.

'No, Mr Duck,' I replied, picking myself up off the floor where the explosion had thrown me. 'And you never will again.' I looked with a kind of sorrow at the remains of my arch enemy.

And that was the true story of How I Killed the Spider God.

(With only a little exaggeration for effect)

[Tue Dec 3 10:22:25 1996]
From: Shadowlight (lanfear)

Subject: Dear Santa,

There's no point in writing this Christmas list, is there. You know what I want. The same damn thing I've wanted every Christmas. The same thing I've wanted every other damn day of every damn year since I was old enough to see the difference. but I'm never going to get it.

Please God, please God, I want to be thin. Just that. Is it too much to ask? Size 8, size 10, size 12, 14, 16. Anything less than this. Only that. Not to watch my friends in leather and silk and the men gravitating to them like moths to a flame. Not the wrenching hurt within when I see Her, with the perfect figure, the perfect everything, and the men drawn to the flame who can't have her, and they don't see me. They never see me.

All my life. Running after others hurting and my lungs burning and I can't keep up and they leave me behind, despising me for it. But I've tried and I've tried and I'm stuck with it and I cry in the night when there's no one to hear. But nothing changes.

I forget the insults they used when I was a child. A block, somewhere in my memory. I hear them less, now, but every one I remember. Over a year ago, when one I counted friend called me a beached whale. I was congratulated on how well I took it. I don't remember what I said. I doubt I could have told you at the time. A straight barb into me. Hurts. And even then I knew he didn't mean it. What if he had I couldn't tell you.

That's not all of it, but the other parts you don't need to know. Covering up my disfigured body. Scarred by my weight, inside and out.

And that's what I am. And it may not matter to you but it sure as hell does to me. And that's my Christmas Wish and every other wish of every other time. And that's why I don't believe in Santa.

[Tue Dec 3 11:02:07 1996]
From: Shadowlight (lanfear)

Subject: And that's the hardest entry I've ever written.

[Sun Dec 15 16:17:04 1996]
From: Shadowlight (lanfear)

Subject: A fire gone out.

I wonder, sometimes. I knew there was a fire in me when I was a child. Bleak, perhaps, intolerant, but fire nonetheless. I knew what it felt like. But I don't seem to feel that fire anymore.

The dreams of the me that I was might surprise those who know me as I am now. There have been more changes than you can know. The most obvious one, perhaps, that I no longer hate you. I used to hate everyone who lived and was human for what they were doing to the world. When I loved the wilds and the feeling of the wind and knew that the woods were shrinking, that the wind was tainted. Then I wanted to kill everyone. I hated all the humans because I had given my heart to the animals and the wilds. To nature.

I felt so passionately about that. About everything. I had a temper I couldn't control and no patience with those who could not see. I fought anyone who tried to bind me. But in the end, it would appear, I bound myself.

The dreams are gone. The passion has faded. There is little I want the way I once did. The things that I cared so passionately about engage a vague sorrow in me, but little more. But what do I love in their place?

I don't think I can ever learn to love the human race. Too late, now. But I've betrayed my passion for nature as well. I don't have the courage to love something that's dying before me. And the fires that raged in me turn inwards and are consumed upon themselves, leaving little but ashes.

So what do I dream now?

[Sun Dec 15 19:46:16 1996]
From: Shadowlight (lanfear)

Subject: Nuada.

Does he really know how insecure I am? How unsure that I can be loved for what I am? Trying to be me but sure that can't keep him. Loving him and seeing all the parts of him that are beyond me. Wondering when the pain will come.

[Mon Dec 16 13:26:28 1996]
From: Shadowlight (lanfear)

Subject: Past

Do you know how easily you can destroy a bond from within, by not believing? That's what I did to Mage. Too opaque for me to see, and without seeing I couldn't trust.

And the path through the storm wavered and went, and the winds touched me and threw me through the black sky, and my body crashed to earth, the fragile bones broken, and I waited to be found.

And he never saw. Never saw me stop believing, never saw me lose control, never saw me fall though I begged him to see. Needed him to see without my telling to prove that he loved me. And when he didn't see I rounded on him, talons razor-sharp to draw blood. Aiming to hurt, to maim, had there been a part of him I could have reached, could have harmed. And only then, when I screamed it at him with the fire and darkness of desperation, of falling, did he see.

I did it to myself. I still do. Too uncertain to believe in your love I'll make you prove it to me, over and again, in empathy and in the impossible. And when you don't see what I'm hiding from you that I want you to find I'll turn on you, fire and ice and you won't see me coming until I've wounded you to the heart. And then we'll both die.

Be wary, beloved. Teach me to believe in you. Love me, and we will live.

In eight months Mage never did learn to see me falling. But then, I wasn't wrong. He never did love me.

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