Kyra: Von, we are going to be docking in a couple hours. Do you have a few minutes?
Von: Always Kyra, what’s on your mind?
Kyra: I’m scared. Actually, scared is not the right word. Can I ask you a question?
Von: Please, yes.
Kyra: Why did Papa put you on Bravo?
Von: You want the long story or the short version? (Von wishes he could see her)
Kyra: I want it all. Every last detail.
Von: Okay. I’ll start with the short version. I owed your grandfather a debt. I’m repaying that debt by looking out for you.
Kyra: (silence)
Von: What are you thinking?
Kyra: Not what I needed to hear. Feeling as if Papa didn’t trust me, didn’t believe in me.
Von: That is—
Kyra: Hear me out. Papa didn’t tell me who you were or why you were on board. What does that tell you? What does that say? What do you think that does for my self-confidence? What message do you think I read into that?
Von: Kyra, you don’t need me. Papa—
Kyra: Frail the logic Von. This isn’t about what is, it is about what I feel. You know what is hard?
Von: Tell me.
Kyra: To have an experience that you cannot share. To speak a language no one else can understand. To be given a puzzle that no one else can help you put together. Can you help me Von?
Von: (sighs) No.
Kyra: You know what I like about you Von?
Von: Pray tell.
Kyra: You’ve always been honest. I knew before I asked the question, before I came here that you had no answers for me. And you know what?
Von: What?
Kyra: If you had tried to give me advice, I would have shut you out. But you didn’t.
Von: Kyra, you have seen things I will never see. You have experienced things I will never experience. You have gifts beyond my comprehension to understand. Besides, I am an old Hynerian. My life is all but behind me. My future is uncertain. Hope is in short supply. So I live for my mission, however ill-equipped I am to the task. And, at this moment, blind as I am, ignorant in equal measure, I know the only thing I can offer is my ears, to listen without judgment.
Kyra: (leans over and kisses Von’s forehead) Thank you Von, but you sell yourself short. You have offered me much more than just your ears.
Von: And what might that be?
Kyra: Your heart. (she reaches out and takes his hands) Your debt has been paid many times over. But, you still give.
Von: If—
Kyra: Shhhhh. Don’t talk. I don’t need your words. Feel my hands. Feel the warmth?
Von: Yes.
Kyra: That is not me. That is you. I am terrified Von. I cannot see past this fear inside of me. I feel it consuming me, eating me alive from the inside out and I have no idea how to stop it. My mind is hollow and questions are bouncing around seeking what is not there. This gnawing fear feels alive, as if it has a life of its own and is clouding everything before me and you are reaching out, with your heart. You are not judging me. You are not advising me. You are simply communicating, with your heart, that you are here. And you know what Von?
Von: What Kyra?
Kyra: You are wrong about one thing.
Von: And what might that be?
Kyra: I do need you. I need you without obligation. Without a mission. I need just you. Can you do that?
Von: Yes.
12 comments:
....maybe it's because of my own mental ramblings, and your kind support of them, but I found this piece so moving...I have a lump stuck in my throat. So many words I've never spoken are right here. THANK YOU
Grace, you are most welcome. I'm trying to show Kyra in the raw so to speak, so show her not as some superhero, but as someone who has doubts and fears and concerns and worries just like anyone else. I still feel like I'm missing the mark. What she is feeling and what I'm writing are two different things--or maybe I'm just being too hard on myself. We may see one more chapter like this or another journal entry to see if I can get it where I want it. I'm just not feeling the angst as I reread what I wrote that I know she is feeling. Of course, if writing and communicating was easy, what fun would that be. :-D
Thanks for the kind words. Hugs to you my friend. :-)
Agree with Grace, I felt the same way upon reading it. From the title, where can replaces will and through the chapter. Feel it as a continuance of what went before, just as poignant. Feeling the need to ask questions and knowing there will be no answers, even had she not said it, that feeling would be there. Likewise when she comments that what he tells her is not what she needed to hear, that this is about feelings and not what the truth of papa's intentions may of been, and finally when she thanks him for responding as she had known he would, without being able to offer her any clarification. Beautiful moment at the end, and a hint perhaps of papa's reasons for putting Von on board, at least it's a nice thought in my mind.
As always, you evoke such emotion through your chapters. This was a wonderful read, and it brought Kyra closer once more.
Hope you're having a wonderful day, xo
PS beautiful coral-like fractal, an image to love.
"Kyra: Frail the logic Von. This isn’t about what is, it is about what I feel. You know what is hard?
Von: Tell me.
Kyra: To have an experience that you cannot share. To speak a language no one else can understand. To be given a puzzle that no one else can help you put together."
Another chapter that moves me to tears. You are writing of Kyra, but I am reading me. Often. Things in my life, things hidden deep in my heart I don't have the words to express that stir restlessly in me tormenting me--my angst. And you give words for it, unknowingly, and those words bring tears and a kind of relief I don't know how to explain. You truly do make your characters real. As grace said, "thank you". xox
"One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter." James Earl Jones
We only have our own experiences to show us the truth, and I wonder, if we don't all feel this way (and I suspect this is not the case, though that could be only wishful thinking), as Oliviah worded so well, of feeling alone more often than not with our own thoughts and feelings. Even when we want to or are able to voice them adequately, there would have to be a heart open enough to really hear them, a Von, without judgement, without thought, just a free flow from one to the other. And it's not necessarily the 'bad', but the good too, the depth of love for example, of happiness, of pride in others, those are the things hardest to express in words or at least for some reason, those are the things that I personally find often to be the case that those I want to listen, don't seem to be able to hear me. (Which sounds like whining, but isn't. Honestly. :-D) In short, I love that JEJ quote, I hear great truth in it.
Oliviah, I suppose we have all had the feeling of wondering if anyone ever sees what we see, hears what we hear or feels what we feel. It is a doubt we will never truly be able to answer.
To give you one small example that acts as a reminder to myself, I will look at an object with my left eye and then again with my right eye. My eyes, for whatever reason, see differently. The left eye is stronger and picks up much more light. The colors, when viewed with my left eye are more brilliant. So I ask myself, if even my own two eyes see differently, how differently does someone else see, or hear, or feel.
So where does that leave us? I think at the doorstep of compassion, of not judging, of listening with our eyes and ears and heart.
As always, my dear Beautiful Soul, thank you for your kind words. :-)
Sunshine, I love that quote and I think more of us than not feel that sense of quiet desperation, of wanting to be understood, of knowing we are not understood, but being at a lost for how to bridge the gap between one heart and another. We live most of our lives alone. Think about it. How much time do you spend in engaged interaction with another and how much time is spent otherwise. We live mostly with ourselves, in our minds. Even when we are with others, many times we are still alone, still not connecting, still not there. These are the moments, I think, when we feel most alone, most lonely, most disconnected. I've been lonely in a crowd or at a party, and perfectly fine all alone at home.
Kyra is at this point, with the experience of The Unknowns in particular, the same as combat soldiers, of having an experience that those who have not had it cannot understand and therefore there is no point in even discussing it.
Here's another; the more you talk, the less you will say. My thought is, we only feel the need to find words, when the wordless is not understood.
And I agree with what you said above, sometimes the loneliest place is in a crowd. We need others to be aware of the seperation between us and them. I'm drawn, just by how it is worded, to your sentence about living our lives in our minds. Whenever I get a moment to people watch, this is, roughly-quoted of course :-), the thought that occupies me as I look at them, that each of them has a life inside, of thought, of memory, of emotion, of hopes, dreams, fears, most of which are known only to them and will never be given any other expression than the silent. That each of them, and this is so obvious of course, but at the same time such a fascinating thought, lives their lives from the inside out, looking through their eyes, processing the world with their minds and their hearts, how different our vantage points our, how seperate our lives are (though connected) and yet, we are all fundamentally the same, we all think, and feel, and fear, and hope, and dream. One of these days, I'm going to tie that in in a post along with an experience I once had where I was caught in the middle of some rioting, and when people started running for their lives, they ran mostly in twos.
Just thoughts, thanks for listening. :-D
And one last one, Kyra, I think, will find what she needs from within.
We are each a universe unto ourselves as I like to say, and sadly, for most of us, we see ourselves as the center of all that is known. :-D
What is said and what is heard very rarely, in my experience, is the same thing. Find someone that hears what you say and I say hang on to them with all your strength--they will be few and far between. I think Kyra is on the road to being one of those rare ones. :-)
Sweetest, as always, your fully engaged comments are most appreciated. :-)
And along the road, she can rest with Von. :-)
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