Tarot Campaign

Interlude          Infatuation

On William and Ewen: Serious and R.G.

S: I'm beginning to think that I've got to make Paris admit that she was infatuated with William, so that she can accept his death and move on. I was hoping that she wouldn't have to. The peanut gallery aside, somehow admitting to having been in love with him seems to give some credence to all the nasty rumours, gives them a grain of truth in spirit if not in fact. *sigh* I was hoping I wouldn't have to put her through that, that she would simply decide that she was in love with Ewen. But it hasn't happened yet and *sigh*, well, I may have to make her confront this. Then she might be ready to make a more real commitment to Ewen.

Pirate Silver's ship hold.
"Oh, God, not again!" Paris prayed silently, feeling the bottled emotions surge once more as she watched the Princess take William's sword and badge up out of the hold. She felt as though the ship heaved and tossed on a mighty tempest and that she, with her comparatively little strength was trying to hold closed a door designed to open in the direction the wind was blowing. It was all in her head and heart. This ship rode its course steadily. But, in the dark and empty stretches within herself, the storm roared full blast.

"We have to do something about this," Real Girl shouted from the spar to which she clung, water streaming down her face. "Now! We can't keep on like this!"

"What do you suggest?" Serious' voice seemed to bubbling up from the depths to which her weight in armor had plunged her, grimly hanging on to her sword and exerting great physical strength to drag herself back to the surface, armor and all. "Shall I simply command the storm to cease and excise you from my being all together? Should you cease to exist, emotion would never control us again." Serious' mailed hand closed gently, firmly, around Real Girl's throat. "No more pain. No more indecision. No more tears."

"Then you would become," Real Girl strangled, "truly as Sir Juda, as Ewen warned us: one who loses part of herself in order to escape the horrors of war and life. Would you be Sir Juda?" She gestured and the hole appeared in Serious' left breast, a sword point entering a moment later.

"No!" gasped Serious. "No!"

Real Girl smiled - but with neither pity nor triumph. They both settled down on a wave-dashed rock, back to back. The storm continued to rage, but, somehow they spoke within a pocket of calm. Real Girl's voice was sad and soft. "Then let us work through this together. You can command my storm; I can save your soul. Only together. God have mercy upon us."

"Amen," Serious whispered.

Then her voice turned harsh. "William is dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! There is no other interpretation for Anton's vision through the Cup of Earth. The skull. The hand. The sword and badge taken from Him. The..." her voice almost cracked, "stain on the tabard. Dead! I would have tried to believe his orders - to believe no rumour of his death - as long as possible. But how could the Cup lie? He - Is - Dead!"

Real Girl wailed, "But I don't want him dead! I wanted him! I loved him! I wanted him to show some interest in Paris - as a girl - or even as a companion. You would have served him forever. And I could have hoped! If he'd had time for more conversations there might have been a chance to attract him. And Lorraine was right: he was definitely worth attracting. Hewas all the noble virtues that you admire -- and a member of the Order -- and stimulating, educational and exciting! Everything I want as well. The fact that he was also a prince was unfortunate. But I wanted him."

Serious, roughly. "An infatuation? You are storming over an infatuation! Preposterous! I should destroy you!"

Real Girl: "I am the part that cares, the part that Ewen believes makes us different from Sir Juda!"

S: "And caring too much will destroy us." She gestured at the storm.

RG: "No! He wants us to care! Caring too little is what destroyed the Mirror and the World! Think! Think!" she begged. "Thinking is one of the things you're supposed to be good at. We loved Prince William. You loved him too."

S: "No! I admired him. I believed in him, in the ideals he represented! They are what we have longed for all our life: to belong in a place where honour, justice, courage, good deeds, and truth have real meaning. He was all of those things! As leader of the Order he had to be. How could I not honour him above all men?"

RG: "You loved him. You loved him more than I did."

S, with a bare trace of panic: "It would be wrong! It is not possible for a prince to love a peasant. There is a gulf too deep for society to accept such. If Lady duGryphon still feels that gulf simply married to a noble knight.... No! It would be wrong for me to want Him to feel that way about Paris. Wrong! And we are committed to Not - Doing - Wrong!"

RG, whispering: "You loved him. If honour means so much, how can you lie? We - loved - William!"

S, with a catch: "Cannot admiration be enough for you? To want the way you wanted is - is a fairy tale. A wickedness that gives truth to the ugly rumours about William and Paris. If you want, then how far is it to step from wanting to offering to whoring? Why drag us down to the muck of the rumour-mongers?"

CRACK! RG pulled back her hand from slapping Serious. Paris could feel her cheeks burning. "I am no more a whore than you are," RG hissed. "Lady duGryphon told Paris to judge herself by her actions not by her thoughts. I am willing to say that the admiration was there - and so was the wanting. You lie to yourself to say otherwise. Both are part of us. Both! Admiration and Want! Ideal and Infatuation. If you can't deal with the truth, then let the storm tear Paris apart!

The wailing whipped around the rock. Real Girl clung to Serious who put her arms around her. In a pleading tone, Real Girl continued. "If we didn't love him -- really love him -- not just admire and want to make him proud -- then why do we mourn his loss so? Why can you not hold back the storm without destroying me?"

Serious choked. "No once else seems to understand what He meant to Paris. How we have lost our leadership, our place to belong, our future, our mentor, benefactor, guardian, friend, our ability to dream! It is like losing Papa again."

Real Girl snorted "We didn't think about him like a father at all."

Serious ignored the interruption. "We lost the position of royal knight. Everything he tried to make us - save the knighthood and the Order - and those only for as long as it can survive outlawed."

Real Girl prodded, "Then why did you not offer to swear to Carline? You intended to when you talked it over with Alessandro. How could Rhori's vague second and third-hand promises make enough difference that you did not. You could have offered. Just now. You could have and didn't!"

"Because you still mourn him," Serious responded brusquely. "We could not do a new mistress or master justice now, howsoever much we love her."

"If you admit that we love her, why not admit to loving him? WE still mourn him!" Real Girl shot back with an intensity like a red-hot needle. "WE don't want him to be dead! Because we LOVED him! The control is you. Do not put it all on me!"

Serious stood, flailing, on a rocky height looking down over ridges and ridges of barren canyon: "Is it not impossible to really be 'in love' when there is no love returned? There was never a sign that Paris was anything but a tool to be used and discarded if necessary. She was only unfortunately a girl to him; not desirably a girl. Why should I acknowledge a fantasy as 'love'? Why should I countenance such an admission if Paris meant so little?"

RG: "But he cared. He did! He got you new armor when the doppleganger ripped yours. He just couldn't afford to let caring affect his decision-making."

Serious: "No! We shouldn't! We shouldn't love if it is unrequited! Wanting is not the feeling a knight should have for her lord! It is the wrong reason for doing what we do! We shouldn't love!"

RG, quietly: "But we did. And we are paying the price."

Serious, brokenly: "No one else knows. I never gave him cause to think so. Never gave anyone cause to besmirch His honour."

RG, softly: "You never did. Just do not punish Paris for the feelings you could not help. He was worthy of love on many levels. Now -- help. Control. But know what you are controlling. Do not smother blindly."

Paris took a deep breath.

That night, after Carline and Cordelia were safely tucked into the small cabin Captain Silver had allotted the women, Paris slipped out. She wrapped herself in her all-weather cloak. [Between it, her armor and her sword, she had almost not made it back up from the depths of the ocean after the flying boat had dropped.] She made her way forward to where spray still broke as the ship's prow sliced through the billows. In a shadowed placed between a massive rope coil and the railing, Paris knelt and rested her head upon the railing. There she called up every memory and every feeling she had had for William: his pride, his anger, his praise, his worry - even the imagined kiss. She danced again that last beautiful dance and knelt again in the light of his sword, his voice, his touch warm and wonderful in her memory. Eventually something loosened, and months of unshed tears breached the dam. Into the salt sea, Paris wept.

Real Girl needs to be tougher. Serious is so rigid that she will shatter.

Hours or days later, Real Girl woke up again. "What now?"

Serious stood on a rocky hillside, armor glinting in the merciless sun: "I don't know. When we were last in Westmore, we were too miserable to - to really see how we felt about anything else."

Real Girl emerged out of the early morning mist, lifting her skirts daintily above the dewy grass of the flower-strewn meadow: "Ewen?"

Serious: "Ewen. We haven't done much to help our relationship with him grow."

Real Girl looked across the field towards the city, white towers tinted pink in the rising light: "He kisses really, really well!"

Serious, with half a grin, noted a sliver of green in the barrenness. A dandelion poking bravely through the crack in a boulder: "The second best kisser in the class. Yes, I remember."

Real Girl: "Hey! As far as we're concerned, he's the best!"

Serious: "But we've made him wait for months - with whatever dreams and hopes and fears he has grown in his own mind. We have not helped. We have not given anything in return for his patience and his friendship. There is so little of worth to offer him."

RG: "He said he knew our worth. Serious: "But what is that? What have we done besides feed fantasies and infatuations? And is that not a poor gift, unhealthy for the recipient? It is not friendship. It is not loving. Can it be good and right? Is it what we ought to be to him?"

RG: "What do we want to be to him? Rhori, Lorraine, Mia, Claire, Carline, all of those are friends. None of them have ever kissed Paris. What is Ewen to us? Fear and exhilaration. Warmth and soft thrills. He is home."

Serious: "He is a touchstone. He is shared experience and understanding. But we do not know how to value him enough. And - most of all, we must remember that he is NOT ours. So he is not home. It is wrong to expect that of him."

RG: "But -- the kisses..."

Serious: "Lorraine told us that a man wants someone who will kiss him. But he should want more than that. With all that he must be responsible for - with all the uncertainties of our life ... Should there not have been time to talk about real life? How will the demands of our professions sit in a permanent relationship? How will our dreams meld together if he grounds us in the physical and in the small thrills and triumphs of every day; but we seem to feed his infatuation with the grand and impossible? Is this really right? Is this really a fair exchange? Are we actually good for him? Are we even truly compatible?"

RG: "But we could be his Lady of the Grapes. And he could be our knight in shining armor. We love the people of the land and there is nothing that he has talked of that does not interest us. How is this not compatible?"

Serious: "Does not real love result in both being bettered? How do we better his life? He worried so about Paris last time that he got drunk and into fights. This is not what love should do! And how have we let him better us?"

RG: "He has held us together. He sees both sides of Paris and wants them both. Does this not make us better?"

Serious, with a trace of bitterness: "If we have loved an Ideal and he is dead, what do we bring a real person who is very human with very human needs? Are we saying that he is second best? Can we even really love? Or are we only fit for being infatuated with Ideals? Are we even worthy of being loved? It has been so long...."

RG, sadly: "So very long -- between kisses." The slender tower and the gleaming walls with their waving banners had retreated far, far into the distance.

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