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Date Posted: 14:01:06 01/09/10 Sat
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Inside here>>>>
In reply to: celtgirl 's message, "I thought it might be time for a brief appearance from the other Mr. Riordan, so here's a wee moment with Pat. I will post it inside the first reply." on 13:50:33 01/09/10 Sat

copyright 2010 Cindy Brandner

It was one of those nights where everything was so still, that it felt as though something momentous was about to happen, and Nature was holding her breath in anticipation.

It had become routine, this wandering byways and streets at night, walking and walking until he was so exhausted he couldn’t put another foot in front of the other. He knew the area here well enough to walk through the woods, and leave the roads to their quiet slumber. The woods held their own charm at night, the trees keeping counsel with something ancient that hung in the air between their boughs, sighing and murmuring softly under the stars.

He was relieved to see the intimacy had returned to Pamela and Casey’s marriage- they seemed happy together once more, and had taken up the rhythm of their life again, in tune with each other, speaking volumes across the room without saying a word. It gave bittersweet pause to him, the small intimate touches as one passed the other in a room, the smiles, the little jokes that belonged solely to a couple. The way Casey watched her with pride in his face, and a lessening of fear as each month of the pregnancy passed in good health and a growing belly.

He paused in the lee of an oak, putting a hand to a rough-barked branch, and taking a deep breath. Sometimes he walked so long and so fast that he forgot to breathe, and would only stop when his chest got so tight that he felt he was in danger of choking. In the wake of Sylvie’s death he had become unaware of his body, it became an enemy in some senses, one that he forgot to feed, abused and overworked, until he collapsed from pure exhaustion. It seemed a limited thing, a boundary that he could not cross, a thing keeping him from what he truly wanted. There were solutions, he knew, to such difficulties, but something in him had shied away from such a final answer.

And yet here he was, starstuff contemplating starstuff. Able to look at the stars once again, even if only just. For it took courage to even look up into the night sky. For so long he had kept his head down, kept his thoughts on a narrow track, not allowing the pain to swamp him, knowing if he did, he was lost. For so many years the stars had been his consolation, and in another life, in another country, he might have become an astronomer. But after Sylvie’s death, he had not looked up for more than a year, he had watched the ground burn beneath his feet, as he walked endless miles at night, but he never once looked up. It had seemed grotesque to him that the stars where still there, forming constellations, that they didn’t simply fall down from the sky for the grief of losing her. He did not want to know then, if he could still feel beauty, if anything had the power to touch him.

But then, one morning, he had started out early for work, the sky just beginning to lighten along the horizon, and even the trees were just sleepy smudges against the sky. And there it was- Vega, his father’s star, so blue and bright, pulsing against the fleeing of night. He had stood transfixed, watching the sky band itself into a softer and brighter blue, and still that star had stood out like something alive against an unconscious world. He hadn't been able to breathe, and had known he might well melt into a panic, but neither could he look away from that star.

Finally, when the star had all but disappeared, he had found himself moving, placing one foot after another, and he had known then, that whether he liked it or not, he was going to survive Sylvie’s death.

He looked up now, the night a perfect one for stars- frosted, clear and empty of other human beings. He stood here, intact if not whole, on a small island of terra firma, with an illimitable ocean stretching out toward all horizons. Within that ocean, he knew, there were vast, dark spaces, bodies that moved in all directions at speeds that inspired terror, but there was also beauty that stole a man’s breath and moments of awe and wonder that were an oasis where a weary pilgrim might rest long enough to regain the strength to take that next burning step and the one after that.

And maybe, just maybe, even for the walking wounded, for the terrified and the sick at heart, for starstuff with the ability to contemplate starstuff, there was still some form of life out there.

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