nithu

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." Lewis B. Smedes

Eamon sat at his desk sifting through a large pile of letters. Tomorrow the army would be racing towards Denerim; he really should deal with these before he left. Maker knows if we will any of us return. He frowned at the small, sealed letter, addressed in a cramped hand to Bann Teagan. Eamon summoned a servant and asked her to take the letter to his brother.

This story was written as a one-shot for the 'Sugar and Spice' event at the Dreamwidth community, peopleofthedas. Over two days it turned into a long-shot so, although it was published originally as one piece, I've decided to turn it into several chapters. I will publish a chapter a day; there are five chapters in all, with a short epilogue that will be published immediately after Chapter 5.

I'd like to thank scarylady1 for providing emergency beta-reading the weekend I wrote this, and WellspringCD for providing further beta-reading once it was complete. I'd also like to thank WellspringCD and lisakodysam for their encouragement when I was feeling so demoralised about this story; it very nearly didn't see the light of day anywhere else.

I count the dismal time by months and years

Since last I felt the green sward under foot,

And the great breath of all things summer-

Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears

As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres

Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute

Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,

A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears,

Dilated by the distance, till the brain

Grows dim with fancies which it feels too

While ever, with a visionary pain,

Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine

Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train

Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning