The Moor Does Not Welcome Flotsams

V.

Eddy limped on the moor, his cane underneath his armpit. For the soldiers, it didn't matter who won the war as long as they had something to support their weight with on their way home. Victory is reserved for folks who haven't seen anything. He would always find his way home, even on the edge of the world. The old house was still there, though smaller than he remembered. The front porch was in dire repair, and the tree branches lay flat on the ground. For the first time, he didn't go in.

Almost no one knew what happened to Joan. Her limbs no longer moved when the strings were pulled. She met a man much older than her, with a tedious scar on his left cheek. He was honest with her, much more honest than anyone else in her life. It was a quality that has been denied to her for a long time. During their first encounter, he told her that he had killed before. He murdered, but felt nothing. He laid it down in simple words, looked askance, waiting for her to get up from the chair and leave. Joan didn't flinch and stayed seated. She didn't leave then, she wouldn't leave afterwards. After a while, she raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Both sat in silence, finding in each other that familiar and comforting scent which soothed their wary souls amid a hurrying and uncaring crowd. It was with him that Joan cried like a child for the first time in years. That night, they quarrelled in their own ways, with neither of them talking. Minutes later, he stood up and walked towards her.

"Why are you afraid?"

"Because if I don't do anything, I'll lose you. If I don't do anything, no one will ever love me."

"Why is that?"

"No one loves me for who I am. That kind of love doesn't exist."

"But look at us. We're the fragmented people of the world, twisted in our own ways. I only love you for the way your soul gazed straight at mine. I don't love you for anything else that's about you."

She looked up at him. That moment she knew. This man loved her for who she simply was, nothing more. She needn't do anything to be "better", to deserve or repay his own love. He would still love her if she was to press a razor blade on his lower jaw, his eyes would still show that adoration and tolerance. That's who she was. He wouldn't deny her of her worst vileness, her most insubstantial wretched monster that was herself, that side of the mirror she never saw. He would become her, as she would become him. She slipped on the ground and cried her heart out. For the first time she needn't muffle her sobs in the pillow or hug herself to sleep. She let the sadness and tears that was behind the dam for ages to flow out her eyes. She cried, and she was free of herself. That night, Joan was a child again.

So it was like thus that our story shall end. Eddy walked his life with a cane, arm in arm with Pam. No one ever talked about their union but it was one of those unspoken certainties. When he came back nothing was the same anymore, therefore it wasn't a wonder for him to try to turn back time and set things right. Everyone lived in that little lie of theirs, and who could blame them? The moor taught them that everything was relative. It was a kind of philosophy that best fitted them to forget. When another gale comes, bringing another reticence winter, we may perhaps find another family that suffered from the mere existence of their contradictions which they believe must be reconciled.