Maximus Meridius <dmmeridius@> wrote:

Beloved,

When does one stop searching for the answers and begin to find them?  I know this is your nature- to wander and seek and ponder the intricate nature of the universe, to question all that seems out of place in the world.  It is your fate by that nature to forever battle, not only those that seek to control your spirit and mold it to their ideals, but yourself as you question the bonds of authority and conformity, while yet trying to serve dutifully. 

There was a time when you would not hesitate to rise to the challenges the world threw your way, and regardless of whether you won or lost, you stood proud and courageous in the face of opposition and never gave in to defeat.  You embraced it, learned from it, and used it to educate yourself as you planned your strategy for the next skirmish.  I do not recall that you ever ran and hid away before.  So imagine the confusion left in the wake of your leaving and the struggle I have to understand why you no longer turn and fight back against adversaries that block your way.  What could be so wrong, so unforgivable or broken, that you no longer feel it worth the effort to try and heal the wounds created by it?  What scares you enough that you shed your warrior skin and take on the shroud of cowardice? 

There is no reason in the world you should feel that you must do this alone.  Are you afraid to be seen as weak?  That the mighty Boudicca might actually need someone's aid?  Gods forbid you should have to admit you are human and have emotions after all. Do you think you would disappoint me if you screamed for my help?  What sort of man would I be if I held a moment of weakness against you and did not attempt to examine the reasons for it? You would do the same for me if I asked it of you.  No one can stand by themselves, not even me.  If we work together, we survive; do you remember? Come to me.  Give me your trust and let's find the solutions together.  You will not find them in your current course, my beloved.  You are only succeeding in exacerbating them by isolating yourself from them.  They will still be there when you reemerge from your shell, and you will discover that they have grown in power. 

Please come home to me.  Stop hiding and face the world down again.  Prove yourself worthy to carry that great name you bear and the responsibility with it. 

Maximus

Boudicca <boudiccathered@> wrote:

My lord and my love,

As for the answers, I have found them.  I found them a long time ago, and it is they that imprison my spirit and deny me joy within the circle of the game.  It is this knowledge that began to eat away at me last spring, that niggled at the corners of my brain and now presents itself to me as a merciless predator that waits to devour me: I no longer have a place in that world.  Everyone else it seems has a niche to fill, and for some, these were the same places in the hearts of you and your brothers that once I claimed. So many roles did I fill: friend, lover, mother, warrior, healer, wise woman, shoulder in sympathy and else, but now others provide those needs and deny me the same.  I have fought against the notion that I am not needed anymore so long that I have learned to embrace it as an ally and follow it gladly in pursuit of reclusion.  Having come to that conclusion then, I let go willingly and am set to learn who I will be alone.  It is this very thing I have sought all my life: who I am without the companionship of others.  What I am capable of, when there is no other whose strength and wisdom I can draw upon and must learn to survive by myself.

If I am to be without purpose then my only other option is to slip away and not be a nuisance, simply drift into obscurity but dictate for myself the terms of the pilgrimage.  Some enemies are beyond defeat, and this one shall pursue me all my life should I choose to remain within the confines of the game.  I only stay now for love.  Love of my sisters, love for your brothers whom I adore, love for you above all.  But in the end, it is not enough and I hurt with my struggles.

You often call me your queen.  No queen worthy of the title would drag her people into her private war.  If I cannot fill the roles that I was born to occupy- those I am truly desirous of fitting then I shall not give half my spirit to another not of my choosing, because I will battle against it and continue to rage at the world in defiance of it.  This is the end it has come to.  Just as I was unable to exist as a slave under Rome's thumb, I cannot survive here, because I am too rebellious to adjust well to being caged by an ideal I did not make of myself.  Not even my love, as deeply and widely as I feel it, can engender ability to fit inside the mold another needs me to settle into.  So it is better this way, to traverse the pathways of the earth by myself and trust that those who provide for the needs of you and your brothers and love you will do so as though I personally gave them the charge and as though I was in their place.

It was inevitable, my love. I knew it when I came home from the portals. I was not meant for this world, given my need to be accepted for my mind and what I know and feel, even if it is the harder way or flies in the face of the common ideal.  You said yourself that if I am held back I will turn and war with any who would seek to do so.  This is a different game now, with different rules, and the rules change from one minute to the next.  I refuse to accept them at times, and others that would make me half a being in my quest to obey.

Would, my most loved man, that you had found yourself a woman more suited to compliance with the modern world and mild of spirit.  Would that the gods had made me a woman able to bend knee to another's will.  I am not, however, and that truth has set my course.  I will forever wander, to appear only when I seek to look after our family in silent apparition.  I leave behind my heart with all its battles, all its victories, all my love and sadness in this decision.  I leave behind the whisper of my memory, if you will hold it safe within your heart.  Yours will keep me warm when there is nothing but winter left.

There are no more heroes after you, my lord and love.  I thank the gods every day that you have been and are mine.  And I thank you for allowing me to bask in the joy of your love a while.

Until the gods unite us again,

Boudicca

When I was a boy, I loved to run through the fields of tall, white-headed wheat that belonged to my father.  It was on one such expedition that I stumbled upon the limp form of a falcon.  It breathed, but its wing was broken and how that came to pass I never did discover.  Gently I picked it up and carried it home, intent on healing its wing and making a pet of it. 

I had such grand plans for my new friend; I daydreamed about hunts we took part in and that it bore messages to legion commanders when I joined the army.  My father in all his wisdom cautioned me that the bird could never live up to my expectations, for it was born wild and should have been handled from a hatchling to be trained properly.  His words to me were, "Wild things belong in the wild.  Hold them in a cage too long, and they die inside."  Even when the falcon's wing healed and it was ready to fly away, I held it captive for over a year before it died.  I know now it died from hopelessness that it would ever fly free again.  I had misunderstood my father.  I assumed he meant that the bird would die in the cage itself, so I moved it to a perch outside, a branch of a tree that I tied it to.  It was not until many years later that I realized he was speaking of the spirit that dies in captivity.  It was a lesson I learned as a slave, and I am grateful to the gods that I was not in that state long.  But there are many forms of slavery, are there not?

It was apparently a lesson I did not learn well enough, however.  The cage is never as specific as my youthful mind led me to believe.  Sometimes it is as simple as being held captive by one's inability to let go of the past and adjust to change. 

When I came to this world, I feared I would never get used to the stark differences between my time and this, but amazingly, I have grown into it.  One would think that Boudicca- adventurous, freespirited, a searcher of the human condition and thrust by the portals into this era first- would have been quick to confront the challenge.  For a while, I think she was.  She was distracted from thinking on the past too much by learning a new language, falling in love with my brothers, learning about the other women, and adjusting to her new lifestyle.  She was kept busy.  She was simply too occupied to consider her situation and its impact on her way of thinking and the things she had left behind, in particular our children and her sense of place in the gods' schemes.  As long as the fact remained that she could not go back, she was content to survive in her new surroundings.

But then the portals opened again and she was never the same.  She knew it would be that way and resisted their draw as long as she could.  Once inside though, her fate was sealed.  She tasted freedom again.  Freedom to be a woman of her time, to hold to her own values and not wonder why or how to fit them to a new world. 

I regret in my more selfish moments ever taking her back inside the gates the second time, when I needed to regain her trust and love and heal her body.  But again my need for her, my possessive urge to hold her and keep her close at my side ruled over my love for her and my desire to make her happy.  Love is not enough sometimes to chain a feral goddess inside the temple you build for her.  She became the falcon that died somewhere inside where I could not reach, because she could see and feel what lay beyond the walls, and could not learn to accept her captivity.  She is a wild thing, no matter how mannered and domesticated she may appear.  I was a fool to think that I could tame her to my hand and make a pet of her.  She only allowed me to hold her as I mended her broken spirit, and because I gave her love in return for her trust. 

Not that she does not love me deeply or want to be with me.  It is because she does that she fought so hard to be what she thought others wished for her to be, but never could be.  Reading the last words she will ever send, I understand this to be true.  Her pain and tears, her desperation to find a home are as vivid to my heart as they were to hers.  This time, I will not watch the light of life die in her eyes.  Another time I cannot bear to see my beloved bird fall to her death from the perch I have set her upon, because I have denied her the use of her wings as the gods intended. 

So one more time I guided her to the gates of time and dimension and stepped inside with her.  I spent the entire night loving her as many ways as I could, cradling her in my arms until morning stole the hours away from us.  We wept for the millennia that will separate us from one another until I finally cross the river into the Elysium that she promised she would wait for me in. 

"Are you certain, beloved?"  I searched her gray eyes for the sign that she had changed her mind and that she could live across the portals with me after all.  That she would find a way to reconcile her past with our future, and that she would be all right with time.  But aside from the flash of heartbreak and hurt for leaving our loved ones behind, I saw that in the end, she knew she had made the right decision.  She could not speak through her tears, only nodded from her burial place deep in my arms. 

As I held her, I logged into my memory for all time the things I shall never speak of to another again beyond this note.  I breathed in the scent of her soft, flamecolored curls as they wound around my fingers.  Imprinted in my skin is the warmth of hers pressed against it as we made love for the last time.  Her sweet smile lighting up the darkness and her laughter chasing away the sadness.  And last, her voice, whispering her love and that she would not forget me.  All my memories of her and our life together are locked away now, and only I hold the key to that part of my heart.  Only I will take them out and hold them lovingly to the light and remind myself of who I have been and where I have traversed. 

If she watched me go through the shimmering gate back to our family, I do not know.  She walked away, striding purposefully toward the forest that housed her gods and swallowed her up for all eternity.  I watched over her departure, praying to my ancestors to protect and hold her safe until I can be joined with her again.

Now she is free.

Maximus Decimus Meridius, 16 September, 2003