The Gnarled Oak And The Little Bird

[Urahra 5781]

Foreword: So, last night, while updating the list of characters on my profile, I noticed a similarity between two of the characters I once played.

 

Carden Ashford, the son of Velwyn Ashford, was a sweet brunet with dramatic scars. He was exceedingly gentle and patient and kind, though very insecure about his looks. Also related to a saint. I realized I had another character who was a sweet brunette with dramatic scars and was related to a saint - Lorina Carrion.

 

I decided it was of the utmost importance to have these two characters meet. So I wrote this at 5 am last night. Enjoy.

 

~*~

 

Music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3QzERACr-Q

 

The official record said the Carden Ashford had been dead for decades. The record said that he died in his youth after succumbing to injuries from his illness. This was a lie, but Carden did not mind too much. The name "Ashford" was a heavy burden to bear. In his youth, he had carried it like a boulder collared around his neck. Ashford the cripple, Ashford the leper - a twisted, diseased thing, an insult to his father's sainted name.

 

Shame was Carden's constant companion. He shrank from social occasions for fear that his face would frighten noble ladies. He kept his conversations short, so not to force some poor soul to look at him for too long. Occasionally, he would gaze in the mirror and wonder if he might have been handsome, if not for his deformation. Shame kept him sequestered in his room at home, where he would quietly study or watch the sky from his window. He fed the birds on his windowsill - until they were so tame that they would perch delicately in his palm. Dogs barked or growled at him, but birds... To the birds, he was akin to a gnarled old tree. A tree's skin was rough and dark, but its gentle branches provided shade and sustenance. The nobles might stare and gossip when Carden sat in the pew at mass, but the birds would happily twitter and peck bread crumbs from his hand.

 

Carden left home at eighteen years old. He was the youngest son - not half as important as Roland - and his feet called him to walk. With nothing but his cane and a sack draped over his shoulder, he made his way out into the world. His mother had wept, but his father simply nodded, as if he knew what it was like to be compelled by something greater than you are. Carden wrote letters home at first. He told his little sister about all the strange people he encountered - orcs the size of three men, cats that walked on two legs like men, and fey elves too beautiful to be real. To Roland, he wrote about his epiphanies - moments of clarity that occurred to him while lying on his back in the deep woods, hearing the call of the whippoorwill. He did not know if Roland ever read them. In his letters to his mother, he assured her that he was safe and healthy, even if he was not. And his father - Carden did not write to his father. He had always been a curiously distant man, his eye always turning toward heaven. Carden loved his father, as all sons love their fathers, but he never felt uglier than in Velwyn's presence.

 

But the letters stopped coming after a while. Carden ventured into cold, remote places where word could not reach him. Even so, in these grey spaces at the edge of the world, Carden saw the face of God. He meditated deeply upon the vast silence. Here, the specter of shame - his constant companion - evaporated like a gasp of breath on a cold morning. As a baby, Carden had been afflicted with an illness that causes his body to rot away. But God's will cured him of his malady and left him damaged, but alive. Was that not a mark of His favor? A sign that Carden should not be ashamed, should not hide himself, but wear his survival as a badge of pride? To think of his scars as blessings? The gnarled oak had twisted and discolored skin, but its spreading branches gave shelter to entire little worlds.

 

Carden returned to civilization to hear of his father's passing. It came as no surprise to learn that the church declared Velwyn a saint. Along with the passing of his father, Carden heard tell of his own death. He had lived for years in solitude without contacting his family, so naturally they had assumed the worst. Carden was a weak boy, could not walk without a cane - easy prey for bandits or beasts. Carden did not mind the inaccuracy. Although he had found peace in the wilderness, he was glad to be free of his name. To be the son of a saint was an impossible weight on the soul. He did not envy Roland for having to carry it.

 

Carden veiled himself not out of shame, but simply for the comfort of others. When his cane broke, he replaced it with an oak branch. Over time, he whittled pictures in the wood with his good hand - images taken from the stories he had heard at mass in his youth. His bandages, staff, and strange clothing caught the eye of the locals in every town he visited. The children would gather around Carden's feet, asking him why he hid his face and what were the pictures on his staff? The adults saw the battered book in his hands and quickly judged him as a holy man. They invited him into their homes, fed him, and listened to his humble sermons. Carden was not eloquent, but he spoke with a gentleness and humbleness that resonated with the rural townsfolk. They were his little birds and, if he scattered his crumbs and waited quietly, they would perch upon his fingers. He never stayed longer than a night or two. His feet compelled him to walk and it was a force Carden could not resist.

 

He walked for many years and crossed many lands. He existed on the kindness of strangers, offering them advice, comfort, and wisdom in exchange for a night's rest. A few faces stuck out in his memory - a dark skinned elven gypsy, a scarlet-haired tavern waitress, a dark elf in a sun hat tending a field. The differences between races became indistinct. What was appearance? Each body housed a soul, a noble soul, a piece of God's glory. Each one deserved saving, preserving.

 

~*~

 

She sat in the front pew, her back facing the door.

 

Carden was 80. His feet, callused and blistered from years pounding the road, had carried him to Petrus. He was not fond of cities and avoided them, preferring the hamlets and taverns one found along the road. Cities, with the smoke, sweat, and stone, did not have the same appeal. City dwellers gave him blank or irritated stares as they passed, never pausing long enough to listen. Yet his feet had carried him here. Carden believed that he had a purpose in every place he visited. If chance brought him to Petrus, then someone here needed him.

 

The cathedral in the square cast a long, pebbly shadow over the market stalls. When Carden touched it's cobblestone walls, he imagined peasant farmers stacking them up one by one, back when Petrus was not more than a village. He ran his hands over the stones as he ascended the steps to the open doors. And there, at the far end of the church, was her.

 

She sat alone, her head drooped as if in prayer. Nearby, a monk lit sticks of incense, but she paid him no mind. Carden wondered idly if she was a young acolyte in training, her neck perhaps bent over a book. A low, choral note slipped from the monk's lips, echoing in the empty chapel. Carden's worn shoes made a dull thud on the carpet as he approached the pew.

 

The girl looked not at a book, but down at her hands. The flesh buckled and cracked with thick, pink scars. It was as though someone had peeled the skin from her fingers all the way down to the knuckle. She bent each finger, one at a time, as if testing how far they would go. Each time, the scars stopped her from curling them fully. Carden sucked in his breath. The noise must have alerted the girl, because she looked up in alarm and quickly shoved her hands in her frock pockets.

 

Carden's first instinct was to apologize, but he found himself arrested by her face. He knew that face from somewhere, though he could not quite pin it. Her ivory skin and dark green eyes brought back memories of his youth in Anthos. He recalled a man whom he had seen many times but never spoken to - a man who would later become an Emperor and a prophet. The girl's round nose and full, flushed cheeks hinted at a different lineage, though. Those features were Chivay qualities. Carden knew them well. His father had always been close to the Chivays. Bits and pieces of people Carden had once known, assembled at random by genetics, manifested on this girl's face.

 

After his surprise faded, Carden bowed. "My lady, I am sorry to startle you." The girl's eyes flickered over his appearance, lingering on his bandages and the staff he carried. She looked back down at her lap, frowning thoughtfully as though trying to puzzle out the mystery of his appearance. Carden smiled beneath his bandages. He tapped the pew gently with his staff. "May I sit?"

 

The girl - no, young woman - scooted over obligingly. With a grunt, Carden sat himself on the pew beside her. She peeked at him curiously out of the corner of her eye, head tilted slightly. After a long silence, Carden dared to speak again. "Does my appearance offend you, my lady?" he asked. The young woman shook her head, her short black hair flying about her face. "I am very sorry to have interrupted your prayers."

 

"I was not praying," the woman corrected him in a small voice. "Just thinking a little bit."

 

"About what, if I may ask?"

 

The trick to taming wild birds has to be still and quiet. So Carden waited and watched. The young woman bit down on her lip, her smooth brow furrowing.  "I am just wondering..." she began haltingly, "why God heaps curses on good people, but gives blessings to bad ones."

 

Carden nodded. "That is one of the great questions of faith, isn't it? The question of suffering. If God is good, why does He allow virtuous men to die in agony and evil men to prosper?" He inclined his head toward the young lady. "It is a question that has caused many people to lose their faith. Ah, but pardon me. You are not interested in a religious lecture, are you? My name is Carden.”

 

He extended a bandage-wrapped hand toward the young woman. She gazed quizzically at his wrapped palm for a moment before removing her hand from her pocket. As she placed her hand in his, Carden lifted her scarred fingers and planted a kiss upon them. As soon as he let go, though, she retraced her hand and shoved it back into her pocket and out of sight. “Do they hurt?” he asked.

 

“Sometimes,” she replied. “My name is Lorina.”

 

“Ah. I knew a woman by that name once,” Carden mused, turning away from the girl. “It was quite a long time ago, though. No relation, I assume?”

 

“I would not know,” Lorina replied. A quiet girl, Carden thought.

 

“So what made you think of suffering, Miss Lorina? It is a rather heavy topic for such a young woman,” Carden began, looking to her once again. “A lovely girl in the full bloom of youth should not be thinking of such ugly things.”

 

“I should not?” Lorina asked, a note of irritation rising in her voice. She was a noblewoman, born and bred, so she kept her anger from showing too much. “What should I be thinking of? Dancing balls and suitors? I know nothing of those things.”

 

“Pardon my presumption, then. It is always a terrible thing to see a young, lovely person in pain when they ought to be enjoying life’s pleasures.” Carden bowed his head toward her. “I, too, was once a young person who knew more about suffering than I ought to.” With that, he began to peel back the bandages on his hand. Underneath, the skin had begun to give off a faint, unpleasant odor. It had turned strange, sickly colors, becoming dark and rough to the touch. Just a glimpse at his naked palm was enough to turn Lorina pale. She glanced at his palm, then up at his face, her pupils wide with shock.  “When I was a tiny child, I was afflicted with a disease that caused my flesh to rot off of my body. It left me covered in scars and unable to walk without help. I grew up thinking ‘What have I done to make God hate me?’ I was only a boy.”

 

Lorina leaned in, listening.

 

“Like you, I thought that misfortune was a sign of God’s disfavor. I threw myself into my studies, hoping that I could somehow make up for the evil I had unknowingly committed as a child,” Carden continued. “It took me a long time to understand that my scars were not a punishment.”

 

Slowly, Lorina withdrew her hands from her pockets. She looked down at her marred fingers, frowning. “They are not?” she echoed back.

 

“Not at all,” Carden replied. “Quite the opposite.”

 

“I do not think this is a blessing at all!” Lorina replied, voice growing hoarse and thick with emotion. “I care – I can barely do anything with my hands at all. And people gawk at me so rudely. And they hurt! Every now and then, I feel as though someone is pushing needles through my skin. I hate it more than anything!”

 

“I felt just the same as you,” Carden replied. “People would stare at me – they still do. I resented that I could not run and jump as other children. I was a burden to every person I met – too slow, too weak, too ugly, too broken.” Lorina bobbed her head in sympathy. “But my scars and weakness had given me a skill that very few others had. The scars themselves were not a blessing, but the lesson they taught me was.”

 

“What lesson?” Lorina inquired, gazing up at him.

 

“Compassion. I knew what it meant to suffer. To be in so much pain that you wished you had never been born at all,” Carden explained. “For years during my illness, I was in constant agony and terror. After I was cured, I was hideous and deformed. No one could bear to look at me. Yet my suffering taught me to be kind. When I saw a beggar on the street, I did not shun him in disgust. When I met a child, twisted and crippled in a tragic accident, I did not wrinkle my nose in disgust. I saw the light of God in all of them. It taught me that every man and woman fights their own private war, not unlike my own. Would you say you are a kind girl, Lorina?”

 

“I do not know… I think so,” Lorina responded.

 

“Suffering is Compassion’s teacher. And loss teaches us the value of God’s creation. Cruelty teaches us what fairness and justice truly are. The man who walks through life in wealth and luxury, never knowing need or injustice, is the most ignorant man of all. Comfort and privilege make poor tutors. Whereas pain grants us wisdom,” Carden answered. “Scars are marks of God’s favor. They show that he has taught us much.”

 

“I have never thought of it like that,” Lorina replied, her face hidden behind her cropped hair.

 

Carden smiled sheepishly, once more affixing the bandages into place over his scars. “At least, that’s how I have come to understand it,” he concluded. “The question of suffering is one that I meditate on frequently. And I feel I can never hope to fully understand it. After all, no man can see through the eyes of God.”

 

“Are you a holy man?” Lorina asked, tilting her head. “I have never seen you here before.”

 

“I would not consider myself especially holy,” Carden replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “I would call myself a philosopher of sorts. I like to think and I like to talk. I like to answer questions and give advice. But I cannot claim to know what God wants. I only know what I feel. That’s all anyone knows in the end, isn’t it? What they themselves have felt.”

 

“Da… I think so too,” Lorina replied. “Thank you.”

 

“I’ve babbled on quite a bit, haven’t I?” Carden laughed. “A young girl has better things to do than listen to an old man spin his tales. You’ve been very patient with me.”

 

Lorina shook her head once more. “Niet, niet. You are a very strange person, but I liked to hear you talk. Thank you.”

 

With a groan, Carden pulled himself up off of the pew. “You shouldn’t hide your scars from view. I think they are quite beautiful in their own way. I only hide mine out of convenience, just so that people will listen to my words instead of gawking at my face. But… I pray every night that there will come a day when I can reveal my scars without fear of judgment from small-minded people.” He bowed once more to the young noblewoman. “Display yours with pride, my lady.”

 

She smiled. There was something so tragic about her smile, yet so lovely – like the sun breaking through a bank of dark clouds after a flood. “I will try,” she said in her timid, quavering voice. In his chest, Carden felt a small flutter – like the wings of a tiny bird. He bowed once more – as low as he could – before turning and hobbling down the aisle.

[Malaise 1570]

((I like it.))

[3andD 1722]

Gwenael smiles from the seven skies, seeing his brother is still alive!

[Tirenas 677]

Moved to the Archive. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.