Sitting here in my just-below-freezing, tastefully understated beige office, with blue-veined fingers tapping cool-to-the-touch keypads under a regulation flat screen, flanked by an L-shaped faux-wooden veneer desk, I should be poring over legislation and contracts finding the definitions to terms that are undefinable and writing a memo to my boss stating same. Instead my shivering fingers itch to start, at least for you, a story of the saga that made me leave this highlanders island 3 long years ago ...
INTRODUCTION
This is a strange story, all the more strange because it happened to ricebag - or at least, that someone who used to be me. Ricebag was always a little cyncial, always a lover, but also apparently a little ahead of the rest, not easily sucked into other people's lives or vague promises of happiness and forever.
But something happened that made ricebag understand that true love had a legitimate right beyond all obstacles, that it survived by imperative, that finding THE ONE (how quaint!) ... was such a unique and incredible feat of complete accident and happenstance, that it ought to be held onto and never, ever let go.
What happened was that ricebag found her Impossible Love.
A Warrior. They sent their love through the grey-blue mist of mountain passes; along the muddy shore of village political rallies; across fields of men and women decked in bilas, thumping the trembling earth with bare feet; from vallies of burnt-down villages that echoed the war-cries of young men chopping down others' futures in the fields of their enemies; in deep nights strung out with fervent stars where young girls skipped home, lanterns swinging great arcs across stone-holed village paths, kunai grass cutting high lean shadows. They sent their love in swift looks and silent promises. They sent their love by messenger, by night. They sent their love in a land where loving outside your right is unacceptable. And ricebag did love. Right outside her right and almost outside of her mind.
She did love a Warrior. And he loved ricebag too. He desired ricebag; his heart beat hard, so much harder when she came into view; he felt scared and not so worthy of the like, let alone the love of a highlander island girl who had only known all the worlds outside of the very one from which he came.
The Warrior did suffer greatly. And in silence. His great love for this strange girl was held so high by him that even he could not reach it. Soon it became a love only good enough for his best dreams and not worthy of defilement by harsh reality, not worthy of his worth-less-ness.
At the end, ricebag did turn to him. She said "I can do this. I know the reason I was born was to have your children. Let me love you. We are not doing anything new and impossible. People of different histories have fallen in love and made it work throughout mankind and throughout time. Let. Me. Love. You." But he would not. The noblest Man, the fiercest Warrior, the honoured Tribesman, the obedient Son, the loyal Brother and the local Hero ... could not stand up against those that he respected and feared the most - the Family of the only one he would ever truly want and never truly know.
... to be continued ...
