Alain Johns (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
honest_johns) wrote2005-04-19 11:32 pm
honest_johns) wrote2005-04-19 11:32 pm
(no subject)
Eleanor Johns was blonde and dark-eyed and just a little plump, full of laughter and spirit. She had a temper like a struck match, that flares and dies out quickly, and burns little; she could almost always be distracted by a joke. She could play the dutiful society wife as well as any, if there was need, but at home she and her husband were equals, gunslinger or no. They each had their roles, of course, and she to the home and without resentment, but she saw to it that her voice was heard. And good-natured Chris grinned and listened, and would have had it no other way.
She had been a tomboy, and spent part of her childhood at an uncle's farm in the countryside beyond Gilead; she was a city girl at heart, but she always refused to stay cooped up in the house, and insisted on running her own errands (with a maid for propriety and carrying, of course, most of the time), and more so after Chris's death. The city was growing steadily more dangerous then, besieged and divided, but she said tartly that she might be a widow but she wouldn't be mewed up, and she wouldn't stay inside afraid and give Farson the victory of her life as well as her husband's. Alain had the feeling that she couldn't bear to stay too long in the house that was empty of Burning Chris, but he never said so. It wasn't the sort of thing that could be said, for one thing, and for another he sometimes felt the same. The house was his parents', to him, first and foremost; for most of his life he spent the majority of his time in barracks with the other 'prentices, and even after he returned to his family's house he was out on gunslinger business beyond the city half the time. It was still his father's house, until abruptly it was his mother's and his.
Perhaps six months before Gilead fell, on one of Eleanor's excursions (a trip to the apothecary for routine medicines, half for the little complaints of any household and half for the stocking-up necessary in a city on the brink of open war), she was caught up in a riot, and badly injured. The maid with her was killed, and Eleanor felt both deeply guilty for this and a little impatient (and guilty for the impatience), because it was her own silly fault for panicking. Eleanor made it home -- Alain was the one who spotted her first, weaving her way down the street -- but she'd taken more injury than she or anyone else realized at first. By the next afternoon she was dead of internal bleeding.
Alain has never quite gotten over the grief of this, though time passes and dims the pain -- as Roland has thought, most horrible fact of human existence is that broken hearts mend -- but he doesn't dwell on it these days.
(Just after her death, he didn't want to live in that house any more. It was his parents' house, not his, and more full of ghosts than ever. But all boys born to the High Speech must face the dark alone; he lived there until Gilead fell, when he was in the city, and never said a word to any. But for a month or so he spent the absolute minimum of his waking hours there. Cuthbert, Jamie, and Roland all understood, and helped provide reasons and excuses to be out, but none of them ever said a thing about it aloud.)
She had been a tomboy, and spent part of her childhood at an uncle's farm in the countryside beyond Gilead; she was a city girl at heart, but she always refused to stay cooped up in the house, and insisted on running her own errands (with a maid for propriety and carrying, of course, most of the time), and more so after Chris's death. The city was growing steadily more dangerous then, besieged and divided, but she said tartly that she might be a widow but she wouldn't be mewed up, and she wouldn't stay inside afraid and give Farson the victory of her life as well as her husband's. Alain had the feeling that she couldn't bear to stay too long in the house that was empty of Burning Chris, but he never said so. It wasn't the sort of thing that could be said, for one thing, and for another he sometimes felt the same. The house was his parents', to him, first and foremost; for most of his life he spent the majority of his time in barracks with the other 'prentices, and even after he returned to his family's house he was out on gunslinger business beyond the city half the time. It was still his father's house, until abruptly it was his mother's and his.
Perhaps six months before Gilead fell, on one of Eleanor's excursions (a trip to the apothecary for routine medicines, half for the little complaints of any household and half for the stocking-up necessary in a city on the brink of open war), she was caught up in a riot, and badly injured. The maid with her was killed, and Eleanor felt both deeply guilty for this and a little impatient (and guilty for the impatience), because it was her own silly fault for panicking. Eleanor made it home -- Alain was the one who spotted her first, weaving her way down the street -- but she'd taken more injury than she or anyone else realized at first. By the next afternoon she was dead of internal bleeding.
Alain has never quite gotten over the grief of this, though time passes and dims the pain -- as Roland has thought, most horrible fact of human existence is that broken hearts mend -- but he doesn't dwell on it these days.
(Just after her death, he didn't want to live in that house any more. It was his parents' house, not his, and more full of ghosts than ever. But all boys born to the High Speech must face the dark alone; he lived there until Gilead fell, when he was in the city, and never said a word to any. But for a month or so he spent the absolute minimum of his waking hours there. Cuthbert, Jamie, and Roland all understood, and helped provide reasons and excuses to be out, but none of them ever said a thing about it aloud.)