Never Forget the Hero (closed)

::grabs the tissue from Karen and wipes her eye too:: Just Wow!

::Just stares at the page as she finishes reading. She wipes away a tear and whispers...."Bravo!"::

His name was Hayden. And his favorite word was “faleem.” Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – it was the only word he could remember. Most days he remembered all the words. All the names, all the people. But Hayden was relaxed. Terminally relaxed.

Some many months before – on the last day – inky smoke scutted across a steel blue sky. The edge of Hayden’s shield crashed against a windpipe, decapitating an
opponent. Hardly savoring the victory before another melee, the knight’s mind flitted to a day in his childhood. Hayden hacked his way forward across the bloody meadow, his tutor’s voice reaching down the corridor of years: “The tria prima, Hayden. The tria prima.” Quoting Paracelsus, the learned old man often repeated, “Mercury, Sulfur, Salt. Emotion, Body, Spirit. Transform, Bind, Abide .”

The tria prima. All three on the battlefield in equal measure. Indeed, the air smelled of mercury, sulfur, and salt, as if an alchemist were brewing them in some sick cauldron of sky. It wasn’t his imagination. The elements were falling. Brimstone was falling. Iron, too. Bolts, shafts – flung across heaven in wide arcs. “Faleem,” he thought he remembered himself saying before something struck him. Not a blade, not a mace, not a spike. A thing. Not wielded but dropped, pulled to the earth beneath him, through him, in fact. The soldier had been standing, his muscle tensed for impact. And then... he wasn’t standing any more.

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Meren had had a bit too much of the Tower for a day. She needed to feel sunshine. See clear blue sky and have fresh air on her face. Desperately needing to find a reason to keep going as Healer.

In this past week alone, she had delivered four human babies, roughly a dozen of the four hooved variety and stood aside while two old friends were lay low for a final sleep within their earth beds. She could not help them. Her training, skills, prayers and oaths, failed her. Failed them, like so many others in the recent past.

Rememberances of the War with darkness, demons, wicked angels, dogged her every step. How many had died would never be known. Bodies could not be counted for they kept rising up and moving. You are not supposed to count one soldier dead twice. However, for them it was over. The darkness that veiled them in death was final. Some had not been so lucky.

Meren caught herself looking at the Queen's roses. How she managed to get to the Royal Gardens was beyond her. However, there she stood regarding the lush beauty. The scent heady thanks to the summers warmth. This was life though, wasn't it? She was glad that at least Her Majesty allowed the roses to be returned. The war, the pain of it all, had them removed.

Had they been squared, at attention, the gardener's shoulders might have impressed her with their breadth. But those shoulders were... relaxed. Their posture made her think him an older man. Until he turned, a shrivelled stem in his hand. And he was... young. Young enough to stand with ease. To stand with a kind of grace. A grace that suggested... what? Not a jester's dance, but a fighter's training. The shadow of such training buried behind, beneath... something... unidentifiably... sad. He flinched, startled by her presence. His attention had been on the flowers, and not her approach.

Her eyes at least came to life again seeing him there. He was her most special patient. The one that has kept her going. The Lady chuckled seeing him start, and
slowly held out her hand towards him "Hayden, forgive me for being so quiet."

"Ma'am," he said quietly acknowledging her with a bobbing bow. He looked at her
extended hand. And looked at his own. He was confused, but gave the healer what apparently she sought: the bruised stalk of thorns he'd pruned from the nearby bush. "For... a remedy?" He tried to piece it together.

She nodded. "Actually yes, you are being rather insightful today." Taking the proof of his efforts in hand carefully, a wistful smile appeared. "The roses have never looked better." She was being patronizing yes, she had no choice. Honesty would never be fully understood. Hayden had been correct though, the dead cutting was a curative for what ailed her. It was a reminder of a far greater power.

Hayden blushed without knowing why, boyhood pink shining even pinker beneath a blade scar on his left cheekbone. "It's... I was... I was trying a new... ..do you... you can't graft, can you? Not... with bones...?" The grasp of his words had exceeded the reach of his understanding. Though something in phantom blue eyes told the healer the knight-cum-gardener had once been capable of deep
understanding across a breadth of disciplines. In truth, Hayden himself remembered being able to work out more and deeper mysteries. And the memory frustrated him, dogged him sometimes to the point of stuttering.

Meren gave him serious benefit of doubt, for they had indeed shared long,insightful discussions about everything,..before. The finely trained warrior proved his mettle in verbal battles of skill and wit, more often victor than vanquished. "I do not know Hayden, I will inquire about it though if you would like. Were you trying to graft the roses?" stepping closer, slowly.

He nods, a little too enthusiastically. "it's the way you make new ones. New kinds, I mean," as if to apologize for misleading her.

He never needed apologize to her. "I find that very fascinating. Have you created a new one yet?" Carrying on with their conversation. Truly, honestly interested.

Hayden's smile is sheepish, the sort that four-year-olds hide in the folds of their
mother's skirts. But it's fueled by an adult's secretive pride.

Meren regarded the still attractive mans expression and bit a lip to stop from
laughing. He was far to large and of an age to be a child, however, that is what his wounds had left him as. This man standing before her had made her question God.
Question herself. Learn many things about both, and yet the Knight left her feeling
she knew nothing at all. He was an enigma with dirty knees.

"Can you... I can show it to you. It's not... I... it's not in full bloom yet, but......I think it might... I think it might live." He was already on his way, his feet crunching the pea-gravel path to a distant corner of the walled formal garden. "Come! Come!" Hayden invited her with a curled arm with an urgency that suggested she be hidden before the girl named 'it' stopped counting and began her search for playmates.

Meren smiled with a long forgotten joy and followed. "I am coming, don't worry,"
gathering her skirts up to move feet faster. The man had a long and relaxed stride.
She was protective of him. Never a woman driven to physical punishment of a child's immature misdeeds, but one boy had gotten his backside tanned to a rosy blister for teasing Hayden. She had seen the tears hasty, harsh words brought to the once powerful Knights haunting eyes, and it snapped something inside of her. She never said she was sorry to that boy either. Fact, the next day that same lad came to Hayden, bearing gifts of apology and friendship. Hayden however never remembered why the boy should say he was sorry. Instead, the two went off to play, a friendship bonded. Now she was having to step briskly to keep up, but when Meren rounded the corner, she stopped in her tracks. Grey eyes wide at what they found waiting.

Even as his post-war demeanor separates Hayden from the brotherhood of knights, so a low hedge separates this experimental working corner of the garden from the formal rows and designs in its center. The man drops from a standing height of 6'4" into a kneeling heap so quickly it seems he has been felled by some invisible lumberjack. His thumbnail feathers the bloom of a deep pink tea rose. His body arched like a protective willow over the small bush. "no no no no...." The man's brow gathered in woe. He almost doesn't hear her question.

Meren eased in next to him, settling to her knees on the soft earth. Dirt and grass
stains upon a Ladys gown be damned. This was important. Leaning in to get a peek, she smiled shyly. "This is the one you made?"

Three aphids have distracted him. "no.... no.... no...." He evicts the pests with
passion, taking their presence as personal insult... or even a deeper affront. "They
can't be here," he tells her, his voice plaintive.

She nods in agreement. "They have no need to be here."

"They can't." Again mastering the fine motor skill required to pinch each of the
aphids frustrates him. Hayden settles for brushing them off with his fingertips. "This one is... I made this one. They can't be here." He tells her again. His composure returns to relaxed features. quieter: "This is the one I made."

A dark head bobbed in agreement, "It is beautiful Hayden. There is no other in the
garden like it"..was she speaking of the rose, or the man? He had been brought to her so near death, the Priest was ready to close the shroud over him. Til a forefinger twitched. Meren risked eternal damnation and threw the Priest out and called for assistance to save this warrior. He could have died, Should have died. He did not. Some part of him had a mightier desire to go on, than to give up and travel with angels. Meren helped him stay. She used everything she had, that she knew, and things she simply chanced to save his life. However, she could not save his mind.

"The Bourbon......I started with the Bourbon..."

"Bourbon?" blinking back from her self pitying memories.

"...they love mulch, you know?" He waves an arm in the direction of a nearby bush
sporting larger blooms in a brighter pink shade. "Bourbon. The name. The roses.
They're like people. They have names. All of them."

She gave a little laugh and nodded. "I see. What did you name this one?" not touching his prize, but pointing it out to him.

Hayden swallows and blinks before looking away. Looking... well... at anything but
her. A child caught with forbidden sweets. "It's smaller. I crossed it with... one of the... one of the Portland Damasks...." His voice and shoulders shrink... "it's... a tea... a tea rose... it's a tea... they... call them 'petite'.

She found herself wanting to hug him and let him know it was ok. Sharply reminding herself, this was a grown man. Once a fine Knight in the Kings army, Felled in the
battle with Darkness. Clearing her throat she nodded, "oui..petite..little." fingers do dare to softly pat his arm with the suggestion of 'good job'.

Again he swallows. Or almost swallows. The lump in his throat is so large. He looks at her fingers and whispers,"it's.....petite anwa."

Blinks as if struck. Her throat now sharing that lack of ability to swallow. She nods
with a smile as fingers again pat his arm.

Her fingers. Only the healer's fingers. He can look at no more of her than her fingers. Fully twenty seconds pass before he breaks the spell with a grunt, rising
back to his feet. "It was... hard. Getting so much color into... it was almost... too
much rose to be... petite."

Masking the ache in her heart, she nodded and stood up as well. "With such a name as you have given it, it fits. They say Anwa stands for..'too much'."

He mimics her nod and repeats, "Too much. I am too much, too. I was bigger once." He starts walking, slowly, back into the garden proper. "In here," he continues, tapping his temple. The claim sounds stupid, even to Hayden. But he can't think of a way to defend or improve it. And so walks slowly onward.

Meren watches him fade into his garden and blinks back the damn tears. "You still are big in there my friend..and in your heart....forgive me." She would end her days wondering if she had done him a favor in saving his life, or had she sealed him in a living curse. Meren knew without a doubt, no matter what, Sir Hayden would always be her reason for continuing as Healer, he was her Hero.

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The afternoon died a lovely death of orange and scarlet. The roses seemed redder, bloodier for it. Maybe Hayden saw battle fire in the blooms. "Faleem," he whispered to one vermillion specimen. The day disappeared, but Hayden did not, of course.

Some imagine that his sort will. That, a soldier wounded in spirit, mind and or body, they become the walls, the trees, the earth, the stone. The unseen. Royals,
nobles, comrades of sound mind, the people indebted to him for daily freedoms... forgot the gardener. The Healer did not.