Fool’s Assassin

Years before I knew that a man’s memories could be pressed into stone and waken as a dragon, I still trembled before their power, and hid from them. Oh, the memories I denied and concealed from myself, for they were too fraught with pain for me to consider, as a child or as a man. And the memories I bled away from myself into a dragon, thinking that I freed myself of a poison that would weaken me. For years I walked, dulled to my life, unaware of what I had stripped away from myself. The day the Fool restored those memories to me it was like blood pulsing through a numbed limb, wakening it, yes, but bringing with it tingling pain and debilitating cramps.

Memories of joy etch just as deeply into a man’s heart as those of pain or terror. And they, too, soak and pervade his awareness of the world. And so the memories of my first day with Molly, and our first night together, and the day we vowed ourselves to each other have flavored my life and in my darkest days they gave me a light to remember. In times of sickness or sorrow or bleakness of spirit, I could recall how I ran with the wolf through the snowy twilight with no thought beyond the game we pursued. There are cherished memories of firelight, and brandy, and a friend who knew me, perhaps, better than any other could. Those are the memories from which a man builds the fortress that protects his heart. They are the touchstones that tell him he is worthy of respect, and his life has a meaning beyond mere existence. I have all those memories still, the ones of hurt and the ones of comfort and the ones of exultation. I can touch them still, even if they are faded now like a tapestry left to harsh light and dust.