Jessica Hayles
September 14, 2020 6:01 PM
A little encouragement. by Jessica Hayles
What do you say to someone to make them want to live?It was a difficult question, and as far as Jessica could tell from the binder full of research her driver had sent her, there was no single answer, no simple statement or question that could heal the Fisher King’s wounds or his land. She couldn’t say she was surprised. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. She had, after all, already more or less asked one of the two questions associated with that legend: what ails thee?
If either of the Fisher King’s questions could be regarded as reasonable, it was that one. As she knew, there was something cathartic about simply saying it out loud – something incredibly comforting, too, about having someone care enough to ask. Of course, in the story, the Fisher King, idling on the riverbank with his wounded leg while his kingdom fell apart, would say something about the spear that wounded him, which tied into the whole Grail-and-Passiontide-generally narrative, but there was an element of how real people worked in that one. The other question - who does the Grail serve? - was harder to make sense of, at least for Jessica. So was its mythological answer - the old king, whose heir you are….
There was something there, she knew it. She was sure that if she thought it through long enough, she would figure out what it meant, how it could help. In the meantime, though, she was on her own.
So, why did anyone want to live?
If she understood that, she’d have something to work with. All her life, she had thought that people lived to live up to their responsibilities. She had not really existed outside her role. Felipe had not existed outside his, either. This was why they had both fallen apart, to different degrees, after losing those roles – wanted to cause pain, one way or another. They couldn’t get them back, but…thinking back, into the vague spaces, she remembered how she’d felt at Ciudad de Matteo, and at the Bonfire…like perhaps it had been okay, just…existing, even if she wasn’t really doing anything of note.
There was something there. Something. She had started writing in disconnected prose, stream of consciousness, everything she could recall – and had found a memory.
It was, it turned out, a massive pain in the rear for her to obtain fresh flowers that didn’t grow on the grounds, but that was why she had a well-paid and loyal staff. Directly, she managed to get her hands on a bouquet of tulips, and selected one. She trimmed down its stem to make it fit in a neat little tissue-wrapped gift box, and used some charms she had wheedled out of Professor Wright to preserve it, keeping it fresh despite being, well, in a box. With it, she included a little note:
You told me once that you weren’t familiar with tulips, but that my poetry made you feel as though you were. I thought I’d give you a little more context to judge from. This one should be a little sturdier than the ones I wrote about, though. Just a little reminder that there’s so many beautiful things in the world that we haven’t seen yet, but can someday. Jessica.
Then, in keeping with their traditional odd means of communicating even while in the same building, Jessica posted her little gift to Felipe, and then started trying to think of the next thing to do.
She couldn’t, she knew, play too heavy a hand. For one thing, she could only imagine how annoying it would be, having someone literally nag you about staying alive day in and day out. For another, she had to tread lightly because of the annoyance that she had promised not to talk to him about – nothing good could come of provoking a fight. Plus, they had agreed they were ‘winging’ a friendship, which meant too careful a schedule might come across the wrong way. Should she aim for an encouraging bit of writing every week, or every fortnight? Gifts each time, or sporadically? Real life was even harder to figure out than ancient riddles, she thought – and felt, at least, like it had as much at stake. But high stakes were often as much of a reason to make an attempt as they were an argument against doing so in business, and she thought real life, business, and literature all had that much in common, at least.
16
Jessica Hayles
A little encouragement.
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