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mldrgrl · 3 years

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Broken Things 23/24

by: mldrgrl Rating: varies by chapter, rated R overall (THIS CHAPTER RATED R) See Chapter 1 for summary and notes

“Go on,” Melvin says to Mulder. “Take care of your wife. I’ve got the horses.”

Mulder holds Katherine close and takes her out of the stables. She’s weeping, hiding her face in his neck and clutching at his shirt. He can feel her tears against his skin and her trembling against his chest. Her choked little cries are tearing him apart.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs to her, over and over again. “You’re alright, I’ve got you.”

He brings her into the washroom and kicks the laundry washtub over so he can set her down on something. He’s able to keep an arm around her as he lights the furnace and then shifts her from one side to the other so he can work the pump and fill the bathing tub. He finds a bottle of bathing oil in the cabinet and pours a bit in. The room suddenly smells of roses.

“We’re gonna get you warm,” he tells her. “And clean.”

“I’ll never be clean,” she whispers, and drops her head into her hands and cries harder.

“Yes, you will.”

When the bathing tub is full and the water is warm enough, he undoes the knot holding Katherine’s robe closed and pushes the ruined garment off her shoulders. Her nightgown has a few stains on it and can probably be salvaged, but he’ll throw them both out anyway. He’ll buy her a dozen new nightgowns and robes, ones that aren’t soiled or hold any terrible memories in them.

“My hair will get wet,” she says to him, when he tries to get her into the bathing tub. He runs to their room and gets the box of hairpins for her. He takes a cloth and wipes her hands clean and then she winds her braid up high on her head and even with no looking glass and shaking fingers, manages to pin it into place and off her neck.

“Okay?” he asks.

Katherine nods and then takes the hand that Mulder offers and climbs into the bathing tub. She folds up almost immediately with her legs bent and her back hunched and her head resting on her knees. Mulder takes up the rag, soaks it in the bathwater and then washes her back.

“I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me,” Katherine murmurs, her voice slightly muffled by her legs.

“I think the world of you,” he answers. “That will never change.”

She turns her face towards him and rests her cheek on her knees. He just keeps washing her back and shoulders, rubbing soft circles into her skin with the cloth. She blinks slowly at him and in her eyes he can see the pain and exhaustion of a heavy burden she’s been carrying.

“I’ve loved you from the day I met you,” he says. “And loved you even more every day since. Whatever it is, Kate, I promise you without a shadow of a doubt that I’ll still love you even more tomorrow.”

She breathes deep, ribs contracting under his hand, and then exhales swiftly. “My father is a Navy captain,” she says. “He’s highly respected and very strict. And my mother is very pious. They’re both very set in their ways. The only person I fear more than my father, or my mother, is God.”

“Mmhm.”

“I have an older brother named Bill. Bill Jr. And I have two younger sisters, Melissa and Charlotte. I was very close with Melissa. I miss her terribly.”

“Did something happen to them?”

“No.” She blinks without really closing her eyes and her head sways slightly. “My father didn’t believe much in education for girls, I think I’ve told you as much, but I begged him to stay in school. He told me I could stay until I turned sixteen and then I would have to prepare to be married. I agreed, even though I wanted so badly to be a doctor that I secretly applied to medical colleges, hoping that if one said yes, he would have to let me go. Well, there was one college that accepted me, but my father still wouldn’t let me go.”

“You were accepted to medical college?”

Katherine nods and sniffles quietly. “I told him that if he refused to let me go, then I would refuse to marry any man he tried to match me with. He said that it was my duty to marry well and that if I refused to do so, he’d put me out on the street. I said I would go happily if it meant I would no longer be under his tyrannical thumb. It’s the only time I’ve ever defied my father and I did think then he would turn me out, but instead he struck a compromise with me and said I was allowed to go to a nurse’s training school that was nearby, but that once I’d complete the training, I should have to find a husband.”

Katherine turns her face back into her knees and sighs heavily. Mulder drops the cloth into the bathing tub and massages the back of her neck. He waits for her to continue, wanting her to alleviate herself of this load, but not wanting to push her too far. The balance between encouragement and pressure is delicate.

“There was a doctor there,” she says. “Doctor Waterston. Everyone revered him, including me. Listening to him lecture, you knew right away he was brilliant. When I had my placement interview, I told him that I hoped to be a doctor one day and he seemed to take an interest in helping me. He allowed me to attend his surgeries and even permitted me to perform a few minor ones of my own, instructing me every step of the way.”

“You’ve performed surgeries?”

She turns to look at him again and nods a little. “I’ve removed a bullet from a shoulder and closed the wound and amputated a foot.”

“Incredible.”

Katherine swallows and her body weaves slightly as she closes her eyes. “Doctor Waterston invited me to dinner one night and told me he’d just received a new medical text that he thought I’d be interested in and took me to his personal office to look at it. He told me he saw a lot of potential in me and knew I could be as brilliant of a doctor as he was, one day.”

A feeling of dread creeps up Mulder’s spine. There is something about the monotone change in Katherine’s voice leads him to expect something sinister to come up.

“He…” Her voice hitches slightly and pinches off.

“You don’t have to say it, Kate, if you can’t.”

“I need to.” She shakes her head and takes a deep breath. “He offered me a glass of brandy, which I did not accept, and then he offered me a glass of water and...and he sat beside me on the sofa as I tried to review the text. I remember thinking that I felt a bit uncomfortable because he was sitting so close. And then...and then I couldn’t focus and I felt very tired and my limbs felt paralyzed. I told him that I felt strange and he said it was nothing to worry about. But...then he was holding me down and I did not know why and I told him he was hurting me and he got very angry and told me to stop talking and he put his hand over my mouth. I remember that there was some kind of stain on the ceiling and I stared at it. I don’t know how long I stared at it.”

Mulder feels like he’s going to vomit. He breathes in and out through his nose and rubs Katherine’s back, but he thinks he might be coming out of his skin. He would like to find this Doctor Waterston and rip him apart with his bare hands.

“I don’t remember getting home,” she says. “I remember waking the next morning and feeling ill and...and very sore between my legs. After that night, he behaved as though I was a stranger. He didn’t call on me in class, didn’t offer to allow me to observe any surgeries, and didn’t seem to acknowledge I existed at all. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and I was sick over it.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I must have let him believe he could touch me.”

“No, you didn’t. You thought he was being kind and he took advantage of you.”

“My father had told me that no good would come of me going to school and he was right. God has been punishing for my ambition.”

“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that at all.”

“I was so sick about the whole thing that I went to see a specialist about the constant nausea and body aches I was experiencing. He told me I was with child and I told him I didn’t know how that was possible because I wasn’t married. He must have thought I was so ignorant. I was ignorant, though. I’d...I’d read about pregnancy and childbirth in my medical texts, but nothing told me how it happened. My mother told me only married women could have babies. I know now how ill-informed I was.”

Katherine pauses there and then lifts her head. She tilts her face up and Mulder can see the slow tears that run down her cheeks and drip from her chin. He wipes them away, but they keep coming.

“I tried to tell Doctor Waterston about my condition, but he told me would publicly accuse me of blackmail and have me expelled from the program. He said that no one would believe me if I said the baby was his and that the word of a respected doctor meant more than that of a fallen woman. And then he gave me a five dollar note and the name of another doctor that he said would get rid of the problem.”

“Oh, Kate.”

“I didn’t. I couldn’t. That would be a sin.” She shakes her head. “I left school. I told my mother what had happened and she was very upset with me. She didn’t know how I could do such a vile and wicked thing and bring such shame to the family. She didn’t know where she went wrong to raise such a common whore of a daughter and said the devil had to have taken hold of me and the best I could do now was repent for my sins and pray that He would forgive me.”

“You did not do anything wrong,” Mulder says, emphatically. “I am sorry that your mother said those things to you, but you have to believe me when I tell you that none of that is true.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

Mulder does not know how to soothe her. He was not raised religious and until now has held no real opinions on the church, but his blood is boiling. He will forever hold malice in his heart for the ideology that would make the most wonderful woman he’s ever met feel so worthless and wicked.

“Believe me,” he says. “Trust in me when I tell you that you are not sinful.”

Katherine sighs. She sniffles and wipes a wet hand down her face. “Then why was I punished so harshly?” she whispers.

His mouth goes dry and his heart feels like it drops into his gut. Her sorrow pains him. He remembers once that he happened upon his aunt in her study while she was reviewing correspondences and she seemed very angry over a letter she had received. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him that women were always suffering for the whims of men. And then she’d stared at him hard and told him to never, ever trifle with a lady unless he intended to be a husband or a father. He was eight years old at the time, but he’d never forgotten it. And he vowed then and there to never, ever have a whim, whatever that might be.

He looks at his wife and he knows she has suffered, more than he even first suspected. He wishes he’d known her sooner. Wishes he could have had occasion to bump into her one day before anything bad had happened to her. Because he knows deep in his heart that he would have known right then and there that he would marry her, just as he knew a few months ago. At the very least, maybe if he’d gotten to her first, she would not have married Jack Willis. But, how did that happen?

“How did you come to marry Jack Willis?” he asks.

“My father knew of him and knew he had some sort of trouble with a debt. He offered to pay the debt if he would marry me. Jack agreed, but I don’t think that either of us knew that even though I now had a husband, my parents told me I had to leave and never to come back. They said I was a bad influence over my sisters. They said I could ruin their chances for a good marriage. They thought that if anyone were to ever find out the truth about the baby...”

Katherine trails off and then turns her face up again. Tears leak so constantly down her cheeks he’s afraid she may never stop crying, but she’s silent and her gaze becomes utterly vacant.

“Kate, what...what happened to the baby?”

“Jack had people in Kentucky and so he took me there. A lot of that time is...I have a hard time remembering some of it.” Katherine wrinkles her forehead and closes her eyes. She touches her face with her fingertips like her head is aching. “They weren’t very kind to me, or to Jack. An Aunt or a cousin of his said she was a midwife and said she’d see to me when the time came. It wasn’t that long before I started having pains one night and bleeding, but I had barely let out my skirts by then and I knew it was much too soon. To answer your question, I don’t know what happened to the baby. They wouldn’t let me see it. I’d lost a lot of blood and was too weak to protest. Jack said it was just as well since he didn’t want to raise a bastard anyhow.”

“That sonofabitch,” Mulder mutters, before he can stop himself. He grits his teeth in anger. Jack Willis is lucky he’s already dead.

“There were three more babies that came and went after that. I think they must have known what kind of world they might be coming into and it was a blessing that they decided not to stay. I wanted each one of them, I truly did, but I didn’t know how I would protect them when I couldn’t even protect myself.”

Kate breathes out a huge sigh after that and drops her head to her knees once more. Her shoulders start to shake and Mulder feels his throat constrict and his eyes burn with his own tears. He cries with her and for her, resting his head against the back of her shoulder as he wraps his arms around her.

↭

She’s never felt so exhausted in all her life. She wants to lay down, curl up, and sleep for days. Her eyes burn with four years worth of tears. She’s cried herself dizzy and it takes her some time to realize that Mulder is crying as well. She reaches up to run her fingers through his hair. He turns his face and kisses her shoulder.

“I’ll understand if you want me to go,” she says.

“Not a chance in hell, honey.” He lifts his head and cups her cheek. “I knew you were strong, I knew you were brave, I just didn’t know how strong and how brave.”

“I don’t feel very strong. Or brave.”

“You are.”

“I’m so tired.”

“Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

Mulder helps her out of the bathing tub and wraps her in a towel. He lifts her easily and carries her to bed. He gets her into fresh nightclothes and undresses down to his drawers and then climbs into bed with her and pulls her tight into his arms. They’re face to face, nearly nose to nose.

“I am terribly sorry that I lied to you,” she says.

“You never lied, you just needed time.”

“I was just so afraid that...I didn’t want you to know how low I really was.”

“It never would have mattered to me. It doesn’t matter to me now.”

“I believe that you mean that.”

“I do.” He shifts and holds her cheek, stroking her brow with his thumb. “There’s something that I should tell you too. Something about my family as well.”

“Alright.”

“Are you familiar with Fawkes Publishing House?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“Do you know the writer, E. M. Abbott?”

“Of course. I read all his books. They call him the Charles Dickens of the Americas.”

“Mm.” Mulder chuckles. “E. M. Abbott is my aunt.”

“Your aunt?” Katherine pulls back a bit from Mulder and opens her mouth, aghast. “E. M. Abbott is your aunt? The aunt that raised you?”

“Yes, great aunt Emeline. My grandmother and Auntie were the daughters of William Fawkes, who started Fawkes Publishing House. When my aunt began writing at a young age, her father told her no one would buy books written by women, but he still thought she was extraordinarily talented and of course he wasn’t going to pass on the opportunity. He told her he would publish her works under a pseudonym. Everyone called her Em since she was a young girl and she liked Abbott because it was the first name she could think of that came first, alphabetically. And so Emeline Beatrice Fawkes became E. M. Abbott.”

“That’s extraordinary.”

“And a well-guarded secret in publishing.”

“How sad though, that she could never get the recognition she deserved.”

“Oh, Auntie actually enjoyed that she’d so thoroughly pulled the wool over the literary community’s eyes. She took great delight in reviews that particularly focused on her unique perspective that was like ‘no other man.’ I would tend to get angry on her behalf though. I found it very unfair, very unjust.”

“It is.”

Mulder nods. “I have done my best to try to change things though. Fawkes Publishing puts out more novels by women than any other major house out there.”

“What?” Katherine raises her brow slightly. “When you said that sometimes you conduct business in Boston, what did you mean by that?”

“I sit on a board representing the family’s remaining interests in the company. We don’t necessarily handle any of the day-to-day anymore, but we own a significant share, which gives us, or me, rather, a fair amount of control. Let me tell you, publishing women writers has proved to be profitable over the years. Extremely profitable, actually.”

She ducks her head a little and snorts softly. “I was a little worried at how freely you spent your money.”

“I can assure you that money is not something you’ll ever have to worry about.”

“I think you could have absolutely nothing and I would still love you.”

Mulder lifts his head from the pillow and leans up on his elbow. “You love me?” he asks.

“I do.”

He smiles and then lays back down and pulls her against him with a sigh. She tucks her head down under his chin and wraps her arm around his back. A strip of moonlight shimmers on his arm and she gazes at it with heavy eyelids. She must be very tired or her imagination is playing tricks on her, but his skin seems to radiate a brilliant blue hue mixed with a bit of red.

#i wrote this #broken things #chapter 23 #MSR #AU #rated R #upsetting content warning

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

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Killan Josta: The Rabbit

Listen. Exactly one conversation with @wildfaewhump and this boy found himself nearly fully formed, and he wanted his backstory and who am I to deny an OC who technically doesn’t exist their moment?

Exists in the same world as @wildfaewhump‘s Iesin and Talvos, and this is in no way relevant and should definitely not fill you with hope for his future. He is a sad boy. No hope for him.

CW: Suicidal ideation (of the ‘would be better than this’ variety, is brief, happens twice), debt slavery, beating and violent abuse, kicking, blood, death threats, emotional and financial manipulation, referenced purposeful malnourishment

“Where d’you think you’re gonna go, Matti?”

Killan’s thin shoulders hunched up somewhere near his chin and he drew his knees up to his chest. He could see a bit of red soaking into the rough woven cloth in his pants where he’d hit the ground and scraped hard along a bit of tree root sticking up out of the dirt.

Under the hollow created by the lifted root, he could just see the glitter of an eye, some kind of bitty rabbit or chipmunk or other tiny prey animal hiding.

He wished he had somewhere to hide, too.

Show me how to escape, he thought to the creature. Teach me how to run or fly fast and far enough next time. Are there really woodgods like my mother used to say? Are there really monsters who sometimes save people like in the stories?

“Hey. Matti.” Ren snapped his fingers before Killan’s face.

“My name’s not Matti,” He said in a half-whisper, then flinched instinctively against the blow he knew was coming.

He threw his hands up just in time to take the brunt of Ren’s heavy-handed slap meant for his face.

“Your name’s what I say ‘tis,” Ren snarled down at him. He leaned over Killan like a great big tree giving off shade and Killan shrunk even more under the baleful look in his eyes. The other hunters and sometime bandits that worked with Ren had settled in a circle around the two of them, four more. Beron, Vanya, Tinch, and Pylko were all as broad and terrifying as Ren ever was, but they deferred to Ren - which made Ren, the holder of Killan’s debt and the one he was starting to think might never let it be paid, the scariest of them all.

“If I say you’re Matthias and call you Matti, that’s what you are. Isn’t that right?” The hand was threatening again, held high in the air and Killan kept his arms up to protect himself, curling them over his dirty brownish hair. They took baths once a week, the group did, and Killan always got last turn at the bathwater and he never felt clean unless he dipped into the river when sent to get water and took the time to scrub himself and took his punishment for dawdling when he returned.

Except this time, he’d tried not returning.

They hunted him down anyway, rubbed his head in the dirt to punish him for putting on airs of cleanliness, and worse was coming. He knew worse was coming. There was a sick pit of fear in his stomach marrying with the hunger that chased him through days and nights. He was worked too hard for little in return, but if he ate too much...

“Y-yes, Ren,” Killan tried from behind the dubious security of his own thin wrists and arms. “I-I’m Matti if you want, ‘til I pay off the money. When… when will I-”

“Not for you to know, debt-slave.” That wasn’t Ren but Beron, who aimed a kick to his side he wasn’t ready for, a crack into his ribs that sent Killan sprawling sidelong into the dirt with a cry.

Once that dam was opened, all their violence burst forth, and it was all he could do to curl into a ball and take the kicks from their good leather shoes. All five of them had their go, laughing and having fun with him, just like always.

Each cry, every whimper or whine, was a mark added to his debt. Ren counted cries as more he owed them for the inconvenience of having to hear ‘Matti’ be a weak little mess who couldn’t even take a hit like a man.

He counted all the food that Killan ate on a little list, marked the wine he drank from the wineskins on occasion, too. Killan owed him for the little tin cup and plate they let him keep, owed him the nights they made stew and let him have a spoon, owed him for the clothes on his back that had gone worn and threadbare, for the needle and thread Killan used to mend every bit torn open by their fists and their boots.

He owed them for the second set of clothes they’d gotten him so he might be clean, just for a day, now and then when he did the washing.

He owed and owed and owed.

He’d been thankful when they saved him. He was still thankful, but part of him had started wishing they had just let the other ones throw him in the river in town after they stole all his coins, just let them toss him like a pebble with weights tied to his feet force him down.

It would probably hurt less to be dead, at least. It would hurt less than this.

But… but there were beautiful days, too.

There were days when Killan walked beside the horses just so he could fall back a little and look around at the sun dappling through the trees along the path, or other days when they kept camp instead of moving on when Killan could race himself to the river for water, or dive into a deep forest pool and get himself clean, blessed blissful clean, and sun himself naked on a rock until he was dry, feeling like one of the wild beasts who could have come and gone as he pleased.

There were days when they were nice to him, cuffed him lightly instead of harsh, pulled him to sit with them around the fire to tell their old stories of fae stealing babies away until Killan shivered and went pale and they laughed, but it was good-natured laughing. Not mean, not really. Not the way they usually were.

There were days during his watch with Beron where Beron would show him how to make tiny little animals out of wood, carving this way or that until he made a tiny fox, a wolf, one time a bird that whistled if you blew into its beak.

They didn’t mark his debt up some days, when they were happy with him, and he could sing their drinking songs by heart and get rewarded with a grin and a clap to the back.

So there were good days, too, and he leaped desperately from good day to good day like a squirrel jumping between trees.

But after a few bad days, he’d had enough, and thought he could run even though they were hunters and bandits.

He’d been wrong.

“Y’know what this means, Matti,” Ren said heavily, as though Killan were a grand disappointment. “Don’t you?”

Killan’s whole body ached, and all he could do was groan on his side on the forest floor, feeling old leaves soft beneath him, smashed into his hair, dirt and mossy green smeared along his face. He throbbed with pain every place their boots had gotten him, and hated his own thin leather shoes cut badly and bought cheap that sometimes wore his skin raw and bloody along the sides of his feet.

He’d get boots when he earned them, he was told.

What else could he do to be worth good boots? What more was there that Killan had not already done?

“I-I’m sorry, Ren, I d-d-don’t-”

“It means we’ve got to tie you behind my horse again,” Ren said. The others clicked their tongues against their teeth, disappointed sounds. Killan slowly pushed himself up, hissing through his teeth at the flare of pain just about everywhere.

“You… you d-don’t, I didn’t-”

“No, we do. If you’re going to try and steal your debt from me, Matti, then you’re going to have to be kept close. Where would you be if I hadn’t saved you, Matti, huh?”

Killan looked back down at the ground. “Dead, Ren.”

“That’s right. You’d be dead if it weren’t for us taking pity on you. And what do you think it tells me when you try to run off and steal my bread?”

Killan’s chin jerked up at that, jaw set in a faded hint of stubbornness. “I baked the bread!”

Ren backhanded him, sending him back down to the dirt, like he lived there. Like he belonged in the decaying leaves where mushrooms sometimes came up in the spring and Killan would pick them by the basketful to cook in oil for dinner, back home, back before. “It’s my bread whether you bake it or not. Stealing bread’s a crime, ain’t it?”

Killan wiped at his mouth with his arm, spat into the dirt and ignored the blood in it. “Yes, Ren.”

“Right. And runnin’ from a debt is a crime, too. You’re lucky we caught you first - show your face in a town and they’d lock you up ‘til I came for you, wouldn’t they?”

Not if they didn’t know I was a debt-slave.

Killan wisely kept that to himself.

“Should’ve let him run,” Beron said, ruffling Killan’s hair as he cringed away from the unwanted touch. “Let the fae eat him.”

“They don’t come down from their stupid mountains,” Vanya drawled.

“Sure they do,” Beron said, but offered no detail or proof. “Where else would they get humans to eat?” He was the one who told the best stories about fae, stealing babies from mothers and taking the children in a village as thralls and leading them away with song, making men kill themselves in front of their horrified true love. They were spooky stories that left the hair on Killan’s arms standing up but kept him leaning forward towards the fire, waiting for more.

Killan liked Beron’s stories, even if he didn’t like Beron.

Even if Beron always kicked him hardest.

“Hey.” Ren hit him across the face again to get his attention, and Killan’s teeth came down too hard on his lower lip, a burst of salt-sweet coppery taste against his tongue as his lip busted and he coughed, gagging at the overwhelming taste. “You listening, Matti?”

My name's not-

“Yes, Ren,” Killan muttered, trying to speak around his lip, so it came out more like Yeh, -ehn. “I-... listenin’.”

“Good. Next time I catch you running from me, I’m going to tie half a raw deer to your back and have Beron use his fae whistle to call one down to tear you apart. And if a fae doesn’t make quick work of your scrawny arse, trust that everything else that smells it on you will.”

Killan shuddered. Beron’s stories made the fae monstrous, rows of sharp teeth and feathers that could cut like a blade, big claws on their hands instead of proper fingers. It wouldn’t be a good death, but at least it would be one. “Unner-... unnerstan’, Ren.”

“Good. And I don’t want any of your mopery no more, either. All you do is mope around actin’ like you don’t have a perfectly good lot in life compared to your bones restin’ in the river where we found you. I’ll take a happier face from here on out and anything less will make it worse for you. Now get on your feet.”

Killan swallowed blood, felt his stomach spin and lurch and threaten to make him bring up his meager breakfast all over the forest floor. He nodded and pushed himself to his feet, falling into line with the men who owned him as they headed back to camp, the occasional smack or kick or curse urging him on even as he limped and dragged one foot a little behind the other.

Ren owned his life until his debt was repaid, but the debt was higher with every breath he took, and he was starting to understand that Ren would never let him go.

He spat blood on the ground as he limped, and wondered if maybe a fae would eat him, if ever he could find one and politely ask it to.

Killan tried to take a breath and winced at the sharp spike of pain from his side. “I th-think you cracked my rib,” he mumbled to Beron, who had come up on his right. The tall, older man glanced sideways at him and shifted, elbowing him sharply right in the side.

Beron, who was sometimes the nicest of them all, right now grinned at Killan’s answering hoarse whimper.

“That’s another mark,” Ren said from up at the front, and Killan made another hopeless sound that only brought Beron’s smile wider.

“Don’t worry, cracked ribs heal fast enough,” Beron said, suddenly jovial and friendly, clapping Killan on the back just to watch him stumble and hiss through his teeth to hold back the sounds as he got his balance back. “I’ll cook tonight, lad. You can lie down early.”

Unsettled by the sudden switch from cruelty to kindness, Killan looked up, only to stumble over a tree root he would’ve seen if his eyes had still been down, falling to his hands and knees on the forest floor, palms scraping dirt and the just-closed cuts across his knee opening up to bleed again.

Killan sniffed back the heat that was building behind his eyes and set his jaw as he forced himself back to his feet, trying to ignore Beron’s booming laughter at his back as he hurried to catch up to Ren.

By the time the leader looked back at him, he had set an empty but vaguely cheerful expression on his face, despite the bloodied lower lip, despite the bruising already starting up across his face on both sides, despite cracked rib and hurting back and aching legs.

Ren didn’t want to see him being sad about his lot in life anymore, and Killan was so tired of getting hurt. Lying wasn’t all that hard. It would be easy enough to lie, with the right reasons, and if I look right they won’t hurt me so much seemed as good a reason to smile as any.

He set himself to look as happy as he could, and hoped that Beron had really meant it about letting him get into his bedroll early.

Ahead of them, the sun came down in dappled yellow through the canopies of the tallest trees, and Killan fixed his eyes on the sight, forced the slightest smile to stretch his split lip until he winced.

The smile wasn’t really all that hard to force, if he was honest with himself. He might be hurt, and bloody, and dirty and downtrodden, but… but you could live for the forest, if you really wanted to, not just live off of it.

Killan could’ve been happy in the woods forever, on his own. In the deeper woods like this he could almost swear the air felt like magic.

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deilands · 7 years

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Everyone’s Agnostic

“There’s not one iota of evidence when it comes the existence/non-existence and nature of God, and yet we NEED to be “in the know” so badly that we will check our instincts and our critical faculties at the door. At this, the earth cries, anyone with a soul cries, and the solution is as simple as admitting that you don’t know.” --Cass, Everyone’s Agnostic

I’m still working on the third part of my entries on my Testimony. It’s much more difficult than I initially presumed when I started because there is so much information that I am still trying to process even as I write. It would honestly be much easier if I had some major ‘beef’ with God. There are a lot of people with a much longer list of grievances that could be laid at the feet of a creator than I. Yet here I am. Until I can sit down and give adequate consideration to what I need to write for the third part of my testimony, I will attempt to share other things.

I made a clarification on my Facebook recently that I am not Atheist. I’m not throwing out all possibility of the existence of a higher-power. Instead, I am saying that I don’t have enough external evidence to demonstrate that one exists. I am an agnostic. I don’t know. There is much for me left to learn in this so I ask you to be patient with me.

To be honest, I also haven’t given up on the idea of going to church either. I do miss the time sitting with my family. I miss the camaraderie of a group of people who - in the best of churches - love each other as family. I find that I really miss the music. Being part of a Praise and Worship team for so long means that I have an endless supply of songs that readily come to my mind.

I think what I’m trying to say is that I believe that there is this concept that someone like me has decided to go off the rails, get cynical and bitter against God and due to this cynicism throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’ve made it my goal in all of this not to get cynical but I do want to be real with you.

I am angry that in the end of it all the questions got louder than my faith. I’m especially angry at doctrines that encourage disparity between people. I’m angry that for most of Christianity the doctrine of original sin means that we were born evil - that if I were to teach my daughters from a traditional Christian standpoint that I would be telling them that they were worthless apart from Christ. I’m angry at the doctrine of eternal damnation and of a myriad number of other small things but to say I’m cynical about spirituality as a whole is a misnomer.

Anyway - sorry about that brief soapbox.

One of the resources that I’ve found that has helped me in my journey is a Podcast called “Everyone’s Agnostic”. It is ran by two people - one who has been an atheist his entire life and the other who was a Christian for many years who also moved away from his faith. They don’t claim to know all of the answers - which is part of the reason that I enjoy listening to the podcast. Instead, they interview a large number of people who have moved away from their faith - trying to discover those connecting points that explain how it happened. They also interview those who are still of the Christian faith who have approached these same concepts but have remained Christian.

I haven’t listened to a lot of the podcasts as there are over 170 of them but I have enjoyed the ones I’ve listened to. If you’re interested, I’d recommend starting with the first one that I started with - an interview with a guy named Jeff Loken who has a blog called Real, Live, Actual Blog (https://realliveactualblog.wordpress.com/).

You can find all of the Podcasts as well as more information on the Authors at

http://www.everyonesagnostic.com.

Here’s the Audio from Jeff Lokin’s Interview:

youtube

#deconversion #christianity #everyonesagnostic #faith

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