The Captain's Paradox

Lynsyrien,

The Race of Man is a young one ... but it is aging quickly, I should think . There are a great many lessons to be learned, and we are not so privileged as the race of your kin to boast of a lengthy existence to learn these in . Even the Halflings time in this world, by comparison, is longer . Mankind is apt to failure, imperfections, and discontent . We chase shadows and danger in pursuit of happiness , but at the end of the day limp back to where we started, wondering why we ever left ...

Everything must have its opposite . How could we ever know how to truly appreciate the sweet if bitter had never passed through our lips? Would we really know happiness, if we had never experienced the suffering by which to contrast it? The nature of Man, with which you are well acquainted, dictates that we would not . We take for granted the happiness until we have experienced misery--happiness is simply the way things are, or were, until it is not, and we would become bored were it the only thing we ever knew and forever unmarred by a thing less pleasant .

We, all of us, long to be truly understood--yet by whom?

I am reminded of the theatre, The masterful player entraps his audience with his performance ; I watch wide-eyed as his story unfolds before me upon the stage--but not a thing of wood and paint alone, for now, as I watch, it becomes his world . I live there with him, and not so, for I am a spectator only . I have a space that only his heart shares, knowing the things about him that only he knows . He expresses by a word, a movement, the expression upon his face those innermost thoughts to me, to his audience . For the story to be a story, we must be able to relate to him in that way, to understand and know those hidden things . His fellow players, in their act, do not know these things . Not until they are revealed to them .

So it is on the stage of our lives . The hidden things are known to the heart, yet not always to those with whom we share the stage . 

But this is not news to you, and such musings are meaningless, at the end of the day. For all the reason I try to put to it, this heart of mine cannot be satisfied . I desire an impossible validation . The madness is that I know such validation is outside my reach--if ever it existed to begin with--and yet I claw hopelessly after it, regardless .

Like the player on the stage, in the next act I too will remove the costume, peel back the mask . There shall be another under it, and, when it suits me, I shall exchange it for another . My name is Captain Evonfall . That is one of my many names . It is the one I favour best, at present . You know me better by another name, another guise--a guise that places itself before all others, which shuns responsibility and commitment . It makes itself giddy on stirring up trouble and drowns its misery at the tavern . I do not blame you in the least for questioning my motives .

You have the advantage, though . You have my trust where few others do . Perhaps soon you will be able to piece together each of my facades, for each one is truly a part of me . I would not have been able to keep them so long were it otherwise . I fear that Wavern has accounted all of it to just another layer of the mask, just another lie, and I have lost her trust .

I thank you, my friend, for remaining at my side . I cannot express to you how precious your company is to me . Hold on, I beg you, just a little longer . Let us see where this road goes . Two bloodlines course through my veins, as conflicting as the darkness is from the light . At the first I rejected the black destiny I was born for, and for years I have contented myself in the muddied place between the darkness and the light--ashamed of the dark, unworthy of the light . The time has come for me to truly explore the light--though I can no more fully embrace it than I can rid my blood of the blackness that taints it . Your support to me in this venture means more to me than you can ever know . Wherever this road leads, I must know its end .

Erauniel