Oh, to loathe someone so very much. And so helplessly.
He pursued me. I became ghost-like in my passing of civilized places....never seeking aid or taking anything that might be missed. Still he found my trail.
I swam rivers. I fought through battlefields. I took no refuge with others, always travelling alone. Still he hunted me.
When a dawn mist rose I walked in utter silence across uninhabited moors. When the moons were dark I passed along a canyon of indigo shadows. When I rested on a wooded hillcrest, chancing to glance around me, I saw him cross my trail on the other side of the canyon.
I ran till my soles were thin. I rode animals to their deaths across desolate plains. I travelled on ships and made curious men forget me. I was in all ways cautious, unintrusive, a shadow. Yet I knew he followed, unrelentingly.
In this place, in a hundred years, if I ran hard enough and long enough, I knew he would still pace me, closing ever so slightly, relentless for the sure victory. He had to win.
And one day, on a dry plateau on a pile of dunghills named Lasting Peace by some local tribe, he did indeed find me. He had killed all the natives I had tricked into ambushing him. He had prevailed against wounds not meant to be survived. His blood ran across his body as he crossed the last hundred feet between us. And we fought.
I screamed my death curse at him and charged....he impaled me a moment later on his sword. My final words to him slathered in foamy blood,
"Damn you, Guibert, ...curse you !"
| Monday, November 10, 1997 |
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