Want to know what actually happened in session 82? Look here. Want to see what Calliope took away from the session? Keep reading…
Letter to Pythor
(After going to Damon’s reading room, and speaking with Estor - written in the crow’s nest of the Ultros, before going to bed the first evening after the group set sail. )(Written after Pythor’s ‘intervention’.)
Pythor,
I am sorry.
I do so want to tell you that if you keep pushing through it will all be okay. That it will all get better. But the truth is that I don’t know that. The hazy release from pain that alcohol provides you is the same release that I sought 500 years ago when I ran to Versi. I got what I wanted and I won’t lie: I was happy.
But, as I look back - as someone who successfully forgot it all and now has to claw back the fragments of her broken mind - I am more and more certain it wasn’t worth it. I lived in ignorant bliss for a while, yes… but now I struggle to remember the faces of the people I loved, the things that once made me happy.
I lost the good as well as the bad.
The Titans, the Gygans, the war… all took so much from me. And by running, I let them take the little else I had left. And now I am an architect of my own misery as I try to remember the family and friends I once loved. I realise now, 500 years too late, that the pain I feel is just proof that they mattered.
Yet, even as I write this revelation down, I still struggle: everyday I remember a little more and it gets just a little harder to carry on. And depending on which way the wind is blowing, which notes strike a chord in my heart, one of these days I think I might be in danger of taking you up on your offer of chasing oblivion once more….
I am waffling, I know. What I am trying to say is: I understand. Not fully, of course, for our pains and losses are as different as they are similar... but I recognise that if I, as someone who now fears losing my memories as much as I do keeping them, cannot bring forth the will to stay in the world that has hurt me so… then it is entirely unfair for me to expect that of you.
So I do hope you can forgive me for my callousness. But I hope you know that it comes from a place of kindness, of hope, and of fear that you will find the release from memory less comforting than it appears.
Please, though, do not take this as a surrender to despair. I believe that we cannot, and should not, stop fighting for a better future; and I really do think that we would both be better off facing our pains rather than running from them… even if our will to do so falters.
Let us do so together.
Your friend,
Calliope