Tag: forgiveness

Fiction (Short)

She Returns to Kir Kanara

Faith Hakimian

She returns to Kir Kanara, a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. Her body is tired and battered. Her armor dented, bloody. And her eyes—her eyes are cold. She is alone.

It’s been years since she last was here. Years since she rode down from the gates at the head of a battalion of Greystone Knights with orders to find the princeling and put an end to his rebellion with as much violence as was necessary.

How she wishes they hadn’t succeeded.

She returns to Kir Kanara, a weight of years and death on her shoulders, flanked by the ghosts of a hundred dead companions and all the innocents they couldn’t save. Perhaps if she had listened, perhaps if the princeling had thought his words could reach her… but perhaps can’t bring a single soul back from the world hereafter, and it can’t unmake the destruction that has reduced all this once beautiful land to ash and rubble.

She can’t remember when it happened, when the last bit of hope that remained to her finally withered and died. She wishes she did. Hope is too precious a thing to lose with so little fanfare. But lost it is, and it’s left nothing in its wake but this angry, broken woman who realized too late how many lies she had been told.

There is no one left for her to save. No one in need of her protection. She’d looked. For months she’d looked, only to find them too late or not at all. She’s not looking anymore. An expression, complicated with rage and grief, cuts across her face; if it’s innocents she wanted she would not find them here. Not in Kir Kanara.

But she is too late once again, even for her other, bloodier purpose. She doesn’t know what she expected. The whole land is ruined, why should the seat of trouble be any different? It’s justice, of a sort. It should be cathartic to know that those who damned them all brought hellfire down on their own heads as well. Yet all she feels is wicked, rotting disappointment that she wasn’t the one to mete it out.

She returns to Kir Kanara, a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. But there is no one left for her to fight and nothing left for her to burn, and all that drives her vanishes like so much smoke.

She wanders, aimless. Her feet take her through the fallen castle, so long destroyed that weeds grow over its burned out corpse. She thinks of lying down, of letting her story end where it began. It would be easy. It would be, perhaps, what she deserved for believing all the lies, for trusting that this place, this once-beautiful place was all that it said it was, that it held all the ideals it said it did.

That it wasn’t just a wretched facade.

The thought comes to her quiet, so subtle she hardly realizes. Her ideals have not changed. They are bruised, wounded like she is. But they are there, a foundation. And little more than a foundation remains of Kir Kanara.

There are so many reasons it shouldn’t work. If anyone else has survived the destruction, Kir Kanara would be the last place they should trust. If the castle is a symbol, wisdom might argue that it was so corrupt it could not, should not be salvaged. If all was lost then maybe she should just leave, too, and find a way to nurse her wounded ideals back to life.

But she cannot shake the thought.

It takes time for her to realize what it is. Hope. Hope for redemption. For herself. For Kir Kanara. Hope that there’s a way to make the castle what it should have always been. A refuge. A haven.

So she stays at Kir Kanara, a hammer in one hand and hope in the other.

Musings

[Blog] Hurting Each Other

Faith Hakimian

If you interact with other humans, chances are you’ll end up either hurting someone else or being hurt by them. Most likely, it’s both. Maybe it’s accidental. Maybe it’s not. Most of us try not to, but that doesn’t stop it from happening. And naturally, we are more likely to hurt those we interact with more often, meaning that when we do wrong someone else, it’s more likely to be a friend or a family member than the stranger we pass in the grocery store.

As with so many things in life, in part because of its inevitability, the most important thing ends up being not whether or not we hurt or are hurt, but how we respond when it happens. Does a harsh word or a thoughtless comment destroy a relationship? Or do we find a way to work through it and forgive? Do we accept that some friendships are not worth saving? Do we decide that this one is, no matter how hard you have to fight for it? There isn’t a single right answer that fits every situation. As a Christian, I am called to love my enemies–not to mention friends or annoying coworkers–and forgiveness heals much.

But that’s a topic for another time. Today, I want to talk about what hurting each other has meant in some of the relationships I value most. And then about how my writer-brain connects that to good storytelling, because we all knew that was going to happen.

Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but my closest friendships are the ones where we have hurt each other. More than once. Often deeply. We’ve said things, or made assumptions, or lashed out, or… the list goes on. I don’t have to continue it, because I know anyone reading this will have a list of their own, with specific events and particular people. And, I hope, anyone reading this will also know that the story doesn’t end there with the argument, or the silent treatment, or the unexpected ghosting.

Or it doesn’t have to.

Those same friendships I was talking about have thrived because when we did hurt each other we also forgave each other, and we worked through it. Love covers a multitude of sins. And thank God for that.

(A quick note: this, of course, does not meant that there is never a time to end things. David didn’t keep hanging out in King Saul’s court after a certain number of thrown spears; he left. He also straight up refused to hurt Saul, even when given multiple chances, which says plenty as well.)

As for how this applies to storytelling, if working through mutual injury in real life relationships can end up strengthening them, then the same is true in good writing, which aims to be an accurate reflection of the real world. Your characters, even your heroes, will not always agree. They might betray each other, or their values, or do any of another thousand things that create a rift between them. And they might realize it, or they might think they were in the right the entire time. Either way, it’s those moments that create the most compelling story: the ones where the characters end up going head to head in a conflict that can’t just be explained away, where it can’t be resolved unless something fundamentally changes.

Unsurprisingly, I noticed a particularly good example of this during my most recent rewatch of Fringe (shush, everyone’s allowed to be a fangirl every once in a while). There are a few episodes near the middle of the third season where a couple of the characters have to work through some things. The sort of things that only apply when you’re a character in a dramatic science fiction setting that involves alternate universes, but the point remains. And it hurts to watch. Because you understand both of their points of view. And you know that they both have completely valid points. And you also know that the harm done is real, and it’s not just going to vanish on its own.

And it’s resolved! The characters talk through it, work through it, and find a way to move on. They don’t just let their relationship float in whatever direction it wants, they choose to put the effort in to make it work. This could be it’s own blog post, but I can’t give enough praise for mature, intelligent characters. Conflict is so much more compelling when it’s not caused by one or both parties being idiots.

Now, I’m not going to lie. Despite knowing all this, it’s still incredibly difficult for me to work that into my writing. If several of my favorite characters aren’t getting along and are actually at odds, it make me sad. I don’t like it. I want it to stop. And it’s a lot easier to make it stop by not writing it in the first place than by putting in the work to figure out how those characters are going to have to get through it. I need to fix that. Because once I do, it’s going to make me a better writer.