Dante's Prayer Who: Liadan (Monologue) What: Introspection Where: Outside by the forest When: 11pm Rating: PG Status: Complete
There's something in the air tonight that Liadan can't quite place.
Friday night and all the other students have either gone home or are out with their friends and yet she feels like being alone. It has been an exhausting week, she's not quite used to her time in the medical center yet and sometimes, it's a little overwhelming. It's something that she's talked about with her mother, something that she's analyzed by herself in the dark of the night when her mind refuses to stop running around in useless circles. To be a healer is to surround oneself with pain, but to be a great healer is to surround oneself with pain and not shut it out. It had only been her first week in the medical bay and even though she hadn't dealt with much more than light flesh wounds, she had seen one student rushed in screaming. A hunter who had bit off more than he could chew. The wounds hadn't been all that bad if Liadan were to be honest with herself, but the pain had been what had changed the entire feeling.
Even though the wounds had been superficial, his yells still echoed in her ears when she closed her eyes.
Sometimes she doesn't know if she's cut out to be a healer. Sometimes, on quiet, still nights like these, she finds herself questioning her faith. Not the Lord. Nor the Lady. She knows they exist, she has conversed with them, danced in their light and felt their presence. It's the message that has been passed down through the generations of humans that gives her pause and she looks down at the worn paperback in her hand, a book which she has read and reread so many times that the cover has been taped back together.
In the inferno of hell, a lone pilgrim made his way through its horrors with Virgil as his guide. The good and the just can be punished with the fires of hell as easily as the evil and the cruel. It's a strange book of rules the Christian Lord has set down for his children and Liadan wonders where the justice in some of it is.
Love can be punished as easily as hate.
Defense can be punished as easily as murder.
Her skirts make a soft swishing sound around her legs as she reaches the forest, taking off her shoes and stowing them away in her bag as she moves languidly towards the center of the forest. A gnarled, venerable oak stands in front of her and with a small whisper to it's thick bark, Liadan climbs up high into its branches before casting a light spell and pulling out her book.
There's something in the air tonight that Liadan can't quite place, but surrounded by nature, alone in the dark she can't help but feel a bit better.