VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, [7], 8, 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 13:26:12 06/07/08 Sat
Author: celtgirl ()
Subject: Here he is>>>
In reply to: celtgirl 's message, "And now for those of you who've been wanting a visit with his Lordship..." on 12:08:34 06/07/08 Sat

copyright 2008 Cindy Brandner


The stars in Russia were closer to the ground. While normally this would be a phenomenon to be admired, tonight frankly, thought Lord James Stuart Kirkpatrick, it was a damned inconvenience, and when compounded with snow swirling up in great funnels, compliments of a Siberian ice storm, it was a downright insult.

Russia- the very name a black and rich perfume upon his tongue. He had never been able to bring himself to call this country by its official name of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic. No, She was Russia, indomitable and cruel, much like the nature of her own people. She was mysterious, dark, unfathomed. From the far west where the city of St. Petersburg still hung like a sugar spun fairytale of European architecture, European manners and European decay- a city of water, stone and sky, Russia’s own Venice. And then moving East- Kiev- its outlines laid down in white marble and etched upon the skies in airy domes, so beautifully constructed they seemed like teacups awaiting the discerning tongues of angels on high to drink their exotic depths.

To the far east, to the frontiers of Vladivostok, the great outpost that never was. And the Russians themselves, descended from the great horse warlords with their scythe-like cheekbones and ice blue eyes. To the far north, with its vast, deep forests, tracts of which no man had ever walked within nor touched upon- here was the land of fable of Baba Yaga and the Firebird, the land of the sweeping amber-skinned hordes of Chingis Khan. Siber, the very name conjuring up icy steppes and dark-eyed women in wind torn furs.

The armies of Chingis Khan had numbered in the tens of thousands- men feared from one ocean to another for their famed indestructibility. Neither hunger, nor cold, nor mighty Russian princes stood against them. The reach of their hooked swords extending from the frozen tundra to the warm blooded waters of the Black Sea. They had shaped the modern body of Russia.

Ah yes, the vast bloody, beautiful, terrible body of Mother Russia- no mother had ever been less nurturing to her children. She had succoured her young on blood from the very beginnings of human memory. Never moreso than now, with the heartless steel of the Soviet Empire and all its tin soldiers as her might and fury. James Kirkpatrick stood in the cold embrace of Her harlot’s heart and knew himself ten kinds of fool for keeping this meeting as he did each year. Each year the risk of something going very badly awry increased, and he often felt his luck running down like a rope of sand, leaving him little to cling to.

But Russia gave him perspective, so huge, so brutal, so layered in history, beauty, terror and blood. So like Ireland, and yet absolutely nothing like it at all. For Russia owed nothing to the Western mindset, the Russian mind was inscrutable, owing to neither East nor West for its philosophy and way of viewing the universe. Russia was Russian, and could not be defined by the tenets of the rest of the world, she was a fact- a great dark Mother, whose mind and soul was slippery and often not understood even by her own.

“Yasha.” A voice, strong, commanding and yet filled with a remembered laughter, came to him out of the snow and the dark.

There were only two people on the face of the planet that called him Yasha, one had raised him, the other stood here, now, outlined in the dark, against the blowing pines. He had met Andrei Alekseyevich Valueve when they were both eighteen years old. They had three years of sublime friendship, in which both were lucky to emerge with limbs and spirits intact. Since then this was all they were allowed, one night a year here near the Finnish border in a low log house whose eaves hung heavy with ice and pine boughs scraped the roof.

“Andrushya,” he replied, voice carrying quietly through the delicate spirals of snow that danced around the two of them.

They stood thus for a moment, Andrei Valueve’s guards a dim blur behind him, the six feet of snow, that separated Jamie and his dearest friend, filled with a wealth of memory and regret.

Then Andrei, always and in essentials, Russian, stepped forward to clasp Jamie in a bear hug, which Jamie returned with equal ferocity. This emotion engulfed the men, from the sheer relief of seeing each other alive and reassuring themselves that all nightmares could be woken from, even if both were very aware, that such things were seldom true in the waking world.

Last edited by author: Sat June 07, 2008 21:33:00   Edited 1 time.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.