”A good loneliness, a good insecurity. Stone room, pines. His will, His mercy. An imperfection to say it and insist: lack of faith. Do not explain.”

Thomas Merton, March 3, 1961

I rub my thumb along the pads of my fingers. There were ridges on my skin. Used to slide my hands together in church during one of Dad's endless homilies. Parson's child couldn't fall asleep in the pew. World felt new in those decades, swathed in an elongated childhood. Back when the Hallowes had a roof, the one you remembered.

Dad never hid what we were from me. Hard to, when pixies, elves and fae knocked on the lintel of our country parsonage's kitchen door. The village children grow in waves. Time to learn, to play the games Faeries played with each other. Mystic diversions, disguising an education in those magics the Realms possess. Even then, with scuffed knees and dirtied cotton shirts, one step out of my dutiful role and the play stopped. My tiny Queen rushed off by her handmaids, the Neutrality to maintain. 

Duty as law.

We met in thickets and meadows, the outskirts of villages safe in the Truce's Neutrality. Never entered each others' homes. The moment I forgot the fundamental rule, the colourful wagons of my father's acquaintances became a better education for the Truce's Peace Child. 

For the Judge, who in his lack of belonging, was uniquely situated to dole justice upon Mystic Truce breakers. 

Then I met you, Tuija. You were a perpetual figure in the background, this warrior woman beside Finnegan and Donovan. 

We danced around, you and I. Drinking buddies, sparring partners. Companions. We were two planets orbiting a bizarre solar body, which shifted its gravity enough for us to combine. The day we married was a strange synthesis of overwhelm and joy. A pause before the onslaught where Zeus must have moved the sky. I don't know, you were in my arms. Raphael took us to Finnegan's, everything else is resounding thunder. The beating of mighty wings.

Sixty years ago, I could still feel the skin of my fingers. I don't remember when it stopped. You told me to run, and my God, Tuija. If I don't find a way out of the Truce now, will I soon feel nothing at all?

Caleb Mauthisen, Anno Paxus 163 (2017)