Special

Sometimes when I watch Finley work, I think of our names together and marvel at them.
Finley and Payton. Payton and Finley.
Those words might not mean anything together to you, but to me, the combination means a lot.
Two old world names, lost to modern tongues, that live because we do--well, it means a lot.

We survive the old world, and sometimes--just sometimes--I like to think about that.

Finley means 'fair-haired soldier'.  Finley is a soldier, too. He fights for what is right and righteous. If all the knights from Arthur's courts are dead, and their descendants buried, and the dust from their bones on some Celtic wind; Finley survives their chivalry, their chasteness, their honesty and their grace, their skill with a sword. He denies the eradication of those values with every breath and movement. Also, he shares what I imagine to be true of those men: their charm, their occasional social awkwardness, their devoted anger, perhaps even their idealistic vanity. That is to say, the idea that doing the right thing will protect our actions from failure. He looks like a knight, too, carries himself like a knight. He has a healthy belief in magic, one that died for most long ago. His willingness to love and not confess it, save to those he trusts entirely, which are few. The willingness to fight hard for the ones he loves....

Payton is the name of an old-English town; Poega's town. No one knows why the name was remembered when all that's left of the city is ruins. I know why the name was remembered, though. Ruins don't mean something is destroyed. Besides the tangible pieces, the intangible things are just as valuable. Sighs waiting in a corner; the remains of a sign in a language we can't read still welcoming us in. I am a ruin of ladies, too. I am a remnant of times when ladies wore flowing dresses and golden hair with elegance and skillful silence. I speak like them, I decorate like them. I cook and clean. I have no skill with sewing, but I can garden. I can entertain. I can be diplomatic. I even have a beauty that would have meant something much more valuable then; it doesn't mean anything now. I would have won my knight with the ruins of a village....


Fine ideas and fine words don't end this.

Finley's a better cook than I am, just as good a cleaner. He doesn't like to drink. I'm better with a sword than he is, too, and I speak my mind. I'm dependent on modern medical technology, support those who are different.


We might fit in better, there, but we'd still be odd.


It's easy to forget that part when one is dreaming. Easy to forget that we are too strange to be heroes, even in a time when heroes were needed everywhere.


Heroes come from unexpected places, though.You need not come from any particular place or have particular friends or skills. You do not need astronomical wealth or expected skills. You need to know what you believe is right and wrong and to fight for them.

Yes, Heroes come from everywhere.

People like you. People like me.


People like us.





I
would be
an extrordinary
hero....