It's National Novel Writing Month! A bunch of @freewritehouse's freewriters have bravely (or foolishly? Only time will tell...) accepted the challenge of writing an entire novel in one month. These are: @amelin; @botefarm; @felt.buzz; @grow23; @improv; @kaelci; @kaerpediem; @linnyplant; @mariannewest; @ntowl; @stinawog; @carolkean; @byn; @kipswolfe; @bennettitalia; @aislingcronin; @nonsowrites.

Aaaand... I'm one of them.

50,000 words total, which breaks down to 1,667/day.

Still panicking a bit here.

Ok, so I got through the first chapter. But again, sticking with it and seeing it through to the ending is the challenge for me. A looooong way to go still. So now comes the hard part.

Chapter 2...

Like I said, there are going to be twists and turns here. So if you find yourself wondering what in the blankety-blank did I do with the storyline that began in chapter one, don't panic. Everything will make sense eventually. Or maybe even sooner.

At least that's what I keep telling myself...

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Read and comment on my #freewritemadness posts for a chance to WIN SteemBasicIncome shares! For more information, click on the first banner at the end of this post

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In case anybody's wondering, this is my 79th 5 minute freewrite. (Disclaimer: even under normal circumstances, these usually take me significantly longer than 5 minutes to write and edit. And given that November is novel writing month, "significantly longer" has taken on a whole new meaning 😉).

Today's prompt is "armband", but I didn't use it.

Word count for this installment is 1,490

Come join in the fun at @freewritehouse! Lots of contests and other fun stuff for both writers and fans 😃🎉

Many thanks to the incomparable @mariannewest for hosting these wonderful daily freewrites :) https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-378-5-minute-freewrite-friday-prompt-armband

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https://unsplash.com/photos/ACt2UZwHsIk

The Perfectionists

Chapter 2

An invitation

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Louis gazed down at the slip of paper in his fingers, reading the words he had written over to himself again, his lips moving to mouth them silently. "The love I bear you is all I have..." The verses sounded sacrilegious to him now. She'd hate them, wouldn't she?

Would she? There was no one he could ask.

He shook himself, looking up to see the others at work in the orchard. He was supposed to be working with them, side by side, instead of standing here like an idiot in the sun, staring at his hands. He was grateful that nobody had noticed him.

The spring air was dry and warm, with just a hint of winter's chill still clinging to it. A light, steady breeze sang in his ears, accentuating the vastness of space all around, the seeming void that was, in point of fact, filled with light and movement, the great illuminated arc of the sky that made the exuberant voices of his brothers sound smaller and more distant than they really were.

He secreted the parchment in a pocket inside of his robes, and trotted out to help with pruning the pear and quince and apple trees. But all during that long windy afternoon, and during vespers, and at the evening meal, he wondered.

There was no question that Justine was beautiful. Too beautiful, he often thought, to have been dedicated to the church. A sacrilegious notion, one of the many that occupied his unruly head. If thoughts, and not deeds, were to be weighed more heavily when the time came to separate the faithful from the damned, then he was sure to find himself among the latter.

Of course, he told himself, there was no greater calling than hers. Not even his own. To be wedded to God is surely a higher purpose still than to be his servant. The purity of her beauty, the balm of her kindness were not wasted on Christ. For earthly love was but a wretched echo of the love of the Creator.

And yet he woke, night after night, in an ecstasy of discomfort, shocked by the cold clarity of his longing, as if love were an icy stream into which he'd suddenly been plunged, awakening all of his senses at once, bringing a painful kind of intensity to his need, and an edge of urgency to his despair. He told himself that he could have made it through the days, in devout observance of the ideals of the order he'd come to serve, that he might have been capable of behaving, in his actions if not in his thoughts, like an exemplary man of God, were it not for the quiet hours spent in the solitude of his own cell, in the dark, when the whole world was sleeping. It was then that he forgot how to see his desire for her as wickedness, as the temptation to sin that he must believe it to be. It was then that his recalcitrant mind refused to recognize his love as weakness. It was then that the strength of it overwhelmed him, and the purity of it consumed him. When he woke, again and again, in the small hours of the morning, his mind freed of the burden of understanding that held it fast during the day, so that there seemed to be little but the insubstantial veil of darkness to separate him from his Creator, he could not help but perceive his love for Justine to be the most transcendent thing he had ever experienced, and to imagine that therefore it must of necessity be divinely inspired, and that if it wasn't, then he knew nothing of God.

After a time of lying there in the cold silence, staring hard into the dark, he would fall back asleep, only to wake again in the light of morning, caged and defeated already by the day to come, and all the days to follow it, caged and defeated by the doctrines which he was to live these days by, and which contradicted exactly what he had experienced of God, and of love, in the quiet hours of the night. When he rose in the mornings, the certainty of those nighttime waking hours eluded him. So he spent the days writing love poems, and not delivering them to the one who had inspired them, but carrying them around with him instead so that he could read and re-read them, guiltily, secretly, and think to himself that her beauty was surely conclusive proof of the presence of a divine hand in the creation of the world, and smile, though he felt ashamed at smiling, while he pruned trees, and chopped wood, and cooked soup, and prayed.

He'd no desire to continue to suffer this longing alone, nor could he abide the thought that Justine might be suffering similarly. He knew, he could see it in her eyes when she spoke to him, that there was something she felt. Of what quality, and in what measure, he couldn't say; but she behaved affectionately toward him, and he was certain that she would not betray him. Tomorrow, before vespers, he'd find some pretext for visiting the convent. He'd see her, surely, in the kitchens, and speak to her, and deliver the poem.

That night he slept with the scrap of paper beneath his pillow, and all during the following day he carried it about with him without once looking at it, undertaking instead to devote his full attention to each successive task at hand. And when, in the long slanting light of early evening, he came to the convent to deliver a large basket of freshly baked bread for the evening meal, as a gift from the monastery, he found Justine in the kitchens, and spoke with her. And the conversation was sweet, and he thought her beautiful, but he didn't give her the note. He was too far removed from the certainty of the night before, his need eclipsed by the lulling rhythmic normalcy of daily routines. He asked after her health, and she his, and each shared an amusing anecdote or two, at which the other laughed cheerfully, and then he left, and went back to vespers, and then supper, and cleaning, and compline, and bed, during all of which he felt the disappointment in himself dully, as if at a distance.

But the need that woke him that night was sharp and clear and painful, so that he cried at the brutality of it.

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Justine returned to the counter and began again to chop the vegetables for the evening meal . What else was there? What point in battling despair when there is no hope available to take its place? She wished he'd come back. She hated his leaving. She both loved and hated seeing him: loved, for the brief but sweetly lingering happiness and sadness it generated in her, and hated, for the requisite superficiality and brevity of it.

If her time had been her own, if she'd been free to determine the structure of her days, who to spend them with, and how, she would have chosen differently. She loved prayer, but prayer was not all there was. There was also life. And God, being a loving father, could not possibly intend to deprive his children of the very life he had bestowed upon them.

So yes, she would have spoken to Louis at greater length, if she'd been able. She would have placed her hand in his, and walked with him out into the meadows of bursting wildflowers that flaunted their perfect beauty shamelessly in the clean spring air. Maybe she would even have kissed him. But she must bear in mind always that such things were not to be, such thoughts were not to think. That though God might have created his children to live and to love, God's children had their own, often very different, notions as to what was required of them. And she lived among God's children. They both did.

In spite of which, and against all reason, she couldn't help but wish that she'd spoken something of what she felt to him. That she could at least have whispered an invitation for him to visit her dreams, as he'd done the night before, and the night before that, and for weeks and months, disregarding her every attempt to keep him at bay, until finally she was surprised to find herself looking forward to seeing him, in dream, each night after she blew the candle out, in the brilliant imaginary dark, where they were free to walk in clear spring air that sometimes felt cool and sometimes felt warm and sometimes both at once, surrounded by immoderate displays of wildflowers.

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©2018 Bennett Italia, all rights reserved.

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