ABATY TYNDYRN
Five years have passed; five summers, with
the length
of five long winters!
William
Wordsworth
For a dear and wonderful friend who showed me this place, speaking of it with so much pride that I could not but love it as much as she did. Thank you, for everything.
A short reflective piece.
vanhunks
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Paramount owns Kathryn and Voyager. Tintern Abbey belongs to the people.
Summary: Like a pilgrim Kathryn Janeway, weary traveler, finds her way home.
TINTERN ABBEY
Kathryn wondered for the thousandth time whether
she felt an intense sadness when it rained, or that it rained because she
experienced deep sorrow. All she knew was that she was struck by a silence that
found its source from within her. Whomever passed her would sense her desire for
quiet repose and knowing this they would respectfully stand a little distance
away and wait...
It was semi-dark, though the hour was early
still. Through the gentle sifting rain she could discern the outline of the
ruins of the abbey as she approached it from the road. She had not prepared for
the rain, she thought as she lifted her face. She enjoyed it - real rain, real
water, real sky, real rolling hills and the smell of fresh grass, the grainy
feeling under fingers as they touched the walls with an ancient reverence... It
could not be duplicated, for perfection of the illusion was always marred by the
knowledge that it isn't real.
She welcomed the rain that soaked into the
earth, the grey skies unwilling to allow the sun to break through and kiss her
upturned face. It always did surprise her the way the grey ruins sprang upon the
eye as she rounded the bend in the road and slowly made her way up the hill. It
lay, serenely cushioned in the valley of the Wye, and the hills, the trees, the
valley, the meandering river formed the frame with Tintern Abbey as the starkly
beautiful picture. One moment just the tallest of oaks with the curtain of rain
- a grey haze really - that shielded the buildings and the next, the austere
beauty of the solitary abbey, its vaults long gone, but its arched doorways
still indicating a desire to be close to heaven.
She had waited seven long years to see the abbey
again. They were seven years of drought in which she thirst and longed for the
streams, the green hills, the trees in the distance and Tintern Abbey. Always,
there had been an emptiness, a pull to this place where she used to come year
after year to breathe in its atmosphere, the air of austerity, a mysterious if
vague blessedness that entered her the minute she touched its walls.
Sometimes on her lonely Voyage where her
companions were the distant stars and worlds that she touched only briefly like
a lonely ghost unable to find rest or like the ship doomed to sail the great
seas forever, she would dream of this place. At first it would hover at the edge
of her dream, as if she were looking at it from a distance
and in respect it waited for her to acknowledge a timeless need. Her feet
would carry her, she knew not how, towards the edge where her spirit would lift
slowly to enter and soon she'd dwell through passages and hallowed halls. She
would stand outside and looked down upon the river Wye, her heart yearning to
hear the stream's rush, or listen to birds in trees that grew tall and majestic
on the opposite bank or see monks in the fields, all wearing wide-brimmed hats
on days when the sun blessed the rolling hills.
Once, the great William Wordsworth penned his
immortal poem here, perhaps standing on the same hallowed spot she was standing,
or maybe he walked up the green hill just as she had done and was like her,
surprised to see the river, swelling as the tide came in. Like a pilgrim he had
returned to a place he knew infused in him the peace he craved, a sense of
homecoming after long years away where he could rely only upon his inward eye to
relive moments he had been at peace, or experienced bliss. She too, had been
away, lost, caring for lost souls, shipwrecked in a way because they were so far
from home with hope the only beacon in the dark distances they travelled. Were
they kindred souls? she wondered. She felt the same connection, a sense of
reaching the end of a long search, of coming home and finding rest. And even as
the rain soaked into her, she recognised it as a balm, the long denied need to
free her battered spirit and accept what was given with so much abundance.
She needed this, had needed it a long time. Her
body was the receptacle of all alien wrath, the burden of her task which weighed
her down so that she thought she would never stand again. It coiled and churned
with countless battles, the scars which never quite healed so that time after
time a memory, a trigger of an event, and the bleeding would start again. Her
body tore itself from all affection, too afraid to love, too afraid to expose
those parts that she knew she would lose irrevocably. Inside her, the battles
had raged. The promise she made the last time she was here at the abbey to
honour, obey and commit herself to her task, became heavy, yet her own desire to
succeed suppressed the anger or the love she knew she could feel if she let it.
Never had she needed Tintern Abbey as she needed
it now. Never was the sifting rain more welcome than it was now. Even the trees
in the distance glistened as if it wept and released all the tears of the ages
for her renewal. Did she imagine roe bounding over the rocks in the Wye? Could
she see the monks in the book room painstakingly embellish texts with the most
exquisite images? Or see some monks toiling in the fields, their hats tilting
over their eyes as they look up, distracted by the presence of one who would
come to find rest? How many knelt, their hands together in quiet supplication
and contemplation of their destiny?
In an alien quadrant, on a lonely vessel
charting unknown sectors to find its way home, she had sought refuge in her
ready room, the holodecks, sometimes sat alone in the airponics bay and dreamed
of home. Yet then, sustenance was temporary, and quickly the old hunger would be
back. Her recreation of these very ruins were but a vague replica, the rain
unreal, the rich green grass too much reminding her that the real thing was here
beneath her feet, or the ruined walls within a finger's touch.
Slowly the anger, the old longing for home, the
hardships they endured, the constant questioning of her own decisions, the guilt
and the gloom seeped from her body and generously the grass beneath her, the
abbey, the river, the trees in the distance took it and absorbed it all. She
bled freely and in
its place came the beginning of the renewal she
craved.
Kathryn wept. The tears had come with the exit
of the old things, a release from the past flowing down her cheeks and away into
life's oblivion. A long time she stood, her tears mingling with the rain. She
wept for beloved crewmembers who died on their long journey home; she wept for
things
that would never be the same again; she wept for
love lost, and the despair that always, in unguarded moments, overcame her.
She was home at last.
She turned to touch the walls one more time
before looking down at the foot of the hill, to the man who had waited there all
the time. It seemed to her that his eyes never left her; a promise to walk the
new road with her into a new future filled her with great inner peace. He didn't
move, and her heart sang with boundless joy as she walked towards him and his
smile travelled on the cool air of Tintern Abbey to touch her.
She reached him. The sifting rain created a fine
mist of shiny droplets on his hair. She touched his cheek in a gentle caress.
His hand came up and covered hers, suffusing her with his warmth.
"There is a new light in your eyes,"
he said quietly.
"Thank you...for waiting..."
**
END