heidi

But then, when I try to look as far as you do, all I see is the next war, grinding the facade of peace to dust.

You always seem to catch sight of some distant star, some unshakable faith.

...Nail on the head as always, Golding.

I'm just... following after the cleric we all so respected.

It was her who gave me courage. It was as if she'd <i>seen</i> war, <i>seen</i> ruin, time after countless time... it was as if she <i>knew</i> we could one day be past all this suffering.

Mm. You've always been her follower. You can see her light.

But I can't.

So to my mind, the best I can do is to see what's in front of me, to trust in the here and now. So it goes for the vast majority.

To trust our every class and play can educate the children, to trust in the little kindnesses we do the Self-Salvation Corps. It's better than cold selfishness, than a rudderless drive.

I... want to trust that what our lives are now is still worth something, just as I trust in you.

You can trust in me, Golding. You can write of this all in a letter, so I might remember for you too.

In that case, supposing I forget one day, you must make it in time to remind me. Deal?

She'd long... arranged a Messenger to hand me an office key.

I couldn't make it.

Countless letters and clippings still fill the deskside suitcase. They are all that's left. Heidi needs not read, for they were all sent by herself.

She came here to find again the true, inner feelings she'd divulged all those years ago.

She said as much to Golding: If I forget the grief and the roars I take down in my letters, then please, remind me.

You catch the guys from today?

Missed 'em.

They'll all be stuck before long, anyway.

Hah, true. No place to run. Those poor insects ain't ever seen what war really is.

—What's that?

The two Sarkaz soldiers assigned to night patrol look up.

From atop a skyscraper's ruins come pieces of paper, floating down.

That's a lotta writing.

Is each one the same?

No.

Then who cares. Someone's just tossing out their wastebasket.

The Sarkaz tosses the letter paper to the ground, and gives it a few stamps underfoot.

What a waste for you to throw these letters away... and how dangerous.

That's alright. Our correspondence was never a signed one.

And besides, they were just letters from me to Golding... odd essays and nothing more.

She always liked to joke to me that since I'd be going my whole life in the guise of a third-rate novelist, covering for my intel gathering work...

I may well be waiting until after my death to get the fame I deserve, when all these private letters can be published.

So here we are... isn't this publishing, in a way?

I understand her choice. I understand how she couldn't bear this age any longer, just how despair and estrangement and hatred overwhelmed her.

Wounded compatriots unwilling to rise again, friends forced to suspect one another, children tasting suffering and hostility in the first years of their lives.

How such stories are so omnipresent, yet so unspeakable.

Depression. Sorrow. Indignity. Loathing. Penetrating critiques and satires, desperately longed-for images and memories.

Everything she endured. Everything she waited for.

The letters tell all across the dark street floor.

To the city, she lets out silent howl after howl.

But she's fully aware that no one will pick them up from the flagstone street slicked in engine oil, let alone discern the handwriting.

All falls still again. The only sound Londinium produces in return, the day-and-night rumble of the military factories, somewhere close by.

...And how powerless these words I play around with are.

No more will there be letters.

But, you know—I still feel it's a waste of sorts...

When Lady Golding put on plays for the children, she'd always bring up the suggestions you made for them in your letters, and how they always hit where it hurt.

Lady Heidi, will you ever... still write your own thoughts, the way you did in those?

Back, to the ground, all the paper falls.

<i>Dearest friend,</i>

<i>You always say if the writing's gone poorly, it's fine to tear up the work. In that light, you'll surely approve of my act of casting away those old letters.</i>

<i>I've come to realize that my unconditional trust—and pursuit—of such a distant ideal is hardly a promised path, hardly bound to just come about under her witness with a finger's snap.</i>

<i>And the calls I once penned from behind as I followed in her tracks; those were no full answer to the lives we have now.</i>

<i>This new life suffused in torment, from my confusion and my loss, from my own soul-searching. Something tells me—that I should be more than just a follower.</i>

<i>This is... the first letter I write you. By my finite insight, by my frail and fleeting life, I want to press on ahead with others, and perhaps, come some time or other, I'll become a leader.</i>

<i>Oh, how I wish my critic could be not the ruthless present, but you instead.</i>