xp_logs | Emerald Isle: Terry Loglet

After a week away, Terry reflects on her life and where home is.

Sunset spread over green hills fair bursting with new life and promise. Ireland embraced spring with the welcome of a bride greeting her love after war. There was nothing magical about being home. The Keep was the same -- unchanged by six years' passage as it had been by the change of centuries before. The little town that sat at the crossroads was a slightly bigger town now but had the same half-remembered feeling of being out of time yet firmly rooted in it.

Everything had that sense. As though nothing--not fire, nor famine nor revolution nor war, not man, nature, God or fae could really change the heart of this place, this island.

It had occurred to her, while sitting on the flight pretending to be reading so that Sean could pretend that he had no need to talk to her--easier on them both that way--it occurred to her that things might not be...that home might not be home. That perhaps childhood memories were merely lies or dreams and the sanctuary she sought was not truly to be found in the stone and earth at Cassidy Keep. After all, except for that single fraught year, the Keep was never really her home. That was Tom. Tom and all the towns and cities and pubs and shady deals in darkened corners and 'isn't she a darling one?'' in the way that Terry knew meant harm but never actually feared not with Tom there to protect her. In her child's mind, her uncle was invincible and all powerful and cleverer than anyone. People knew better than to cross Tom Cassidy, especially over his girl.

Home--real home--was sitting down at her first harp. Was falling asleep under the table, with her head on her uncle's knee while he made a deal. Was her lock picks clumsy in her hands until Tom had reached out to steady her. Was poetry at dawn when she woke for school and he was falling asleep. Was yet another move from nondescript flat to nondescript flat.

Home was Tom. But home was Ireland. All its places and people. Its language. Its soul.

She shouldn't have worried.

No, now her worries were more familiar. And more painful.

She couldn't talk to Sean. Not yet. She still didn't know what to do about him. Tentative overtures on both parts drew them closer, sure, but it fell apart. Never quite enough to bridge the pain and misunderstanding that coloured everything.

So Terry spent her days with Ireland. Long walks, chats with the locals who all knew more about her that she did, and inevitably a céilí, an experience both bewildering and delightful as memories (Tom loved parties) met with the present. (Sean had shocked her with his enthusiasm. She'd dropped her drink when she saw him spinning through a reel. It gladdened her but disturbed her too. How she was ever to learn this man when he kept showing bits of himself that didn't fit?)

She cried often. It was sort of overwhelming being home, being surrounded by people who spoke in the musical lilt that she remembered from childhood instead of the flat, harsh New England accent that she could hear in her own voice. She'd cultivated it on purpose but it still sounded wrong to her. Coming home, it had slipped away somewhat but not quite.

Mostly she didn't think about Xavier's. It always hurt too much. She didn't check the journals, only opened her email with her breath held like a talisman against whatever messages it might hold. But nothing came. Terry told herself she was grateful for the space.