Home to Eisental

So it's been a bazillion years since I've actually blogged, so here's something I wrote up last summer and then got...distracted. Eight months later I'm flailing at my long-abandoned blog and came across this in draft form, and then bawled my eyes out rereading the thing, so here it is in (almost) virginal form.

To jump ahead in the story, as well I ought, since it's now March?

I wasn't afraid.

For the first time ever on that site -- the first time ever among those people -- I WASN'T AFRAID.

And that changed everything.

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So anyways. The week before the event was teh suck. I had (unsurprisingly) pushed myself the hell too hard, doing so many events in a row, and I was out, I was OUT, brain made of cream cheese and aching body curling in on itself in that 'major depressive incident imminent, abort, abort!' sequence I've gotten to be so familiar with. So I took it the hell easy, read, goofed online, slept LOTS, did really nothing that I didn't ABSOLUTELY have to. And just hoped I could hold it off until I got some time for a real break.

And Friday came, and I hit the wall where I couldn't pretend anymore that this was just another event, just Event #5 Of Eight In A Row What Are You Thinking. This was Eisental, this was home, this was the people I'd left without goodbyes, abandoned, run away from, fled -- the prodigal son returneth, and the bible story is really nice but pretty often the prodigal son returneth to a kick in the ass and a 'and stay out'. And despite knowing these people, despite all my logic and rational mind could say, I still believed one of the last of the many lies I'd heard way back when, and knew I wouldn't be welcomed back.

Which is why I was pretending so hard. Because these people. These people. For all that Caer Galen became home, for all that I miss my wild, city-state, monkey-dancin barony, I'm still from Eisental, Eisenstadt, bad German accents and cannons, a great ape swinging knuckles on the ground and picking things up with my feet.

I missed them terribly, and I wanted to go home, and you know that line.

So I got up and packed up and screwed around and piddled with other things and somehow got on the road when I'd planned to despite my best efforts, and my hands knew how to guide the car to the site, and my feet knew every pothole in the road, and Wicked Girls came on the radio just as I got within sight and finished up just as I was parking, and I knew that it was all gonna be okay.

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And somehow it was. I was greeted with hugs and immediate attempts to catch me up on five years' gossip (most of which I handily avoided). I was fed (also hollered at for not telling folks I was hungry). I was invited to enough parties that even if I'd only had half a drink at each, I'd've only made it to half of them. Walking through site, the scent was right, the trees were right, my feet knew every root and ankle-breaking hole in the dark, the story tree drew me within its embrace just as it always had. It was RIGHT, in a way that nowhere else has been right in a long, long time. Too long.

Eisental status mentis est. No matter where I travel now, I know that Eisental is home.

As Caer Galen is home, because Caer Galen status mentis est. I have, it seems, a dual citizenship, and despite East vs. Outlands, barony vs. shire, my two homes have so much in common -- more than just me, and now Loiosh -- that I can comfortably live in both.

It's a good feeling. I haven't had community, true community, since I left Caer Galen, and damn near two years is a long time for even an outcaste nomad like me to be without a pack.

It doesn't make me want to sink my roots here again, mind you. I'm not...a roots-sinking sort of person. But it's a place where I can settle for a bit; it's a perch, a place to stop the wheels from rolling for a time. It's a camp where I'm welcome, a place to pitch my tent.

It's good to be home.

After all those years, it's good to be home...and not afraid.