[open] then shall thy light rise up in darkness

[almaredemptoris]

Who: Jean Valjean (almaredemptoris) & YOU
What: Various activities as the city cools down
When: Throughout March
Where: Olympia
Warning(s): None


I. The Sanctuary

As the riots subside, diminishing from a wild blaze to glowering embers, and it becomes no longer necessary or practical to barricade oneself in his own home, Jean Valjean is quick to answer the call to help. It is not the blessing of Thesa he seeks, nor the bolstering of his reputation, but the soothing of his conscience. When before him are those in need, he feels compelled to lend what aid he can.

So, with a long list of components folded and tucked within his pocket, he sets out with a partner to replenish the ravaged supplies of the Sanctuary. Whoever accompanies him in this endeavor will find in him quiet company as they traverse the market district and the gardens to which the Sanctuary has access. He focuses on the task at hand, addressing occasional comments or questions such as, "Where do you think such an ingredient could be found?"

Later in the week, he may be sent out with a basket of medicinal potions and a list of addresses to visit. He is still learning the city's layout, so hopefully whomever he has been paired with is better versed in the twisting and narrow roads of Olympia, lest they end up turned around.

II. Rebuilding Olympia

When he is not under the direction of the Sanctuary, Jean Valjean devotes what time he can to the broader efforts to restore the city. Whether he is assisting Olympians and fellow refugees in repairing homes and businesses, or assisting in the collection of food, clothing, blankets, and other goods for the city's shelters, he works with a serious diligence. He brightens when he watches after the stray children of men and women hard at work, occupying them with stories and following along with their games. They are as dim shadows of his own Cosette, and he feels a bit more cheerful and a bit more melancholy at once.

He does not volunteer to supervise the cowed rioters as they carry out their sentences of cleaning streets and restoring the palace gardens, but as he carries out his own tasks he might be caught watching them with a countenance that is more pensive than contemptuous.

[OOC note: Feel free to reply in brackets or prose, I have no preference. PM me or use my comment on the plotting post (linked above) if you would like to plot. :)]

Comments

[almaredemptoris]

"I've got some experience," he answers modestly. He had learned the trade of pruning at a young age and dedicated the next fifteen years of his life to the trees of Faverolles, all to carve out a meager existence for himself and his sister's family. These skills he had harnessed once again in the five years he spent in the convent at Petit-Picpus helping the garden to flourish. For him it is not a hobby in whose soil sprouts peaceful contemplation; it is labor that had simply been necessary, and he pursues it now simply because he possesses skill in it. As he follows the young man, Jean Valjean carefully reads over the wooden markers that label each plant, committing as much as he can to memory. "I have studied a little too," he continues. "Some of the plants of this land have similar properties to the plants I know from home. It is just a matter of relearning."

[inaurare]

"It is, indeed. I know that feeling well."

Careful steps off the path, over the border plants to sit on the edge of the planter. The plant is growing in proud sprays here, and he runs his hands through to inspect - a satisfied little smile at the first hints of buds. Some of these will be ready to flower before long.

"The house where I was raised had gardens of its own, though they were more... decorative gardens, one might say? There was a small plot for kitchen herbs and the like but nothing so extensive as this-- did we need the root, or leaf, or both?"

[almaredemptoris]

"The root," he responds without glancing at the list clutched in his hand. "Although I wonder if we might find some use for the leaves too. Waste not, want not." Then conversationally he adds, "That sounds pleasant, to have such gardens." As is characteristic of a man who holds all others at arm's length by necessity, he contains his answers to what is polite without prying further, and he keeps the topic tilted away from himself as much as possible. He does not presume that the young man wishes to linger on reveries of what he had been made to leave behind in a country now usurped by darkness. The double edge of a sweet memory is to recall it after it has long passed.

[inaurare]

"I enjoy things that grow." And growing things had always been a happy distraction from his lingering. Linneus knows that ache particularly well, since long before his arrival here.

He notices the slant of the conversation, though, and one hand gently taps the edge of the planter - sit? Linneus is more than used to kneeling in flowerbeds and he misses the gardens of the Teahouse, but he actually likes the Sanctuary's gardens, the raised beds are a little easier to work in.

"Let's take several, then." The roots will have tangled underground anyway, making it impossible to take just one. And a few plants together will yield a decent amount of the root. "If they're not needed immediately the leaves can keep..." Dried for tea, or steeped, though young leaves are quite edible - enough for him to pinch one off to try, delicate, "Or we can deliver some to the kitchen."

[almaredemptoris]

Although he would just as soon remain standing, he takes a seat upon the ledge when prompted. Judging by the length of the list with which they have been tasked, they have got a long afternoon ahead of them, and so he supposes it would not hurt to rest while he may. "Indeed, the kitchens too must be wanting for ingredients in these troubled times," he agrees amicably. "A great many are taken care of by the Sanctuary, are they not?" Moreover, it is out of his only incipient familiarity with the native plants that he remains by Linneus' side rather than suggest they divide and conquer. This young man seems to have lived in this alien city for at least a little longer, and thus knows better what they seek. Perhaps he might learn from him. "If you dig them up, I can work at separating root and leaf and bundling these together."

[inaurare]

"They are, yes." Linneus quite happy with the division of work; seeking out a few of the plants that have not flowered yet. Those he will pull, and he sets to work with care to loosen the earth, exposing the root without damaging it, making it easier to free and pass over.

"There was a sickness here about a half a year ago - did you know this? Olympia was evacuated and maybe a month later a number of us returned from Wyver to find our homes broken into... there was some pride, in the face of the evacuation, a number of Olympians who refused to leave. But with the crops and businesses unmaintained, the harvest ungathered... well, you can imagine. There was a food shortage in our absence, and some sought to feed themselves and the food in our houses - well, we weren't using it..."

His attitude in the face of this was very much that he is bearing now. As unpleasant as it was to come home and find his home disturbed... Linneus understands why it happened. He has never looked for blame, really.

Methodical, freeing the root, giving it a cursory dust off before laying it out for the gentleman to take care of.

"I returned a little before the new year and found my home in a state. It had been that way for a while I expect, most of the food gone, and snow all blown inside. One gentleman suggested I go to the Sanctuary for help - this was before I worked there. I'd only volunteered up to that point, they were struggling so to take care of the afflicted, so I didn't know of all they did..."

[almaredemptoris]

Jean Valjean listens attentively, folding these snippets of history into the slow growing stores of knowledge he has gathered pertaining to this new world. It seems to be a land plagued by troubles, but then hardship is the natural condition of man, and it is for this reason that he depends upon God for guidance and strength. When Linneus lays out the plant, he borrows the shears to separate roots from stem and then leaves from stem, setting these aside on the raised ledge in two piles. The work is quick and seamless in his hands, thus lending credibility to the experience he claims. "It is man's duty to serve one another, as God commanded, but so too is it man's nature to serve only himself, especially so when burdened with hardships," he murmurs. He cannot, of course, censure those who took advantage of the abandoned houses that they might stave off starvation. So well does he remember the desperation that drives such acts, it is like a brand on his mind that sears through all the long intervening years. Rather than contempt, he feels only pity for those whose fortunes drag them so low that it becomes necessary to turn to thievery.

[inaurare]

"I would have given them what I had, if I'd only been there to give it." A light shake of his head, leaning forward to dig out another plant and keep their little operation going. Five, maybe? Perhaps they could go for five before moving along. "But I wasn't, so I can't fault them for taking." Hesitantly glancing at his partner "...though to say so is self-serving, perhaps. I took from here, when the Sanctuary shut during the riots."

For all he understands it was for their protection - both of those who worked there, and those receiving care, it worried Linneus a little that the Sanctuary, a place for helping those in need, would close its doors when their help was needed the most. When there were injured outside its gates; when Lysa's daughters were struggling to provide care in hastily-set-up clinics.

"The sick must be protected and sheltered, I understand this. But..."

[almaredemptoris]

He listens quietly and reserves judgment, for that is the prerogative of God. Finally, as Linneus trails off, he asks, "Do you feel remorse for your actions? And are you not doing penance now, in giving your aid to the Sanctuary? That is all God asks of us when we do wrong, to repent and in doing so cleanse our souls." As he speaks he takes up the next web of roots that Linneus loosens from the soil, adroitly severing the parts and adding these to the pile. While he does not presume that the young man shares in his own religious views, he hopes that his words offer some reassurance nonetheless.

[inaurare]

A moment, while he pulls back from his work, a light frown on face.

"Yes and no. I regret it, but I don't regret it." Oh, but that sounds so flimsy, but trying to explain it will feel like making excuses. People needed the help, without the Sanctuary to turn to for healing, so to that end... "It was the right choice at the time, I think. But I think that means it was more... necessary than correct."

And he is here, now that it's done. His actions are known, he was not the only member of the Sanctuary forced to operate outside its walls, once they closed, and he was fully prepared to lose the job he had there, if it had taken that to make things right.

[almaredemptoris]

His expression is contemplative as Linneus explains himself. Such feelings are not unfamiliar to him, nor is the act of theft for the sake of survival. Theft is wrong in the eyes of the law, but withholding aid to the needy is wrong in the eyes of God. "None should be condemned for willing to live another day," he says quietly. "And with that life, you can strive to give back to others."

[inaurare]

That frown still furrows Linneus' brow a little while he works, loosening the final root and smoothing the soil over after it's pulled up. It's important to Linneus to try to do right, to be kind, to try to help, compelled not just by his nature, but his own experience. He has given must, been taken from plenty. And struggled even then being kind to himself.

And sometimes what people call kindness is just being nice - so many people he has known to be nice only to smooth over cruelties.

"To give - to be kind - sounds an easy thing. But kindness offered only when the inclination allows, when the situation makes it easy... that is not necessarily the measure of a man, I think. Sometimes kindness is perhaps making a hard decision, in the knowledge that it will help..."

It is presumptuous, however, to say such things. He forgets, sometimes, that in the eyes of most he is young yet - what a thing it is, to feel old. To be in his mid-twenties and already tired.

[almaredemptoris]

Age is not a factor in how one becomes burdened by hardship, nor in how one bears this load: the young bend as do the old. At twenty-five Jean Valjean had found himself responsible for his widowed sister's seven children. Day by day he had been whittled down smaller and smaller, closing in upon himself, until he broke. The window. The bread. A nineteen year sentence on his head. Now with twice as many years passed, he feels younger in many respects. His spirit had been renewed first by the compassion of the bishop, then later by the innocence of Cosette. The one had cleansed him of the hatred that befouled his heart, the other kept him from regressing to those darker instincts of disgust and defeat in the face of mankind's wretched underside. "Compassion in its truest form is that which is given in spite of any consequence. When it does not serve the giver to any end, or indeed when it may harm the giver. Compassion is mercy." Jean Valjean finishes separating the parts of the plant, and tying together each separate bundle, which he places in the basket.

[inaurare]

"Yes." Soft, a taut little smile with those words - simple words, but big in their meaning, in their acting.

He straightens up, taking a deep breath of the garden air, squaring his shoulders a little. That's better. The garden has always helped him.

"...shall we move on?" Literally, and in terms of conversation, one hand sweeping toward their basket. "Our list is long, and there is only so much time in the day, no?"