North Road {HS}

21. Pierce

I never met Margaret. Meggy as Lewis called her.

But from the beginning she was one of those entities that was off-limits. That even when you had your hands on her you never really had her. And that drove everyone who knew her mad for her. I never heard her being regarded on any other level than that of the gods.

But it seemed that they all might have been as equally scared of her as they were enamored. Even Lewis. Even Harry. And back then both of them had been scared of so very few things.

Lewis had penned a song in her honor, and 'Odd to Leggy Meggy' and sent it to her post haste. She had responded in turn with an equally as scandalous ditty about 'Untrue Lew' with the promise that they would go to every pub and perform their masterpieces when he returned. Harry has rolled his eyes at this but Lewis had been overjoyed by the prospects and had celebrated by getting roaring drunk and then singing both tunes as we went over the top the next morning.

Margaret hated the war and she viewed them leaving as unforgivable. She was livid with both of them and didn't let them forget. Blaming Harry when Lewis had decided to join up as well. But though she was angry she was also loyal and supported her boys through their days in the trenches with entertaining letters filled with promises of better days and accounts of other nurses.

But then one day bleeding out on the muddy trench floor it had ended. And somehow this mythical creature that was Margaret Styles was dead. And Harry mourned the loss the only way he knew how to. By forgetting.

Then the letter arrived.

A week ago.

And no one has said anything. Only the four of us knew and a glaringly, silent tension had settled over us.

Harry tried to seem unaffected but the nightmares he had just started to escape were now crashing over him in heavy, inescapable waves. He hadn't been there any morning since. Returning only in time to change his damp clothes for others that would only get more damp on his way to work and to splash water on the purple in the hollow under his eyes that would only grow darker.

I had seen Harry fight a war before and even had the chance to fight alongside him. We were brothers in arms. But now he was fighting alone. Waging a desperate battle in the trenches of his brain that seemed to run deeper and darker than any in France.

He had buried her there. He had buried himself there.

Yet his ghosts had remained even after he had run thousands of miles from them.

But that's the problem with the off-limits, legends, the mythical, the gods. They can be resurrected.
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I know it's been a long time and I know it's short but here's some explaining that needs to be done all around.
1.) Remember Lewis getting name dropped all along? Maybe he's important.
2.) I'm in the airport. Again. I had to go back to the States for five days to coordinate a wedding and get instruments for our refugee music program.
3.) You know you spend too much time in airports when one of your default WiFi options is Heathrow WiFi.
4.) There probably will be another update in the next twenty four hours, but I can't promise anything. (I still have 24 of this 48 hour trip to go to get back to my apartment in Tyre.)
5.) Here's a totally unsolicited picture of me that none of you cared about seeing ever just so I could remind myself that there was at least one day in these past few months of settling in a job where no one cares what I look like and going back and for that there was really a day where I didn't look like an actual airport, trash human.

Anyways, sorry for being incognito and sticking my wannabe sultry face in your feeds. Love you all and you'll here from me soon. ❤️