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[indent][indent]“We write of what we know; and for those who want to understand, we say, we bear witness to all that we have seen as we journeyed our path.  He Himself has declared: ‘If a man does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch; and men gather it, and cast it into the fire, and it is burned.  If he abides in Me, I abide in him’ (cf. John 15:5-6). The sun cannot shine without light;  nor can the heart be cleansed of the stain of destructive thoughts without invoking the name of Jesus. This being the case we should use that name as we do our own breath.  For that name is light, while evil thoughts are darkness; it is God and Master, while evil thoughts are slaves and demons.”

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[color=gray]Allowing the sullied thickness of her mittens to be brought up again and to trace the trough leather of Byznut’s reigns (drawn about her defined jaw and perched horse chin), she clung to the restraint secretly, holding the material dear to her like her own cross, nestled and warm against her pale wintry skin, as the two creatures wedded with the clan for their evening offerings. The weighted body of her equestrian pulled tired, strong muscles through the winter several steps closer, cracking the sounds of a beautiful horizon emerging in the distance. Reason had dismantled Annushka's air, as her body, wrapped abundantly stood silently and void with mere nods that meaninglessly showed her conditioned humility, annealed by the conscripted life. A dim veil still blinded her vision as she looked onward, unsettled by the ominous discord that had misaligned her own perceptions with the otherworldly entities. Although, she could still hear the colorful boldness that modestly cloaked each word being prayed in meditation from the Hetman, but in the midsts of the prayers, the evil one’s arrows were still able to pierce through her papakha and deliberately cut short her penitent thoughts, dragging her prayers to the graves of the ice to be lost in the shadows that were approaching from the forestry. In small hopes of hidden help, her dark eyes shed small glimpses towards Dmitry, standing with the pride that only a Cossack would know, as his bearish style withstood through the effervescent trumpets announcing the setting of the sun and the offense of the invisible enemies. And, she crossed her body as her gaze draped to the lowness of her own thoughts to the silent but strong word, [color=white][i]Amin.[/i][/color]

It had been the cherished Misha who had put flame in the dear lamps, burning the fragrant oil that set forth incense and worship towards the already smokey heavens, but it all seemed through the religious fashion of the moment that Dmitry’s own righteous spirit had been the real ignition of the flames and perhaps, it was his very own contrite prayers, which had cast such a cloudy coverage in the heather powdered sky. In Annushka’s very own chest, her heart felt the confines of prayer in the darkness of her soul set alight… yet she seemed to lose such faithful stillness as these feelings were imply snuffed and covered with ashen turmoil when she pondered with perversion the modesty that had shortened their evening prayers. This crux of love had been lost to poor Annushka, far before her Confession of the Old Believers. It was no such wonder or mystery as to how her life had taken such a fall.  These reasons for not wanting to accept the truth were keeping her head low and her eyes from making much more merriment than necessary for guest’s sake and to not upset the host and any small prayer of chance she still had to kneel through the Gates.

[i]Amin.[/i] The hem of Annushka’s garment swifted away at her ankles as her body motioned towards the group for food and drink. She was not far from the Hetman, zealous in his mountainous instrumental physique and thick hair.  His unwavering care for her conveyed utmost honor, so skilled, no book could have taught him this Way. He was not the only one amongst the group who had been tonsured with such fervent grace. It clung to the clan like fiery ornaments with bold colors and holy passions. A recherché part of her wanted to imagine the army, vigorous and robust as they were, as beautiful flowers that had sprouted and blossomed through the gray monuments of sullen, achromatic ground jaded with sprinkles of black and brown dust, but so much despair had devoured her appetite for any decorative thoughts for such. Instead, her mind drifted, cradling gently back-and-forth in contemplation over the future that held the Cossacks on this journey in selfless ambition for her own salvation. So sweet were the words she wanted to speak in a feminine admiration, adorably founded in consideration for her new comrades’ acceptance, yet fear had smitten her tongue as she knew all too well the thirst that was driving her would not be quenched during tonight’s meal. Dread was churning away her spirits over-and-over as she imagined her Confession being quietly recited to a man she had no liking or dealing. 

The Annushka she recollected as a youth seemed stronger than the person she was now. Small thoughts of temptation, so cheap and trite in their size were capsizing her courage far more than any such negativity ever had during her childish days. These thoughts had been tempting her in various ways and forms. In simple instances that seemed to last for longer bouts of times than she knew not to believe, the thoughts told her that her sins had died with her husband, and any trials to receive mercy were not needed. Such thoughts were hard not to heed, yet when she did often fall into their traps, sometimes laced in silk threads, Annyushka would find herself tumbling further into the web of neverendering melancholia. This discouragement tried to devour her into thinking her husband had taken all of their sins together and was now being persecuted for them. The eternal flames were burning him like charcoal, and the only scent to expunge from his immortal life was a stench not even the All-merciful God would acknowledge or care to remember. He had really died for her sins, now entombed in the belly of Gehenna, but it was all for her to be saved as a secret between her and her fallen and damned beloved. And still, she begged his intercessions.

In other instances, the temptations arose in her in shapes like a poisonous seed that told her it was hopeless to ask forgiveness. It drenched her mouth at times in the middle of the day, when her cheeks were feeling the dry coolness of the outskirting kingdom, and her skin was longing for a sip of something other than the water that kept nestled in her satchel. They were hidden traps so laid freely and dined; and the convinced her that the script in Jesus’ hand read not her husband’s name and neither would it ever have Annushka’s soul willfully scripted; but such doubts she knew were the type that drove beasts into the depths of their own feigned sinlessness as they roamed free and wild, always thinking to escape themselves but never succeeding.

Some other times, she saw Cossacks, even the men so dear to Dmitry as ruthless and cruel. Their intentions were none close to the Most Holy, and spitefully, she cast her own ill-will towards them in vain projection.  Such falsehood, she saw too closely in her prayers, and she knew all these such thoughts were trivial even if they came like storms of black smoke that blinded her judgement in vile and baseness, as her own distraught nature to curse her husband and herself.  Annu was many defenseless to these attacks, which all seemed so similar, in her sinful womanhood, evenly tempestuous. At times, they all seemed to be the same thought, over and over, merely weaving the same fabric that stretch not just over her own muscle and bone, but they announced a discorded story of a woman who longed to be damned. She was a stranger in this land, and yet treated with reverence, threaded to the Cossack who tied their truths to the One True Godhead, the very one she could not bare to see, blinded by her own faults and guilt, she willingly refused to sacrifice. Nevertheless, the heating of millet and fat was warming to her cold senses, a hearty celebration to the Nativity as warriors to feast rather than lament.

There was much to lament, however. It was not just Annyu who could feel the cold throne flowing over from the Queen’s Court or the wearily long-winded road that had taken them by necessity to direct safely around other Cossack; yet the cheer commanded onward in the Cossack; and the high spirits were painted not with their misery or tiredness but with the future in the coming day. Their courage was radiating with fires that prepared their foods, in pots over brewing fire. They came together for commune over travel and food. The sound of jest and laughter portrayed like a written picture, lost in the etymology of translation to Annushka, as a woman displaced in a society that had little use for the dainty mold to be so present. For such reasons, the situation not even understood to herself was drawn with a sturdy face worn upon her as to disguise her innermost self from even her own conscious.  A comfort of this helped mask her own struggles of doubt as she began suiting her worth in the coming dawn, not to be beaten by the nature of her most intimate workings, she was brazen in her attire of the Don Cossacks. It was of utmost importance that her inner self was watchful as to guard her outer self. For years now, she had kept this womanly identity shut, and terror of being discovered had caged away the emotions that she so mostly wanted to let penetrate the snow fallen earth. How desperate she had been to be by her husband’s side; and now still, she felt the tug of his departed soul lingering with honest fervor and broken heartedness.  Yet, pondering him left pity and confusion in her bosom along with a dishonored taste upon her tongue when she counted his memories beside her amongst the the new company.

Indeed, it was a God-given blessing in itself that tonight they should sleep so separately. To each stoic act of community, a private devotion of emotional indulgence was granted, seemed like the shortened prayers. A modest change in routine and structure was noted by Annushka each day. Only small and simple things and only daily, like trickling water, she was seeing the small droplet of forgiveness that softened the blow of the rigid lifestyle, unlike the previous one that had captured her memory in anguish and loathe. Their spirits, although kindled with spiritual kindness, were frighteningly stronger and more vibrant and fererent than the coarse mane that collected around the others in a clockwise manner. 

There was joy in this, despite the  mourning disposition of fictional widowhood, and a small smile pressed to her lips a she joined the herd. Her mind walked counterclockwise in a tiny jest of play. This was her new home, and her name would soon be allowed to be carved on the inner-workings of the clan, like the holy scroll painted in the Son’s hand. This impatience was a crucial nurturing she discerned to keep as excitement and spiritual anticipation to keep from falling away into the snares that left her soul bedridden with the weeds of her sins and memories of adultery. Even with the Hetman’s treatment, she was feeling the discrepancy of her own worth to not be a branch being gathered for the fire to shrewd but as a branch apart of the tree, impenetrable and patriarchal and not cast out and put to shame for the misery of a mistress’ evil desires and deeds. No longer with her husband by her side to hold up her astute act, her mind was learning to drift to the prayer of the heart. She would need it to stomach the journey in the morrow after a night of the grain wine, transparent like the force that exuded from the Hetman — a triumphant posture she had once seen long before somewhere, and only now was she starting to remember it.

She untucked the pinkness of her desires and embraced the pain, now able and willing to be numbed by the cold winds, encouraging the clan to commit further into each other. So far ahead of the fallen nature was the Hetman, so it seemed to her feminine mind. She allowed this trick to entangle her if only for disposition to give way for further respect for the man's authority and austerity. If a mark was being missed in this attempt, she told herself as comforting peace in the shortened prayers of a long-suffering journey, she was still trying, and in her trials and errors, God a Merciful hand, already guiding specially her to safety, the monastery come the new beginnings of the new born King. [i]Христос родился.[/i]  If Dimitri, dearest Dima, with his hound eyes so piercing and staggeringly bold, could take in her wretched being with cherished hyssop and fatherly blessings then so shall it be that his Creator through the witness yet to come do the same. Fear still blushing her, she turned her bare cheeks, kissed by the lulls of the weather's lucid, coils tipped to her left side, permitting her hoydenish traditions to rest upon the evening laurels of her braid as a gloved hand moved to the hilt of her saber, reforming a bond. There was a future forged for her with a fighting chance, s'long as she safe guarded the Holy Mother and allowed no sin to penetrate her royal doors as she failed to do properly before her own parents.[/color]