The Longest Night

Way back, I wrote - and lost - a poem about what would happen in the event of a nuclear war. All very earnest stuff, and probably just as well for the world that it has disappeared. The poem ended with the rather unoriginal
"... And sullen mist shall hide the truth,
And the truth shall hide for ever."

A lady from the workgroup I belonged to at the time believed I could improve the ending by saying "And the truth shall be lost for ever." As ever, I railed against such impertinence, but (much) later, relented and accepted her version of the ending. It sounded better, if nothing else.

However.

Later, I remembered why I said 'hide' and not 'be lost'. It was a comment on the reality of life; that the truth is often not lost, but may be hidden i.e. is hidden, either accidentally or deliberately, until someone else uncovers it. The question is: uncovered by who? I had no answer. Aliens, perhaps, or some surviving race stumbling upon it centuries later. Of course, I couldn't illustrate this at the ending of the poem. It would have been silly to try, and would have ruined my attempt at a dramatic ending.

I feel this way about my protagonist. His truth is hiding from me. He seems to be hiding from me at the beginning I've chosen. It could be because I've called him Leon. There is already a book and film about someone named Leon (unread by me), and so I feel I will probably have to change his name. Perhaps he is upset with me, because, like me, he loves this name. Hmmm. Change of name or not, he and I have begun to talk; tentatively. I've begun to understand him, but still haven't captured everything about him. Who he actually is. How he actually came to exist. Once I've done that, I'm sure Leon and I will get along fine. There, I've called him Leon again. Guess it really must stay like that. I hope so.